Longreads Best of 2012: Kiera Feldman
Kiera Feldman is a reporter for The Nation Institute’s Investigative Fund. She wrote “Grace in Broken Arrow” for This Land Press, which was featured on Longreads in May.
I’m of the belief that a good murder story should put you out of commission for a while. There is a storyworld to journey into, and it is a doozy. But most of what we get on a day-to-day basis is just cheap entertainment: lurid play-by-plays and gleeful reveling in the perpetrator’s villainy. In one of my favorite murder stories of 2012, Vanessa Veselka writes, ”It seems our profound fascination with serial killers is matched by an equally profound lack of interest in their victims.” The unifying theme of my 2012 picks is simply that these pieces honor the stories of the people who were wronged.
1. “The Truck Stop Killer,” by Vanessa Veselka (GQ)
2. “A Daughter’s Revenge” by Robert Kolker (New York magazine)
3. “The Innocent Man” (parts I and II) by Pamela Colloff (Texas Monthly)
4. “The Lethal Presidency of Barack Obama” by Tom Junod (Esquire)
5. “The Throwaways” by Sarah Stillman (The New Yorker)
Notable mentions
• “The Hit Man’s Tale” by Nadya Labi (The New Yorker)
Delving into a murderer’s mind, not for kicks but for understanding
• “After the Massacre” by Lee Hancock (Dart Society)
The long view of Fort Hood, as seen by both the victims’ families and the shooter’s family
An anatomy of a wrongful execution
A murder of a young newlywed went unsolved for 23 years, until a cold case homicide unit picked up the file and found a missing clue.
Sherri’s file perplexed Francis. The crime report stated that a swab had been taken from the bite mark on Sherri’s arm, but it was not listed in evidence and was not among the forensic samples that had been signed out by Moritt in 1993. It apparently had been misplaced sometime earlier. Where might it be?
Francis knew well the steps in the evidence chain. Evidence recovered from the victim’s body would be held for a time in the coroner’s freezer, while the case was still active, and at some point would be gathered up and stored under the file number. What if the swab hadn’t made it from the freezer to the file? Francis called the coroner’s office. The swab was not on file, so they searched the freezers by hand.
Dirt Under the Rug
What’s wrong with the crime stats in Baltimore? “The Wire” creator David Simon on how to fix them, and how beat reporting is necessary to understand the problem:
So if you’ve read this far, and you understand the actual dynamic in play, you’re probably saying to yourself: What’s the solution? In the past, the detectives and lawyers simply swept their mistakes under the rug, with neither side taking responsibility for the bad stats. And now, because the state’s attorney has prevailed in this contest of statistical gamesmanship, the police department clearance rate has been savaged and some bad cases are no longer being charged, yet at the same time, good murder cases aren’t going forward. Which is worse? And how can this be fixed?
Well, it’s easy. And I’ll give you as long as it takes you to read past the next string of asterisks.
