Read the best long reads from around the internet, including outstanding long-form articles leading publishers like The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, LA Times, Washington Post and many more.
After the surrogate son—and alleged lover—of New York’s “jeweler to the stars” was involved in a brutal killing, tabloid drama engulfed a swath of the city’s rich and powerful. But what really happened the night of Joey Comunale’s murder?
Richard Phillips survived the longest wrongful prison sentence in American history by writing poetry and painting with watercolors. But on a cold day in the prison yard, he carried a knife and thought about revenge.
Like all the best con artists, Randy Constant was a charmer, hard not to like. You’d never have guessed that the father of three, grandfather of five was a liar, cheat and serial philanderer who masterminded one of the biggest and longest-running frauds in the history of American agriculture.
A world-renowned physicist meets a gorgeous model online. They plan their perfect life together. But first, she asks, would he be so kind as to deliver a special package to her?
This Hotel lists hotel, hostel and bed & breakfast recommendations from trusted experts like New York Times, Lonely Planet, Fodor’s, Frommers, CNN and many more.
In the fall of 2018, the 26-year-old American missionary traveled to a remote speck of sand and jungle in the Indian Ocean, attempting to convert one of the planet’s last uncontacted tribes to Christianity. The islanders killed him, and Chau was pilloried around the world as a deluded Christian supremacist who deserved to die.
By robbing the Bellagio, Tony Carleo had achieved something he hadn’t been able to do in a decade of striving – he had made himself a millionaire. But, because he had stolen chips instead of cash, he was really only a millionaire inside the Bellagio casino.
After class on Tuesday 15 September 1981, the first day of the new school year, a 10-year-old girl named Ursula Herrmann returned to her house in Eching. She never arrived. So began one of Germany’s most notorious postwar criminal cases, which remains contentious to this day.
It was the spring of 1992 in the small town of Martensville. Rumours were spreading that a local family were members of a secret satanic cult, abusing children at their home daycare and at a property outside of town. A horde of devil worshippers was allegedly on its way, looking to attack in the dead of night.
She tormented studio executives, actors, makeup artists, security guys, photographers, screenwriters, athletes, even bobsledders and scuba divers for years—until corporate investigator Nicoletta Kotsianas was put on the case.
The newest trend among the world’ s ultra-rich—like, royalty-grade, private-plane-owning Scrooge McDuck rich—is to have a butler. But what type of person would willingly give over his life to serving the outrageously moneyed?
For years Donald Heathfield, Tracey Foley and their two children lived the American dream. Then an FBI raid revealed the truth: they were agents of Putin’s Russia. Their real names were Andrei Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova. Their sons tell their story.
On May 18 2015, the FBI announced the search for a 53-year-old accountant accused of embezzling $8.7 million from an Ohio-based Pepsi distributor had come to an end. His name: James T. Hammes. Authorities say Hammes took the funds through a series of banking transfers while working as a controller for the distributor. Then he went for a hike.
To thousands of young millennials from humble backgrounds, Jordan Belfort’s Wolf of Wall Street story became a blueprint for how to escape an unremarkable life on low pay. Their social media feeds display super-rich lifestyles, but what are these self-styled traders really selling?
The US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when the Japanese finally succumbed to the threat of further nuclear bombardment and surrendered. The support for this narrative runs deep. But there are three major problems with it, and, taken together, they significantly undermine the traditional interpretation of the Japanese surrender.
Jeff Pike, the head of the infamous Texas-based Bandidos motorcycle club, went on trial in federal court for racketeering. Prosecutors called him a ruthless killer, the man behind one of the deadliest biker shootouts in American history at the Twin Peaks restaurant in Waco. Pike, however, said he was just a good family man.
If Anthony Montwheeler does suffer from a mental illness, one that caused him to become extremely violent, how were the hospital staff and the review board so easily fooled? And, if he does not, why, a month after winning release, did he commit a senseless murder in the full view of multiple witnesses?
Texas has banished hundreds of prisoners to more than a decade of solitary confinement, an extreme form of a controversial punishment likened to torture. Many of these prisoners aren’t sure how—or, in some cases, if—they will ever get out.
The mystery surrounding MH370 has been a focus of continued investigation and a source of sometimes feverish public speculation. Judging from the electronic evidence, this was not a controlled attempt at a water landing. The airplane must have fractured instantly into a million pieces.
Citing the fact that Keith Raniere had a cast of girlfriends, the media declared that Nxivm was not a self-improvement company at all but rather a “sex-slave cult.” A federal investigation was opened, culminating in Mexican police officers plucking Raniere from a pricey villa.
For more than a century, historians, writers, and artists were guilty of creating a mythologized version of the American West. How history forgot Felipe and Vivián Espinosa, two of the American West’s most brutal killers—and the complicated story behind their murderous rampage.
For many raised in the church, escape presents a singular problem. “They have an identity to go back to,” says one former Scientologist. “We’re trying to discover our identity in a vacuum.”
Bill Benter did the impossible: He wrote an algorithm that couldn’t lose at the track. Close to a billion dollars later, he tells his story for the first time. “I find the real business world to be a lot more difficult than horse racing.”
George Wright, America’s most elusive fugitive, ran for forty years. He ran from the cops after escaping from prison. He ran from the feds after the most brazen hijacking in history. He ran from the authorities on three continents, hiding out and blending in wherever he went.
Virtually every Amish victim I spoke to—mostly women but also several men—told me they were dissuaded by their family or church leaders from reporting their abuse to police or had been conditioned not to seek outside help. Some victims said they were intimidated and threatened with excommunication.
Ruja Ignatova called herself the Cryptoqueen. She told people she had invented a cryptocurrency to rival Bitcoin, and persuaded them to invest billions. Then, two years ago, she disappeared. Jamie Bartlett spent months investigating how she did it and trying to figure out where she’s hiding.
A mysterious mansion. A murder-suicide. Paranormal activity. This is the true story of 2475 Glendower Place. Before the Internet, it retained its anonymity, hiding at the foot of Griffith Park, at the eastern end of the Santa Monica Mountains. Now it’s becoming an Amityville horror for the Facebook generation.
On April 16, 2007, the fuzzy, grey star had just set, and the bustling streets cast further into darkness, when police detectives arrived at the Agricultural Bank of China. When detectives entered the vault, they were stumped. The suspects had left behind only one piece of physical evidence: a bag full of lottery tickets.
As one of the northernmost settlements on earth, the Norwegian hamlet of Longyearbyen has become a magnet for adventurous souls looking to start a new life. But when an unsettling crime happened, it brought home a harsh reality: in the modern world, trouble always finds you.
June 26, 2017: Another man vanishes from the Gay Village. Part one in a four-part series on the Toronto police investigation and community efforts that caught serial killer Bruce McArthur.
How Tommy Thompson, a brilliant scientist, went from discovering a mother lode of treasure at the bottom of the sea to fleeing from authorities with suitcases full of cash.
Northern Irish paramilitary Gary Haggarty pleaded guilty to hundreds of violent crimes, including many killings – while working for the British state. They included five murders; five attempted murders; one count of aiding and abetting murder.
Antoine Yates spent three years living peacefully inside his New York City apartment with his ‘roommate’ — a 450-pound Siberian tiger named Ming. Until, that is, Ming’s animal instincts kicked in and he mauled Yates in the middle of their kitchen.
It was one of the most arresting viral photos of the year: a horde of climbers clogged atop Mount Everest. But it only begins to capture the deadly realities of what transpired that day at 29,000 feet. These are the untold accounts of the people who were there.
For years, Mormon mommy blogger Natalie Lovin curated a picture-perfect life. Natalie’s job was being a lovably quirky wife and mother who documented her idyllic life online. Then she left the church—and her husband.
Lynx Vilden is a 54-year-old British expat who, for most of her adult life, has lived wholly off the grid. She doesn’t have cell service or WiFi. Until about ten years ago, Lynx also possessed no credit card, nor fixed address; her previous abodes had neither electricity nor running water.
In the water park business, Jeff Hendry was considered a genius of sorts. He often said that his goal in life was to make customers of his family’s legendary water parks happy—“to put a smile on their faces, to give them a thrill or two.” It was a beautiful vision. Until it went horribly wrong.
Ben Schlappig, 25, is one of the biggest stars among an elite group of obsessive flyers whose mission is to outwit the airlines. They’re self-styled competitors with a singular objective: fly for free, as much as they can, without getting caught.
Confederates who had rejected Reconstruction fled the United States in the wake of the Civil War—a voluntary exile that American history has more or less erased. The Confederados in Americana, Brazil, are one of the last remaining enclaves of the children of the unreconstructed South.
What happened at the Gardner Museum has become the most famous art heist ever, not only because of the money involved—$500 million, making it the largest art theft in history—but also because of the countless FBI agents, private detectives and art dealers who’ve tried and failed to solve it.
