The stories of Guatemalans reveal a community haunted by civil war and genocide and threatened by the drug trade and gang violence.
PHNOM PENH, Cambodia—At the entrance of Choeung Ek, the most visited of the “killing fields” here, several shiny-eyed children greet tourists and quickly engage them in a counting game in both Khmer (the Cambodian language) and English. They laugh, ask the strangers their names, where they're from. They skip around and say, in unison, "1-2-3-smile!"
The Wichita Eagle newsroom recently faced a coverage situation that few newspapers encounter: A serial killer resurfacing many years after his last killing.
A six-part series that takes a deep look at the impact of homicide on family, police, bystanders and the city itself. Originally published in the Detroit Free Press (Detroit, MI), in 2004.
A 12-part series about a couple who survived the Cambodian killing fields and returned years later to help others. The devistation of genocide is revealed through their own journey and that of the women they seek to rescue fro a life of prostitution. Originally published in the Rocky Mountain News (Denver, CO) in June, 2004.
An eight-part series about survivors in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a community that has lost hundreds of women to unsolved murders in the past decade. Originally published in the Orange County Register (Santa Ana, CA), in 2004.
In February 1972, I was 18 years old, a couple of months out of high school and beginning a cadetship at the now-dead Sun News Pictorial in Melbourne. It was my first week at the paper and I had been sent for the day to watch police rounds at work.
It was a slow to no-news day at Russell Street so the police reporter suggested we drive up to the Sherbrook Forest where there was a search for a man who'd been missing for a week.
Reporters may have felt they didn’t want to intrude, but far from a closed and hushed house between Sheona’s death and her funeral, it was literally an open house.
Recently we have covered the fifth anniversary of the worst atrocity of our Troubles. The relatives of the victims, who have formed their own committee, have said it will be the last memorial service formally convened in the town.
An article depicting the unhappy life of a Siberian boy whose violent death is told against the larger story of his birth parents, the orphanage that briefly shelters him, and his abusive adoptive parents in America. Originally published in the Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), on October 28, 2001.