Resources for Featured Articles, Homicide & Mass Shooting

Women of Juarez

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.

Close Encounters

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.

Even Without Malice, Errors Still Hurt

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.

Commemorating Our Troubles

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.

The Short Life of Viktor Matthey

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.

Aftershocks of a Crime Spree

A series describing the impact of a string of armed robberies on its many victims, including the trauma experienced by the police officer who shot and killed the suspect.  Originally published in the Detroit Free Press in 2001.

Rwanda: Beauty and Loss

In these remarkable messages, sent to the Dart Center from Rwanda, Deirdre Stoelzle-Graves shares impressions of that country.

The Joseph Palczynski Story

A two-part series from The Baltimore Sun on the lives of six women serially victimized by one man's extremes of physical and psychological abuse.

Columbine: A Photographer's Perspective

David Handschuh, staff photographer for the New York Daily News, had just returned to his office when his editor told him to go to Littleton, Colorado. Six hours after watching the event unfold on television, he was at Columbine, covering the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Columbine: A Willingness to Talk

One by one, students ran from Columbine High to escape the terror caused by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. As teen-agers wandered outside the building, some appeared dazed and confused — shocked by the killings of their teacher and friends. Others cried and wept, unable yet to comprehend the horror of what they or others had witnessed.