Archives de catégorie : True Crime

A FALSE REPORT de T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong

Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true story of Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth

A FALSE REPORT
A True Story of Rape in America
by T. Christian Miller and Ken Armstrong
Crown, February 2018

On August 11, 2008, eighteen-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle, Washington, and raped her. Within days police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story: details of the crime didn’t seem plausible and her foster mother thought she sounded as though she were reciting a Law & Order episode. The police swiftly pivoted and began investigating Marie. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie—a bid for attention. Police charged Marie with false reporting. One of Marie’s best friends created a web page branding her a liar.
More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault. Describing the crime to her husband that night—the attacker’s calm and practiced demeanor, which led the victim to surmise “he’s done this before”—Galbraith learned that the case bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon realized they were dealing with a serial rapist: a man who photographed his victims, threatening to release the images online, and whose calculated steps to erase all physical evidence suggested he might be a soldier or a cop. Through meticulous police work the detectives would eventually connect the rapist to other attacks in Colorado—and beyond.
Based on investigative files and extensive interviews with the principals, A FALSE REPORT is a serpentine tale of doubt, lies, and a hunt for justice, unveiling the disturbing reality of how sexual assault is investigated today—and the long history of skepticism toward rape victims.

T. Christian Miller joined ProPublica as a senior reporter in 2008. Before that, he worked for the Los Angeles Times, where he covered politics, wars, and was once kidnapped by leftist guerrillas in Colombia. His first book, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives, and Corporate Greed In Iraq was called one of the “indispensable” books on the war. He teaches data journalism at the University of California at Berkeley and was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University.

Ken Armstrong, who joined ProPublica in 2017, previously worked at The Marshall Project and Chicago Tribune, where his work helped prompt the Illinois governor to suspend executions and empty death row. His first book, Scoreboard, Baby, with Nick Perry, won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for non-fiction. He has been the McGraw Professor of Writing at Princeton and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard.

They have both won numerous awards, including a 2016 Pulitzer Prize for their article « An Unbelievable Story of Rape, » written for ProPublica and The Marshall Project.

ANY ONE OF US d’Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich remporté aux enchères par Flatiron Books

Mise à jour du 5 juin 2017: droits cédés à Sonatine

L’agence littéraire Sterling Lord Literistic vient d’annoncer l’accord passé avec Flatiron Books après enchères pour la publication aux États-Unis du premier livre de Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich.

Encore étudiante en droit, Alexandria se rend en Louisiane pour faire du bénévolat dans une organisation offrant à des accusés sans moyens une représentation légale. Elle travaille alors sur la condamnation à mort de Ricky Langsley, reconnu coupable d’avoir assassiné un enfant de 6 ans. La condition mentale de ce meurtrier et son passé extrêmement difficile expliquent, sans le justifier, son délit. La mère de l’enfant demandera même à la cour de ne pas infliger la peine capitale à Ricky, qui aurait besoin de soins psychiatriques. Grâce aux actes du procès, aux témoignages et articles de journaux divers, l’auteure se propose de reconstruire cette histoire, du passé de Ricky jusqu’au débat suscité par sa condamnation.

Mais ANYONE OF US n’est un « true crime » conventionnel. Car parallèlement à l’histoire de Ricky, l’auteure raconte sa propre histoire, notamment son expérience d’enfant abusé. Et au fil des pages, la vie de Ricky et la sienne se rapprochent progressivement, jusqu’à même se croiser…

 

A groundbreaking book that shows how law is personal and composed of individual stories

ANY ONE OF US
by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich
Flatiron Books, TBA

 
When Alexandria started Harvard Law School, she had no idea how her life would be dramatically altered. After taking a summer internship at a small law firm in Louisiana and working on the murder and death penalty retrial of convicted child molester Ricky Langley, Alexandria begins to see his life and circumstances mirrored in her own. As she digs deeper into Ricky’s past, pouring over thousands of pages of court transcripts to tell his story, she finds herself thrust into the narrative as she begins identifying with the killer through their mutually abusive childhoods. In taking on Ricky, she is forced to face her own story, and rationalize the path that led her to a Harvard education, while defending the one that led Ricky Langley to a life of violent crime. But in investigating his case, she realizes that she is not alone in interpreting the crime through her own life. The judge, the jury foreman, even the victim’s mother and the defense attorney—all saw the crime through their own lens. All saw their lives in his. The murder trial that took place was not just about Ricky’s past, but about the pasts of everyone touched by the crime. In Alexandria’s hands, ANY ONE OF US becomes a book not only about how the story of one crime was constructed—but about how we understand our lives, our families, and each other, and how we all make stories.

In the tradition of IN COLD BLOOD, THE EXECUTIONER’S SONG and DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY, Alexandria merges her own personal narrative with that of Ricky Langley’s, interpreting her life through his and showing how either story can really happen to ANY ONE OF US.