Killer Bodies at the Gym

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Hi 👋 

Welcome back to The Lazy Reader, where we read some of the best longform journalism from across the Web ✨

We’re doing something a little different this week.

I’ve been doing a lot of extra reading to be able to recommend you a three-part series from The Miami New Times: A massive story from late 1999 and stretching into early 2020 that looks at one hell of a crime. It’s violent and frustrating—not to mention it can get confusing with all the characters, but that’s to be expected from a very long story—and many times I had to step away from it to keep a level head.

But my goodness does it deliver.

The writer does a massive research job here, thinly and precisely parsing through reams of court documents and dozens of hours of interviews, then masterfully finds a narrative throughline that stays coherent despite the chaotic series of crime here, and the perpetrators’ equally chaotic attempts to cover their tracks.

Writer Pete Collins must have battled cosmic levels of information overload here. And I understand that an assignment is an assignment, so he probably had no choice but to push through, but still. A heroic effort through and through.

I won’t say anything more about the story itself. I’ll let you experience it for yourselves as unprimed as possible.

Dive into part 1 here. The other two parts are spread out across the newsletter below, broken up by other reading recommendations, just in case you’re not ready to commit to reading tens of thousands of words.

Rain Boots, Turning Tides, and the Search for a Missing Boy | WIRED, $

Heartbreaking. On so many levels, heartbreaking. There’s the tragedy of the missing boy, but layered on top of it is a tragedy of a different kind, this time revealing how cruel society can be, enabled by the Internet. The fallout from his loss unfolds in the cruelest and most painful of ways.

Aside: The writer here flexes her ability to build suspense and string you along. There are a few cliffhangery types of sentences, which could be annoying to some. But I personally found it fine. Like pushing a good literary device almost to its limit.

The Rise of the Science Sleuths | Undark, Free

I know not everyone finds science stories fun, but I don’t know… I found this one to be as compelling as a typical True Crime piece. There’s a lot of intrigue here, and a lot of tension, too. Though of course, of the different kind. The piece benefits a lot from the push and pull between scientists belonging to different ideological camps. Some go on a borderline witch hunt in their mission to preserve the integrity of science, while others want to maintain the status quo—and their citations.

Yes, sure, this story is sometimes slowed down by the need to explain some complicated scientific concept, but I think it adds to the story rather than takes away from it.

How Tea’s Founder Convinced Millions of Women to Spill Their Secrets, Then Exposed Them to the World | 404 Media, Free

I’m not on social media a lot, so I wasn’t aware that the Tea app was even a thing until very recently, when a friend told me all about it, with a particular and furious focus on the controversies surrounding it. I’m not a woman, so I couldn’t really relate to my friend, but I felt the entire weight of her frustration. Modern dating is an awful experience. Women just wanted to carve out a niche of their own online, trying to keep as safe and as happy as they can. Then men had to go ahead and ruin it.

And to be clear: Not all men, sure, but it’s almost always a man. I can never apologize enough for my half of the chromosomal divide.

Built on the Bodies of Slaves: How Africa was Erased From the History of the Modern World | The Guardian, Free

I know I just said that I’m not on social media a lot, but I do still occasionally check Twitter (which I still refuse to call X) and Reddit. And sometimes, I get extremely unlucky and chance upon an angsty comment from someone (likely a child living in his parents’ basement) who scoffs at history—at how whatever prosperity we’re enjoying right now was built—bloodily, might I add—on the bodies of Black Africans.

I saw one such comment last week, which sent me digging for this story. And now I’m sharing it to you.

The Bloody Toll of Congo's Elephant Wars | GQ, $

There’s a lot to be said about poaching and the illicit trade of animal parts. It’s a very complex subject that touches on other, equally complex topics (poverty not least among them, as well as biodiversity, conservation, and even sovereignty—but I digress). This story doesn’t go into all of those. Instead, it focuses all of its time and energy into just the collateral damage: The human and animal bodies that are left lifeless by this bloody enterprise.

Run for Your Life | Outside Magazine, $

This came out in 2015, at about the same time that I started seriously running—and around a decade before its current boom. It’s both comforting and troubling to see that people still run (an act that inflicts physical discomfort, if not pain, on their bodies) to escape from their demons, even for just a bit. I’m lucky to have gotten over that hill in my life, and to have found other lower impact alternatives to keep sane, but my heart goes out to everyone who still has to resort to these exhausting means to keep the thoughts at bay.

📢 Also adding some choice picks from last week’s email here, just in case you missed that:

• Stranded on an island with a gunman.

• A brush with one of the country’s most notorious serial killers.

• A fatal slip of the mind.

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Happy reading, and until next Monday! 👋