The Demons Among Us

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Hi 🎃

Welcome back to The Lazy Reader, where we read some of the best (and spookiest) longform journalism from across the Web 🕸️

I have something of a special edition for you today: A Halloween-themed list. But while the season brings with it a lot of whimsy and fun trick-or-treat-y feelings, the recommendations here are anything but. And I guess this is a great time to warn everyone that all of the selections this week are likely to be triggering.

The articles below will confront the most evil impulses of humans. Abuse is a baseline, and the stories build up to some gruesome heights (or lows, depending on how you want to see it). There will be a lot of violence and blood and gore, also pain and loss, but sadly—and terrifyingly—not much remorse.

That content warning again: Stories this week are likely triggering. Tread carefully.

If you do decide to dive into this week’s recommendations, please do let me know what you think of it by voting in the poll below.

Happy reading and see you again next Monday!

PS - Thank you to beehiiv and 1440 Media for supporting this week’s newsletter! Please do consider giving their respective links below a click. It’s free, easy, and helps me out a ton. Thank you!

We’re anchoring this TLR with a classic.

In a massive seven-part series, the Tampa Bay Times digs deep into a triple-murder that shook Florida to its core, challenging everyone’s notions of humanity and evil. The deaths are gruesome and horrific, especially if you’re an empath. The team here did an incredible job of painting every person in this story (including the murderer) as nuanced and complicated, making them extremely relatable.

The reporting here must have been a heroic effort, because the degree of detail that the articles achieve is incredible. Which makes it even more terrible, in the best way possible. The story almost puts you there, witnessing first-hand the violence, the desperation of the family and of law enforcement, and the cold confidence of the killer that he’d get away with it.

This is one of those stories that makes a lasting mark on you: It shakes you to your core so much that, no matter how much you want to, you always hesitate to revisit. If that’s you, take this as your sign to re-read this series.

If it helps, here are the individual parts laid out:

Chapter 1: Sunset - On June 4, 1989, the bodies of Jo, Michelle and Christe Rogers were found floating in Tampa Bay.

Chapter 2: Haunted - In Ohio, rumors about the strange behavior of Hal Rogers begin.

Chapter 3: Neighbors - A profile of the killer emerges — he could be the man next door.

Chapter 4: The Tin Man - After nearly three years of frustration, a name stands out from the thousands of tips.

Chapter 5: The Silver Bullet - The suspect vanishes, right under the noses of the investigators.

Chapter 6: Night Stories - Five years later, a new account of what happened that night unfolds in a courtroom.

Chapter 7: The Magic Kingdom - After the verdict, Hal Rogers searches for peace.

Postscript - Nothing is the same. 

Email Was Only the Beginning

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If you’re not in the right headspace to commit all that time and energy to Angels & Demons—seven articles can be a bit too much, I understand!)—then here are seven other equally horrifying stories for you.

Angel Killer | The Atavist, $

Probably the most twisted, depraved story I’ve read in a while. So much so that I need to reiterate my content warning here: This story is disturbing. Please be careful when reading this.

I don’t want to give too much away but if crime and cannibalism had a terrifying, sickening lovechild, this would be it.

The reporting, as far as I can decipher, is largely archival. Lots of digging around news clippings and case files, supplemented with some pounding the pavement. But really, you wouldn’t be able to tell at first: Deborah Blum expertly carves out a character-driven narrative from reams of documents, something that not a lot of investigative journalists can do. The impressive writing here makes this story hit harder in the most gruesome way.

‘It Broke Me’: Inside the FBI Hunt for the Online Predators Who Persuaded a 13-Year-Old to Die | The Washington Post, $

Early last year, there was this big investigative effort to look get to the heart of 764, an online network of child abusers who, exploiting the degree of anonymity that the Internet can give, prey on kids: engaging in cybersex, blackmailing them, and even forcing them to carry out crimes or hurt themselves.

This story is in that vein. In fact, WaPo even names 764 here, because though not definitively proven, the criminal in this piece is thought to have been a part of 764. Or at least, he mirrors their modus to a frightening degree. This piece dedicates a lot of focus to the law enforcement effort that took this man down, but I feel like not much space was given to the fallout from the teen’s death. Perhaps it was to give the family the space they deserve, which I do think is the ethical choice here. But it does leave an emotional hole in the story that, at least for me, was quite noticeable.

See No Evil | TexasMonthly, $

Another gruesome one here, but definitely not as bad as the Atavist one above.

Of all the stories on this list, I feel like this one is the most stereotypically True Crime. After all, this is from Mr. Skip Hollandsworth himself, the king of the genre.

He sits down with a convicted killer who allegedly (because he’s challenging his conviction) brutally murdered four sex workers and, without revealing too much, left their bodies with some sort of sick signature. Skip digs through these crimes and weaves the man’s history between them, in an attempt to make sense of the violence.

Some flags: The language here can get rough. The piece uses the words prostitute and whore liberally, which I guess is a sign of the time (this was run in 1993) but also felt refreshing to me. Skip uses these labels matter-of-factly and doesn’t position them as excuses for the crime, but he doesn’t try to euphemize its way out of something. It could get off-putting to some.

Torture at Abu Ghraib | The New Yorker, $

Something a bit different. We’re zooming out from the personal and looking at the sheer evil and depravity that an entire system can engender.

And on that front there’s really not much that tops the U.S. military. I know there are some terror groups out there that are just as horrific, but there’s something about how cold and aseptic the U.S. armed forces are in their abuses, and how eager they are to wash their hands of these episodes. Definitely makes things worse that the military positions itself as a force of good in the world, that it defends the lofty ideals of democracy and human rights—while simultaneously fostering monsters with munitions.

The Bravest Woman in Seattle | The Stranger, Free

At face value, this story seems to just recount the morbid, gruesome facts of a morbid, gruesome attack on a couple who was very much in love and very much looking to spend a lifetime together. But at its core—and as the title suggests—the story is an ode to the strength of the sole survivor of the attack.

She has lost her partner, suffered severe injuries and most likely has more than a lifetime’s worth of trauma. And yet she insists on standing in front of a jury, a judge, the media to relive the worst day of her life and pick at wounds, bare her shame and pain for everyone to gawk at. All in the hope of putting the criminal away for life and prevent something similar from happening to anyone else in the future.

The Monster of Florence | The Atlantic, $

This story was published in 2006 and still easily beats out most True Crime stories today.

What a beast of an article. The writer embeds himself so deeply into a string of killings in Italy, so much so that this story stops becoming an investigative piece and instead is more of a first-person story about how two journalists grew to be obsessed with the titula Monster.

The crimes here are very violent and gruesome, and in many instances I had to step away from the story to center myself. Something to consider when you read this.

The Work of the Devil | TexasMonthly, $

This piece, from 1989, is easily one of the creepiest story I’ve read. There’s gore, suspense and a healthy dose of the occult. TexasMonthly positions it as a True Crime piece, which I guess is technically true, but which I think undercuts the horror-y vibe of this story. The writer should have leaned more heavily into that, in my opinion.

All of this is not to say, of course, that the writer did a mediocre job; quite the opposite, really. It’s worth repeating that this piece was published in 1989, nearly three decades ago. But you really wouldn’t be able to tell. Gary Cartwright writes with polish and finesse, enough to easily outpace today’s prime journalists. Prose is tight and restrained, which I think is important for stories like these that are way too easy to overhype. But Gary also knows when he needs to go heavy on the descriptors, which he does masterfully.

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ALSO: I know some of the stories I recommend might be behind paywalls, and maybe I can help you with access to those. Send me a message and let’s see what we can do 😊

Until next Monday! 👋