Poetry, feuds, and travels in Belgium
The best reads of the week
This week’s top pick profiles ‘homicide archivist’ Thomas Hargrove, who over the last seven years has tried to collect the details of every murder in the United States since 1971, searching among them for statistical anomalies that could point to a serial killer at work.
The police department rebuffed him; a lieutenant replied that there were no unsolved serial killings in Gary. (The Department of Justice advises police departments to tell citizens when a serial killer is at large, but some places keep the information secret.) Hargrove was indignant. “I left messages for months,” he said. “I sent registered letters to the chief of police and the mayor.” Eventually, he heard from a deputy coroner, who had also started to suspect that there was a serial killer in Gary. She had tried to speak with the police, but they had refused her.
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