After a botched bank robbery in 1990, Sture Bergwall, aka Thomas Quick, confessed to a string of brutal crimes. He admitted to stabbings, stranglings, incest and cannibalism. He was convicted of eight murders in all, and after the final trial he went silent for nearly a decade. But a few years ago, Bergwall came forward again—there was one more secret he had to tell.
She was Becky Sue Turner, then Lori Erica Ruff. Now she’s Jane Doe.
The intertwined lives of an Oregon rancher and a Indiana fraudster.
Montaous Walton couldn’t throw, catch or hit. But he wanted to be a ballplayer. And with the help of the internet, the media, and an ambitious young agent, that’s what he briefly became.
On a cruise with Syvlia Browne, the controversial psychic famous for telling distraught parents where their missing children are.
A captured bank robber makes a remarkable claim.
An investigation into a scholarly hoax.
In 1913, Joe Knowles became a media sensation after fleeing into the Maine woods wearing nothing but a jockstrap. Two months and one bear-clubbing incident later, the “Nature Man” returned to civilization as a hero. But was it all hoax?
A scholarly dispute devolves into criminal impersonation.
The story was told by Sports Illustrated, CBS News, and countless others: linbeacker Manti Te’o, Heisman trophy candidate and the face of Notre Dame football, was playing brilliantly despite the tragic loss of his girlfriend to leukemia early in the season. The reporters missed one key element of Te’o’s story, however: the girl hadn’t died. She couldn’t have. She didn’t exist.
On an affliction for the digital age, “Munchausen by internet.”
How a couple made millions on uncanny forgeries.
“What could possibly be funnier than depositing a perfectly ridiculous, obviously false, fake cheque?”
On the evening of November 7th 1974, the 7th Earl of Lucan, an inveterate gambler and Backgammon champion with a taste for power boats, snuck into his estranged wife’s basement. He then bludgeoned their nanny with a lead pipe and placed her in a canvas sack, before attempting to murder his wife. Recognizing his voice, she convinced him that she could him escape, then slipped out a bathroom window. Lord Lucan was never seen again.
John Dirr’s son Eli didn’t really have cancer. In fact, neither Eli nor John Dirr ever existed.
A decade-long Internet hoax unravels.
The world of high-end wine gets conned.
An exposé of Internet Marketers.
An investigation into the true identity of a high school basketball player.
The strange saga of Sarah Phillips, who went from message board commenter to ESPN gambling columnist and hid her identity from editors, scamming many of the people she met along the way.
The story behind the story that ended Dan Rather’s career.
An investigation into Erin Brockovich and the lawsuits that made her famous.
How Timothy Patrick Barrus, a white writer of gay erotica, reinvented himself a (wildly successful) Native American memoirist.
As a teenager, Trey Smith snuck into the cash- and porn-filled home vault of his friend’s father. Fifteen years later, he told the story from prison.
How a Massachusetts psychotherapist fell for a Nigerian e-mail scam.
Was Steinbrenner’s Partner the “Madoff of Memorabilia”? Inside a collector’s hoax.
