In 1955, A. J. Liebling published a piece in The New Yorker about a mysterious murder that had occurred at the turn of the twentieth century. On the afternoon of June 26, 1897, a man’s dismembered body was discovered floating in the East River, a killing that became known in reporting circles as the Ghastly Find. Some papers attributed the crime to a maniac like Jack the Ripper, while others saw parallels with additional unsolved homicides. A young newspaper reporter with some medical training believed that there was a more prosaic explanation for the crime. Liebling’s piece follows the writer as he investigates each new clue about the murder. As the story unfolds, it becomes a tale about how a young journalist’s persistence led to the discovery of a torrid love triangle and, ultimately, the identity of the murderer.
This week, we’re bringing you a selection of whodunnits and other mysteries. In “Who Killed Carol Jenkins?,” Mark Singer explores the unsolved murder of a Black woman in Indiana in the late sixties. In “The Buffs,” from 1967, Calvin Trillin follows a group of conspiracy theorists as they work to uncover new details about the J.F.K. assassination. In “The Plagiarist’s Tale,” Lizzie Widdicombe examines the secret behind a spy novelist’s prolific work. In “Where the Bodies Are Buried,” Patrick Radden Keefe revisits the I.R.A.’s connection to the abduction of an Irish mother in 1972. Berton Roueché investigates a perplexing case of mass hysteria at a Florida elementary school, and Judith Thurman explores the obscure origins of the earliest known cave paintings. In “We Two Made One,” Hilton Als describes the complicated plight of identical twins who retreated into their own world before going on an arson spree. In “Remembering Satan,” Lawrence Wright chronicles the hidden truths behind a landmark case involving “recovered” memory. Finally, in “Mysterious Circumstances,” David Grann writes about the baffling death of the world’s foremost expert on Sherlock Holmes. A good mystery captivates whether or not it’s eventually solved. We hope that these pieces add some intriguing thrills to your holiday weekend.
— Erin Overbey, archive editor
A murder mystery from 1897—and the race among the decade’s star reporters to solve it.
What a thirty-three-year-old murder has done to a town.
Was Lee Harvey Oswald innocent?
The author of “Assassin of Secrets” had a secret of his own.
Gerry Adams has long denied being a member of the I.R.A. But his former compatriots claim that he authorized murder.
The staff and students at a Florida elementary school thought that they’d been poisoned. Were they right?
What does the world’s oldest art say about us?
Why did identical twin sisters decide to speak only to each other in a way no one else could understand?
Claims of sexual abuse and satanic ritual unravelled the Ingram family—and escalated into a landmark case in the national obsession with cults and “recovered” memory.
The strange death of a Sherlock Holmes fanatic.
