The early bird deadline for 
The 2025 Freelance Fellowship Recipients
By Paul Saltzman, Chicago Sun-Times On Jan. 31, 2014, a nephew of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in a death a decade earlier. Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko admitted doing exactly what an investigation by the Chicago Sun-Times had revealed in early 2011 he did — and what police and…
Read MoreUntested rape kits allowed serial rapist Anthony Alliano to continue his violent attacks on young girls and women in Cordova.
Read MoreIt’s amazingly easy to steal water from a California stream. Even in this epic drought, the state has no way of monitoring exactly who is tapping into its freshwater supplies and how much they take. And those who do get caught taking water they have no right to often are allowed to keep taking it…
Read MoreUnless courts or the governor intervene, the state of Mississippi will execute a woman whose son repeatedly confessed to the killing she is slated to die for — evidence the jury never heard.
Read MoreIt is a danger hidden beneath the streets of New York City, unseen and rarely noticed: 6,302 miles of pipes transporting natural gas. Leaks, like the one that is believed to have led to the explosion that killed eight people in East Harlem this month, are startlingly common, numbering in the thousands every year, federal…
Read MoreNancy Chancey, 59, was killed after she hit another car and was thrown from her vehicle. Two days later, a resident nearby found the body of 60-year-old Art Stroud in the brush near his home. Stroud was struck by the airborne car and thrown out of sight of the police who responded to the crash.…
Read MoreWhether for infestations of insects or crime or simply for convenience, parents in the Rochester School District overwhelmingly send their children to schools other than the ones within walking distance. The median neighborhood elementary school in Rochester enrolls only 15 percent of its local children, even without counting those who attend the district’s citywide schools,…
Read MoreJared Remy had glided through his first five criminal cases, but prosecutors thought the sixth one would be different. Compared to what he had been charged with in the past — beating and choking his ex-girlfriend while she held their baby, cracking a friend over the head with a beer bottle in a jealous fit,…
Read MoreAfter Gregg Thomas pleaded guilty in 2004 to killing a teenager, a Baltimore judge ordered him to serve 15 years in prison. He was out in less than 10, and by last week he had been charged in the shooting ambush of off-duty Baltimore Police Sgt. Keith Mcneill. The shooting, which left Mcneill in critical…
Read MoreBefore he turned 21, Blaec Lammers had seen the inside of mental health facilities at least seven times. One of those visits stemmed from following an employee for two hours at the Bolivar Wal-Mart wearing a Halloween mask and wielding a butcher knife. None of that stopped that same supercenter from selling the 20-year-old a…
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