Interactive Narratives

An look inside: The case that began with a stepfather's anguished 911 call on April 10, 2008, in Portsmouth ended Feb. 18 when Robert Lee Barnes was sentenced for sexually assaulting and stabbing to death his 16-year-old friend, Meghan Landowski. More…

Two-year-old Darisabel Baez was beaten to death one day in 2008. In her final moments, men and women tried to ease her pain, then sought justice. Still haunted, they say we must never forget. More…

In 1945, newspaper publisher Arthur Kasherman was gunned down on a snowy street in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Was he a crusader for justice, or a low-life who angered the underworld once too many? Watch the video, read the stories, see the crime scene photos and maybe you'll solve a 65-year-old murder mystery. More…

The bizarre and tragic deaths of Margaret Chandler and Gib Bogle on the banks of the Lane Cove River in Sydney, 1963, remain an elusive and intriguing Australian mystery. This website explores the theme of inconsistent and impermanent memory, allowing you to shift forward and backward through time, space and point-of-view, and so compare eyewitness accounts of the deaths. The story is represented by a montage of sound, image and text, and is controlled via a map/graph interface. As you progress through it, the project becomes less about solving the crime and more about revealing the enigma of individual experience and interpretation. It is also about how a time and place, in this case Cold War Sydney, inescapably shapes the perceptions of the people who live within it, and how people who suffer an unexplainable tragedy are often blamed for it. It is the story of an improbable murder or an implausible accident; a puzzle without a solution where objective truth becomes impossible to grasp because it does not exist. More…

Before 1992, battered women in California who killed their abuser went to prison without the opportunity to show how years of abuse led to murder. In many cases, such testimony would have reduced their sentences. Since then, California law has changed and nearly 30 women have been released early for their crimes. These are the stories of 19 of these women freed since 2002. More…

In 2007, 30 people were homicide victims in Newport News, Va., a 50 percent increase over 2006. Most of the deaths happened in the East End, a predominantly poor, African-American section of town. Police have said that a culture of "no snitching" has hindered their efforts to arrest suspects in many of the killings. Residents of East End feel isolated from the rest of the city. With no banks, large grocery stores, dry cleaners, movie theaters or shopping centers, they are forced to leave the area for basic services. This isolation has given many a strong sense of community, a distrust of the motives of the police and city government as well as fear of retaliation if they do come forward with information. More…

A six-part series about the murder of a young American exchange student in a Korean motel, and the ordeal of her close friend who was accused of the crime. The site makes use of exclusive video interviews, photos, extensive interactive maps and diagrams, and several audio photo galleries, all in an integrated design. More…

Jacksonville's most murderous neighborhoods lie west of a five-mile stretch of Interstate 95 between Interstate 10 and the Trout River. More…