You probably don’t have time to read every investigation, every breakdown, every file we’ve opened this week. We get that. So, here’s our weekly recap of our deep dives. We are Front Page Detectives, and this is where the story actually is.
The Lindsay Clancy trial ended without a verdict. The fight over the lone juror who refused to acquit her has only gotten uglier.
Michael P. Desronvil was the only juror who would not join the 11 others favoring a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible for killing her three children. Since the September 4 mistrial, fellow jurors have publicly accused him of refusing to engage, disregarding instructions and clinging to the brutality of the killings rather than the legal question of insanity.
Desronvil has fired back, claiming some jurors entered deliberations as “activists” committed to acquittal. Meanwhile, reporting has dug into his marriage, finances, family disputes and Haitian background despite no established finding that he lied during jury selection or committed juror misconduct.
The dispute has become increasingly uncomfortable because Desronvil was also the panel’s only Black juror. His family now says it fears leaving home as criticism of his vote spills far beyond the courthouse.
The jury failed to reach a verdict on Lindsay Clancy. The public appears considerably more determined to reach one on Michael Desronvil.
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Lizzie Borden has spent 130 years trapped inside a rhyme. Netflix is giving her another story — and taking some extraordinary liberties along the way.
Monster: The Lizzie Borden Story dramatizes the notorious 1892 murders of Andrew and Abby Borden, with Ella Beatty playing the woman acquitted of hacking them to death inside their Fall River home.
The evidence against Lizzie was undeniably troubling: family resentment over money, contradictory statements, a mysteriously missing note and the infamous burning of a dress days after the killings. An alleged attempt to purchase prussic acid has also fueled a theory that poisoning may have preceded the ax murders.
But Netflix goes much further, embracing disputed or invented elements including sexual abuse, a romance with maid Bridget Sullivan and the idea of murder as liberation. None is established by the historical record.
Lizzie may have been guilty. She may have been innocent. What history does not provide is permission to turn every missing fact into whatever makes the better television scene.
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The stranger thought he was going home with a woman. He had no idea the CIA was waiting.
Under the notorious MKULTRA program, the agency operated covert safe houses where unsuspecting men could be lured inside, secretly dosed with drugs including LSD and monitored through hidden surveillance equipment.
Known as Operation Midnight Climax, the experiments used women recruited by federal narcotics agent George Hunter White to bring subjects into controlled apartments. The men received no warning, medical screening or meaningful follow-up — and some became seriously ill.
The CIA already knew how dangerous unwitting LSD experiments could be. Army scientist Frank Olson plunged to his death in 1953 after being secretly drugged during another agency experiment. Yet covert testing continued for years.
The government later concluded that drugging unsuspecting Americans had been “clearly illegal.” Nobody involved was prosecuted — and after the CIA destroyed most MKULTRA records, many victims could never even be identified.
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How Joe Valachi Broke the Mafia’s Most Sacred Rule
For more than 30 years, Joe Valachi kept his mouth shut. Then he decided the Mafia wanted him dead.
The longtime Genovese crime family soldier had survived mob wars, prison and decades inside a criminal organization built around omertà — the absolute rule of silence.
Everything changed after Valachi became convinced boss Vito Genovese had marked him for death. In 1962, terrified inside federal prison, Valachi mistook another inmate for an assassin and beat him to death with a metal pipe.
Facing the rest of his life behind bars and believing the Mafia had abandoned him, Valachi began talking. In 1963, he appeared before the U.S. Senate and publicly explained Cosa Nostra’s hierarchy, initiation rituals, families and rules to millions of Americans.
He wasn’t the Mafia’s most powerful gangster. He became something far more dangerous: proof that a made man could break the code — and live long enough to tell everybody about it.
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Laura Trelstad went dancing on Mother’s Day in 1947. By sunrise, she was dead in a Long Beach oil field — with one white shoe missing.
The 37-year-old mother of three had been sexually assaulted, beaten and strangled before her body was dumped less than a mile from home. Tire impressions suggested she had been killed somewhere else, while detectives became obsessed with finding the missing shoe they believed could reveal the true crime scene.
Witnesses traced Trelstad through bars, a bus journey and several men she encountered that night. One sailor was questioned and cleared. A tall, well-dressed stranger reportedly left the bus after her and was never identified.
Because Elizabeth Short had been murdered only months earlier, newspapers quickly folded Trelstad into Los Angeles’ supposed “Werewolf” killing spree. The evidence suggests otherwise: the crimes differed dramatically in method, staging and sexual violence.
Her killer may not have been Los Angeles’ mythical monster at all. He may simply have been one man with a car who met Laura during the final miles of her journey home.
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Onni Happonen refused to surrender an elected office to extremists. A police officer responded by handing him directly to them.
The 32-year-old Social Democrat had become a target of Finland’s far-right Lapua Movement in 1930 after resisting attempts to purge elected left-wing representatives from local government in Heinävesi.
When a fascist mob stormed the town hall on September 1, Happonen tried to escape and fired a warning shot before his gun malfunctioned. A sympathetic police officer arrested him — then surrendered him to the mob.
Happonen was driven away, savagely beaten and shot in the neck. His body remained hidden in an anthill beside a highway until 1932. Two men confessed, were convicted and then claimed they had been bribed to take responsibility for the killing.
The Lapua Movement was eventually banned after its failed coup attempt. Happonen never saw it happen. Even eight decades later, wreaths laid at his memorial were smashed overnight.
Extremism lost the organization. It had already taken the man.
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