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.
Forget the latest lawsuit or courtroom filing. The Karen Read story begins with one unanswered question: what happened to John O’Keefe outside 34 Fairview Road?
The 46-year-old Boston police officer was found dying in the snow in January 2022 after spending the night drinking with Read and friends. Prosecutors said his girlfriend drunkenly reversed her Lexus into him and left him outside. Her lawyers said O’Keefe entered a fellow officer’s home, was attacked and later dumped on the lawn.
Both sides built cases around deeply contested evidence. Broken taillight fragments, vehicle data and witnesses who said Read cried “I hit him” supported the prosecution. Head injuries, wounds on O’Keefe’s arm, missing surveillance footage and the disgraceful conduct of lead investigator Michael Proctor fueled the defense allegation of a frame-up.
A first trial ended with a hung jury. A second jury acquitted Read in June 2025 of murder, manslaughter and leaving the scene, convicting her only of drunk driving. The verdict ended her criminal jeopardy over O’Keefe’s death without establishing another killer or proving the conspiracy her supporters insist took place.
Four years later, O’Keefe’s family, Read and the witnesses accused of covering up his death are still fighting in civil court. The murder case is over. The battle over what really happened that snowy night is nowhere close.
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Ted Bundy died in Florida’s electric chair in 1989. Investigators are still proving which women he killed.
Bundy confessed to roughly 30 murders before his execution, but the true number has never been settled. Some supposed victims were later linked to other killers, while several girls and women Bundy claimed to have murdered have never been found.
Modern DNA testing is now cleaning up the historical record. Utah investigators confirmed earlier this year that Bundy murdered 17-year-old Laura Ann Aime in 1974. This week, authorities formally closed the killing of 17-year-old Melissa Ann Smith after preserved biological evidence linked her case to Aime’s.
The breakthroughs also show why Bundy’s confessions alone are not enough. Ann Marie Burr, Rita Jolly, Vicki Hollar, Nancy Baird and others have all been associated with him without conclusive proof, while DNA eventually cleared him from murders including those of Rita Curran and Katherine Devine.
Bundy spent his final days giving detectives names and fragments. Nearly 40 years later, science is deciding which parts were true.
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After September 11, the United States built a detention system designed to operate beyond ordinary courts, borders and public scrutiny.
CIA prisoners were moved through secret facilities in Thailand, Afghanistan, Poland, Romania, Lithuania and elsewhere. Some were waterboarded, kept awake for days, confined in boxes, threatened with violence against relatives and subjected to medically unnecessary rectal procedures.
Psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen helped design the interrogation program after adapting techniques originally used to train American personnel to resist torture. Their company ultimately received $81million from the CIA.
Some detainees were held on catastrophic mistakes. German citizen Khaled El-Masri was seized in Macedonia, secretly flown to Afghanistan, abused and held for months before the CIA finally released him in Albania without charges.
The black sites closed under Barack Obama. Broad criminal accountability never followed. Decades later, survivors are still living with what happened inside prisons their captors once denied existed.
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Frank “Lefty” Rosenthal looked like a casino executive. Behind the Stardust’s corporate paperwork sat something much larger.
The Las Vegas resort was bought with tens of millions of dollars borrowed from the Teamsters Central States Pension Fund through financing influenced by organized-crime figures in Kansas City, Milwaukee, Cleveland and Chicago.
Rosenthal was installed in casino management while crime families secretly skimmed revenue before the money reached the books. Couriers carried cash across the country. Mob bosses collected their shares without appearing anywhere in the Stardust’s official ownership structure.
Federal investigators eventually pieced the operation together through wiretaps, surveillance, cooperating witnesses and records seized from Kansas City mob figure Carl DeLuna. The resulting Strawman prosecutions sent senior organized-crime figures to prison.
Rosenthal escaped a skimming indictment and spent years denying he had informed. After his death, former law-enforcement officials revealed another twist: the man at the center of the Stardust empire had also been a high-level FBI source.
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Elizabeth Short knew Marvin Margolis personally. Police questioned him after her murder and said he was cleared. Years later, investigators were still digging into him.
Margolis had briefly lived with Short in Hollywood during 1946 and possessed wartime medical experience after serving as a Navy corpsman in the Pacific. He later pursued premedical studies at USC, making his background especially interesting after Short’s body was surgically divided at the waist.
The LAPD said Margolis had an alibi. District attorney investigator Frank Jemison was less satisfied. By 1950, officials were examining Margolis’ military records, marriage, medical history and relationship with Short. One surviving report ended with the words: “THE INVESTIGATION PENDING.”
A modern theory suggests Short may have contacted Margolis while desperately seeking somewhere to stay after leaving the Biltmore Hotel on January 9, 1947. No telephone record, witness or motel register proves such a meeting occurred.
Margolis died in 1993 without ever being charged. Nearly 80 years after the Black Dahlia murder, the question is less whether he has been proved guilty than whether detectives ever had enough evidence to clear him in the first place.
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Two women were beaten to death inside their own London shop in broad daylight. Their killer simply walked away.
Sarah Squires, 77, and daughter Christina were found murdered at their stationery business on Hyde Road, Hoxton, in July 1872. Both had suffered repeated crushing blows to the head while the shop was ransacked around them.
Robbery appeared obvious, yet money remained hidden beneath a bed and the extraordinary violence suggested something more personal. Witnesses reported a bearded man fleeing the area, while Sarah had warned days earlier that local burglars had targeted the property and declared: “We shall be all murdered.”
Police chased family members, local thieves and supposed confessions without finding the killer. One drunken man admitted the murders in 1888, only to be cleared when records proved he had been at work.
The case faded from public attention. Victorian newspapers were disturbed by how quickly London seemed to move on. Sixteen years later, another killer would begin stalking Whitechapel and make indifference impossible.
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