The Best American Crime Writing: 2004 Edition: The Year's Best True Crime Reporting

A year’s worth of the most powerful, the most startling, the smartest and most astute…

“Ciudad de la Muerte” by Cecilia Balli, from Texas Monthly
“Code of Dishonor” by Clara Bingham, from Vanity Fair
“Lord of the Drug Ring” by Charles Bowden, from GQ
“The Dark Art of Interrogation” by Mark Bowden, from The Atlantic Monthly
“Possessed” by Luke Dittrich, from Atlanta magazine
“Night of the Bullies” by Robert Draper, from GQ
“Stephanie” by James Ellroy, from GQ
“Who Is the Boy in the Box?” by Sabrina Rubin Erdely, from Philadelphia magazine
“Who Shot Mohammed al-Dura?” by James Fallows, from The Atlantic Monthly
“The Professor and the Porn” by Elisabeth Franck, from New York magazine
“The Old Man and the Gun” by David Grann, from The New Yorker
“ Crime Scene Cleanup” by Pat Jordan, from Playboy
“A Miscarriage of Justice” by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., from The Atlantic Monthly
“Watching the Detectives” by Jay Kirk, from Harper’s Magazine
“For the Love of God” by Jon Krakauer, from GQ
“Chief Bratton Takes on LA” by Heather Mac Donald, from City Journal
“Not Guilty by Reason of Afghanistan” by John H. Richardson, from Esquire
“Megan’s Law and Me” by Brendan Riley, from Details
“Unfortunate Con” by Mark Schone, from The Oxford American
“To Kill or Not to Kill” by Scott Turow, from The New Yorker