Aurora Phelps: Dating App Killer Who Drugged Her Victims

01 • 17 Minute Read

Slate

Laura Creedle

George noticed something was wrong on the first few dates. A different Louis Vuitton bag every time. At a casino steakhouse, dark glasses and a pink cap angled away from security cameras. He cut it off. Then she showed up at his door anyway. A week of drugging, imprisonment in his own condo, and $20,000 in credit gone. His sister flew to Las Vegas and found him hospitalized, barely coherent. The woman he knew as Bora turned out to be Aurora Phelps, linked by the FBI to at least five other men who didn't survive. The picture from the FBI's PowerPoint presentation is one his sister cannot stop seeing.

Read the Story →

02 • 81 Minute Read

The Atavist Magazine

Katia Savchuk

A Crime Beyond Belief

In March 2015, Denise Huskins was abducted from her boyfriend's home in Vallejo using swim goggles, prerecorded audio, and a wetsuit. The police declared it a hoax. Months passed while she and her boyfriend were publicly branded as liars. A detective in a neighboring city, working a separate home invasion, connected the dots and found the real perpetrator: a Harvard-trained immigration lawyer whose psychosis had quietly consumed him for years. The lawyer was eventually sentenced to 40 years. What he told the journalist about his state of mind when he released Huskins is something he still cannot fully explain.

Read the Story →

03 • 17 Minute Read

The Walrus

Rachel Browne & Brian Fitzpatrick

One Brother Is a Toronto Cop. The Other Has Ties to Organized Crime.

On January 18, 2021, two masked gunmen forced their way into a home in Bolton, Ontario and shot Giovanni Costa, 65, and his son Michael. Giovanni died. Michael survived and vanished. Rachel Browne and Brian Fitzpatrick trace a decade of violence around Michael's 'Ndrangheta-connected criminal career and the parallel undoing of his brother Daniel, a Toronto Police Service officer who in 2011 bought Michael a one-way ticket to Rome after a jeweller was executed and Michael became a person of interest. That night, Daniel denied six times under oath that he knew where his brother was. He had dropped him at the airport hours earlier. Daniel was eventually reinstated to the force. Michael's whereabouts remain unknown.

Read the Story →

04 • 13 Minute Read

ABC News Australia

Emily Baker & Hannah Ross

Women reveal Byron Bay's predatory 2000s culture of rape, humiliation and shame

Rachel Kila was 15 when she received a text from a 21-year-old who had spotted her around Byron Bay. Months of sexual abuse followed. She reported it in 2021, after her own daughter turned 15. Gordon's guilty plea opened the door for 35 people to speak to Emily Baker and Hannah Ross about what the early-2000s Byron Bay hardcore scene looked like for young girls. Fifteen women alleged rape or sexual assault by older men, some as young as 12. The nickname for Gordon was "Ped Gordon." His preferences were widely known. Parkway Drive said they were blindsided. The women who grew up there said that was impossible.

Read the Story →

Join the Lunch Club

📣 Subscriber Shoutout: Thank you to Shelby from Ohio for supporting LBR this week!

LBR is free and stays free. Lunch Club members get ad-free reading, a weekly Top 5 digest, and Source Notes, my monthly note on everything that almost made the cut. Starting at five dollars a month.

Join the Lunch Club →

She drugged him for a week. Five other men died.

LUNCH BREAK READS

Further Reading

Keep Reading

STAY CONNECTED