When her son vanished in Mexico City in 2005, Isabel Miranda de Wallace built billboards naming his alleged kidnappers before police had even charged them. The public called her Madre Coraje. Sam Edwards traced two decades of confessions extracted under torture, a blood sample that matched the wrong man, and prison sentences stretching past a century. One suspect fled to Kentucky under a fake name and married an American soldier before the FBI found her. Wallace died months before Mexico's Supreme Court overturned the case that made her famous. Her son's body has never been found.
Rachel Montgomery pledged devotion to her guru at a remote Oregon retreat center, and he raped her in a temple after ordering the community to drink through a celebration, according to a federal lawsuit. Leah Sottile spent months building a portrait of two Buddhist teachers accused of using spiritual authority to extract sex from students who had vowed obedience. One guru settled a rape lawsuit in 2025. He is now back in Oregon, and the retreat center has already scheduled his next retreat.
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Twenty five years ago, a stranger flagged down Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees on a dark stretch of the Stuart Highway, shot Falconio, and tried to drag Lees into his truck. Courtney Barrett Peters and Emma Masters revisited the case that inspired Wolf Creek and still draws tourists asking questions at the roadhouse where Lees escaped. Bradley Murdoch was convicted and died in 2025 without ever revealing where he hid the body. Police doubled the reward money last year. The tip line has barely rung.
Lynn was still in diapers when the abuse began, and by age ten she had done to her younger brother what had been done to her, according to two sisters raised in the Old Apostolic Lutheran Church. Jeremy Kohler and Andy Mannix, reporting with the Minnesota Star Tribune, spent a year documenting a recurring pattern: children harmed by relatives who grew up to repeat the same conduct, while church leaders urged forgiveness over reporting. One convicted member is serving nearly eight years. Lynn has now told her brother what she did. She still does not know if he remembers.
