About this item
Two Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists tell the riveting true story of Marie, a teenager who was charged with lying about having been raped, and the detectives who followed a winding path to arrive at the truth. On August 11, 2008, eighteen-year-old Marie reported that a masked man broke into her apartment near Seattle, Washington, and raped her. Within days police and even those closest to Marie became suspicious of her story: details of the crime didn't seem plausible and her foster mother thought she sounded as though she were reciting a Law & Order episode. The police swiftly pivoted and began investigating Marie. Confronted with inconsistencies in her story and the doubts of others, Marie broke down and said her story was a lie - a bid for attention. Police charged Marie with false reporting. One of Marie's best friends created a web page branding her a liar. More than two years later, Colorado detective Stacy Galbraith was assigned to investigate a case of sexual assault. Describing the crime to her husband that night - the attacker's calm and practiced demeanor, which led the victim to surmise "he's done this before" - Galbraith learned that the case bore an eerie resemblance to a rape that had taken place months earlier in a nearby town. She joined forces with the detective on that case, Edna Hendershot, and the two soon realized they were dealing with a serial rapist: a man who photographed his victims, threatening to release the images online, and whose calculated steps to erase all physical evidence suggested he might be a soldier or a cop. Through meticulous police work the detectives would eventually connect the rapist to other attacks in Colorado - and beyond. Based on investigative files and extensive interviews with the principals, A False Report is a serpentine tale of doubt, lies, and a hunt for justice, unveiling the disturbing reality of how sexual assault is investigated today - and the long history of skepticism toward rape victims.
About the Author
T. Christian Miller is an investigative reporter at ProPublica, an independent, non-profit news organization dedicated to writing about stuff that matters. In more than twenty years as a journalist, Miller has covered four wars, a presidential campaign and reported from more than two dozen countries. Miller has published investigative projects in the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, the Washington Post, National Public Radio, This American Life, ABC News 20/20 and PBS' Frontline, among others.?Miller has spent much of his career covering the military, criminal justice and multinational corporations. He has won accolades for his work in the U.S. and abroad, including the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting with Ken Armstrong and two Emmy Awards for a documentary with PBS' Frontline, Firestone and the Warlord. The Washington Post called his first book, Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq, one of the "indispensable" books on Iraq. His second book, with co-author Armstrong, is A False Report: A True Story of Rape in America. Author Susan Orleans called it "a deep, disturbing, compelling, important book." One reviewer described it as "an instant true-crime classic, taking its rightful place beside Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter and Dave Cullen's Columbine."Miller is a big believer in the power of investigative reporting. He serves on the national board of Investigative Reporters and Editors, teaches data reporting at the University of California at Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism, and was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University.?Miller, who goes by "T," a family nickname, does a few interesting things besides journalism. He likes to garden with California native plants, go abalone diving in the cold slate gray waters of Northern California and longboard on smooth, gently sloping surfaces. Miller graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with highest honors. He lives in Kensington, California, with his wife, Leslie, their three children and a goldfish named Goldie.
