Who is Steve?
If you’re thinking, “who the hell is this guy, and why is he doing this?” Well, before there were any true crime podcasts, there were true crime blogs, and mine was one of the first. I launched it in 2004 or so. Six months later, in early 2005, the editor of the biggest true crime site online at the time, The Crime Library, hired me to write for her based on the buzz I’d gotten for several unexpected scoops. That began my education in professional journalism, which I’ve stuck with and made my full-time job for the last 18-plus years or so.
I went on to launch a blog titled True Crime Report for Village Voice Media, which I maintained by myself until 2009 when I burned out on the subject and damn near everything else (that blog has been offline for a few years now).
I made a career shift, but not a big one. I kept writing and reporting but broadened the subjects I covered, something I continue to do today.
For a total of six years, I was the Weekend Digital Editor then the Deputy Digital Editor and Social Media Manager for Maxim magazine. I was also a true crime columnist for Real Clear Life, a site that has since been folded into Inside Hook. Additionally, I’ve edited and contributed to tech sites like dot.LA, Android Police, The Metaverse Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, and most recently, I was a contributing editor to newser.com. I’m updating this in 2024—in 2023 both my parents passed away, and my job for much of the year was handling their estate and the care of my only living sibling, who is severely disabled.
Personal info: I’m a native Tennessean, Nashville-born and raised, but for more than 12 years, I have made my home in a bucolic corner of New England, about 45 minutes outside Boston. I’m grandpa-aged but not a grandpa yet, despite having a LOT of kids, all now in their twenties and thirties. I studied to be an opera singer in college. After my writing career took off, I put singing on pause for almost a decade until I found a voice teacher who understood my somewhat unusual tenor sound (very loud, easily mistaken for a baritone). So—I started again, though more for fun and personal fulfillment than anything. I’ve been married to a brilliant English educator and writer, Dana, for 24 years. We live in the city where she teaches at a grand old New England boarding school with our two youngest kids and a pair of sleuthing twin tabbies, Daphne and Velma. (So far, they’ve only apprehended mice and bugs.)
Why subscribe?
It gives me the incentive to keep doing this. Paid subscribers get to discuss the crimes I write about, posing their own revelations, theories, and conclusions. Also, with this newsletter, I intend to provide a flexible resource for anyone tracking crime stories. Eventually, I will provide a list of links to new and breaking stories as well as cold and unsolved cases and then the occasional full-length exploration of stories that obsess me—and maybe you, too.
Stay up-to-date
I don’t know about you, but I’ve got that five minutes before my alarm goes off thing happening many mornings. If I’m in no hurry to go anywhere, I grab my phone off the charger and check my email. I have a ton of Google alerts left over from all the way back when I was a regular crime blogger some nineteen years ago, and I might as well cull them and send you the most interesting, intriguing, and, yes, disturbing shit I find there.
Join the crew
Come on, let’s get the old gang back together.
To learn more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
