This week for BuzzFeed News, Tim Stelloh chronicles the search for the lost victims of one of America’s most infamous serial killers. Read that and these other great stories from BuzzFeed News and around the web.
Thirty-five years after Chicago’s infamous “killer clown” was convicted for murdering 33 men, eight of John Wayne Gacy’s victims remained unidentified. Jason Moran, Cook County’s one-man cold case unit, has made it his mission to find those names, exposing what has been called our criminal justice system’s “silent mass disaster.” Read it at BuzzFeed News.
What do you do when sleep feels more like a death sentence than a relief? Virginia Hughes reveals the exhausting lives of hypersomniacs: people who can sleep for days on end yet never feel fully awake. Read it at Matter.
Christopher Torres was 27 and on a path to coping with schizophrenia when an Albuquerque police officer shot him dead in his family’s back yard in 2011. Rachel Aviv examines why no officer has ever been indicted in a city with one of the highest rates of fatal police shootings in the country. Read it at The New Yorker.
In 1995, Calvin Buari’s former drug crew put him in prison for murder. Now, Albert Samaha explores how prosecutors and detectives made sure he stayed there.
Read it at BuzzFeed News.
A chance encounter between two teenagers on a public bus in California results in one of them lit on fire and the other sent to jail for a hate crime. Dashka Slater reports from Oakland, where the story of Sasha Fleischman and Richard Thomas illuminates the complex relationship between its residents. Read it at The New York Times Magazine.
Ian Johnson goes underground in Beijing, where one million migrants, known as the “rat tribe,” live illegally in former air raid shelters. “It’s a space where no one disturbs you. I’m used to not seeing the sun already.” Read it at Al Jazeera America.
E.B. Boyd chronicles the enormous and complicated task of moving U.S. troops out of Afghanistan. “What’s made getting out of Afghanistan harder, more dangerous, and more expensive is that while the military is genius at optimizing everything involved in winning battles, it’s not as good at setting itself up for a smooth and efficient exit.” Read it at Fast Company.
As heroin addiction ravages lives across the nation, how is it that we aren’t using an already-proven drug to treat it? A sprawling, stunning, and painfully frustrating piece by Jason Cherkis. Read it at The Huffington Post.
Gemma Sieff recounts her years borrowing Bentleys and Maseratis to drive around the country for love — and how it all came crashing down. “How difficult it was to combine showing off with cheering up.” Read it at Vice.
Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/anitabadejo/our-9-favorite-feature-stories-this-week-a-rat-tribe-a-sleep
