Maurice Chammas, the death penalty reporter at The Marshall Project, was skeptical when Greg Werchuk first pitched him on David Wood's case. But he didn't want to write the usual story — he wanted to document the impossible process of trying to stop a death sentence in real time.
Zelig Williams landed a role in Hamilton at just 19 while still in college — a rare achievement in a world where most Broadway dreams die young. By 28 he was a veteran ready to mentor the next generation, until he disappeared without a trace on October 3, 2024.
Season 5 of Dateline: Missing in America brings six new unsolved mysteries. The show is explicitly asking listeners to engage — because a detail someone remembers might be the break investigators need.
After years of CIA contracting, Ryan moved to Medellín, Colombia for five years, embedding himself in cocaine networks, getting arrested multiple times, bribing cops at ATMs, and seeking violence in the most dangerous neighborhoods he could find. He OD'd several times. He wasn't there for work — he was chasing the same adrenaline high that combat gave him, hoping someone would finally kill him.
After destroying two men's faces at a high school party — one needed multiple reconstructive surgeries — Strickland was arrested and placed in the segregated white cell of Riverside County jail. White supremacists made his bed, showed him the rules, and gave him a choice: with us or not. Looking across at the black cell, he said he was in. He was there less than two days but was drawn to the community, the tattoos, the savagery.
In the four years following their wedding, Manassas police responded to the Bobbitt home multiple times for domestic violence. Lorena's coworkers noticed bruises on her arms and neck. She stole $7,200 from the nail salon trying to save the marriage. John insisted she have an abortion. This was the trajectory of their relationship long before the knife.
John came home drunk, and in Lorena's account, jumped on top of her and raped her — the second time in five days. After he fell asleep, she went to the kitchen for water, saw an 8-inch Ginsu knife on the counter, and said later, 'It was survival, life and death.' She picked up the knife and severed his penis entirely.
Lorena fled the apartment still holding John's severed penis, threw it from the car window near a 7-Eleven, then called 911 from the nail salon. Police located the organ in an overgrown lot but wouldn't touch it without gloves. One officer ran to the 7-Eleven and returned with a hot dog box filled with ice — the improvised vessel that helped save John's ability to have surgery.
After just three days of trial, the jury deliberated less than four hours before acquitting John Bobbitt of aggravated sexual assault. A juror said they needed 'screaming or bruising' as evidence — an impossible standard for marital rape. Within days, the case exploded from local crime story to national punchline, covered by outlets from the National Enquirer to the New Yorker.
At Lorena's trial for malicious wounding, her psychiatrist argued she struck at 'the instrument of her torture' while suffering from PTSD — a clean narrative of trauma response. The prosecution's psychiatrist countered that severing the penis was 'goal-oriented behavior,' not a truly impulsive act. The jury came down the middle: not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
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