She Seeks Justice

 More than two decades have passed, and the family of Lakota Renville is still waiting for answers that have never come. Lakota was just twenty-two years old when her life was taken in 2005. A young woman from the Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota community, she had left the familiarity of the Lake Traverse Reservation and made her way to the Kansas City area, like so many young people seeking opportunity, independence, and a future they could shape for themselves. What she found instead was something far more dangerous—something that would ultimately take her life and leave behind a trail of unanswered questions that still linger today. Her body was discovered in an empty lot in Independence, Missouri, not far from where she had been living. The details surrounding how she ended up there, who she was with, and what happened in her final hours remain unresolved. Despite investigative efforts, no suspect has ever been identified. DNA evidence was collected, but it has yet to produce a matc...

Two children, one cabin, and a silence that has never been broken There are some cases that settle into your bones, not because of what is known, but because of what isn’t. The disappearance of Scott and Amy Fandel is one of those cases—a story that begins in an ordinary moment and ends in a silence that has stretched across decades. Scott Fandel and his younger sister Amy were living with their mother in a small cabin near Sterling , tucked into a wooded area off Scout Lake Road and the Sterling Highway. Their lives were shaped by circumstances that were far from easy. Their parents had gone through a difficult divorce, and their mother, Margaret, was working long hours as a waitress to keep things together. The family was doing what so many families do—finding a way forward, even when the path wasn’t steady. On the night of September 5, 1978, Scott and Amy went with their mother and their visiting aunt, Cathy Schonfelder, to a local bar and restaurant called Good Time Charlie’s. I...

It is a question I have been asked more than once, sometimes gently and sometimes with an edge of concern: how can someone who professes faith—who believes in grace, redemption, and the sacred value of human life—also immerse themselves in stories of violence, loss, and the worst things people do to one another? It is not an unreasonable question. At first glance, Christianity and true crime can seem like opposing forces, one rooted in hope and the other steeped in darkness. But the truth is more complex, and far more honest. The tension people feel comes from what true crime has become in many spaces. It is often packaged as entertainment, consumed casually, and discussed in ways that can strip victims of their dignity and reduce human suffering to content. That version of true crime should make anyone uncomfortable, especially someone guided by faith. There is nothing Christ-like about exploiting pain, speculating recklessly about real lives, or turning tragedy into spectacle. If t...

Why I Wrote Two SSRN Papers on Ethics, Accountability, and the Real Cost of Storytelling I’ve spent years working in the true crime space—as a writer, advocate, and someone who has walked alongside victims’ families and unresolved cases that don’t neatly fit into headlines or narratives. Over time, I began to see something that concerned me deeply: the gap between storytelling and responsibility. True crime has grown into one of the most powerful forms of modern media, yet the ethical guardrails that exist in traditional journalism are often missing. That realization led me to step back and do something different. Instead of just participating in the space, I wanted to study it, define it, and create a framework that could help protect both victims and the integrity of the work itself. I recently published two SSRN papers that reflect that effort—both grounded in ethics, accountability, and the real-world consequences of how stories are told. The first paper, Ethics in True Crime Podca...

There’s a particular kind of accusation that says more about the person making it than the one receiving it, and it’s usually rooted in small thinking and even smaller understanding. Recently, someone told me that I must be doing this work because I want to be famous, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel offended as much as I felt stunned by how deeply they misunderstood what this actually is. Famous for what, exactly? For digging through decades-old case files that most people have long since stopped caring about, for sitting with families whose grief never had the dignity of resolution, or for writing about the worst day of someone’s life and choosing, again and again, not to look away from it? There is nothing glamorous about cold cases, and anyone who believes otherwise has never spent time in the reality of them. There is no spotlight waiting at the end of this work, no applause for reopening wounds that never properly healed, and no reward that balances the emotional weight of carr...

 Addiction in Arkansas is not an abstract issue confined to statistics or headlines—it is a sustained and measurable force reshaping the structure of families and the trajectory of childhood across the state. In recent years, Arkansas has ranked among the hardest-hit states for substance use disorders, particularly opioids, with post-pandemic data showing one of the highest rates of opioid use disorder diagnoses in the country and sharp increases between 2021 and 2024. The consequences are not just medical or economic—although even those are staggering, with each case of opioid use disorder costing an estimated $551,000 annually when factoring in healthcare, lost productivity, and system strain—but deeply personal, unfolding inside homes where addiction disrupts stability long before any official intervention occurs. Within those homes, children often become the first and most enduring witnesses to addiction. Arkansas child welfare data consistently shows that substance abuse is ...