I’m an investigative and enterprise reporter for NJ Advance Media, the company that provides stories for The Star-Ledger, New Jersey’s biggest newspaper, and its sister publications in the state, along with NJ.com, the state’s premier news website.
A deeply reported portrait of the four women slain by a serial killer in Atlantic City. Before drugs put them on a path to prostitution, they were daughters, wives, mothers. … More The Atlantic City victims: Four lives of lost youth
Buoyed by voter discontent with the war in Iraq, U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez defeated Republican state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. by an unexpectedly wide margin yesterday to retain his seat, overcoming months of bitter attacks on his character and integrity. … More Menendez rides Democrats’ wave
(Published July 9, 2006) By Jeff Whelan, Josh Margolin and Mark Mueller The Delaware River rose and rose, spilling into Trenton, cascading across roads, nipping at the lower level of the Statehouse. The National Weather Service said it could be a big one, a 50-year flood. In his wood-paneled office, Gov. Jon Corzine declared a … More How a budget dispute became a brawl
This story appeared in The Star-Ledger on Aug. 14, 2005. PITTSBURGH — Ten minutes. The time between dinner and dessert in the home of Charles and Mary Ann Kozakiewicz. The time it took the couple’s 13-year-old daughter, Alicia, to vanish on New Year’s Day in 2002. Mary Ann Kozakiewicz had been clearing dishes from the … More To Catch a Monster, Using Anti-Terror Law
To undercover detectives, the woman on the phone sounded a tad old to be running an “escort agency.” For one thing, she had trouble catching her breath as she described her available call girls. For another, she used the word “dear,” as in, “That’s all-inclusive, dear.” … More The oldest suspect in the oldest profession
The definitive, behind-the-scenes look at Jim McGreevey’s rise and fall, along with the factors that forced his resignation and famous “gay American” speech. … More The governor’s secret life
The seeds for Gov. James E. McGreevey’s stunning announcement yesterday that he is gay and that he will resign in November were planted four years ago at an elegant political reception in Israel. It was at a performing arts center in Rishon Lezion, a middle-class enclave outside Tel Aviv, that McGreevey was introduced to Golan Cipel, a spokesman for the local mayor and a former information officer for the Israeli consulate in New York. … More The man who toppled a governor
This is one of the most fascinating stories I’ve ever worked on and remains among my favorites. Herbert Axelrod, who built a fortune writing how-to books on keeping pets, from fish to hamsters, also amassed a collection of rare violins that, amid great fanfare, he sold to the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra for $17 million. Both Axelrod … More False Notes: The true story of one of the world’s greatest violin swindles
LANDSTUHL, Germany — The story is told in the sterile white bandage across Spc. Gregory Brown’s throat, in Cpl. Timothy Brosnan’s broken legs, in the ball bearing that lodged in Sgt. Carl Oliver’s right hand, rendering two of his fingers useless. It is the story of a wartime promise that could not be kept, of men dying as they sought to save others and of a shadowy enemy who rises from the brush along the roadside, fires a rocket-propelled grenade and melts into the landscape. For members of New Jersey’s Army National Guard, it is the story of one day in Iraq, as told by three scarred survivors evacuated from Baghdad to a U.S. military hospital, Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, in Germany’s rural southwest corner. … More N.J. soldiers bear scars of an ambush
BAGHDAD — Rahbiya Momad has lost count of the new political parties vying for power in postwar Iraq. She knows they number in the dozens now, their names and slogans brightly spray-painted on dusty brown buildings once occupied by Saddam Hussein’s government. Momad, 61, welcomes their growth, calling the development a step toward democracy. … More In post-war Iraq, women reach for a voice
Mark Mueller Journalism 