This year’s best-of list, chosen by our editors, includes essays, op-eds, and explainers, covering topics from trash pulls to war crimes investigations.
The top stories of the year informed, surprised, and delighted us in so many ways. You taught us about your favorite OSINT tools, FOIA requests done right, fraud prevention for small nonprofits, spoliation letters, and a cyber-investigations contest we didn’t know existed. You challenged our thinking about big global databases and the business model of doing high-volume, low-dollar casework. And you offered windows into other investigators’ worlds, from a UN war crimes investigator to FBI hostage negotiators.
You wrote a haiku about trash pulls.
You showed us the ways experience has changed your minds: how interviewing a fraud suspect helped you put yourself in his shoes. How you spun a career disappointment into a deeply humane specialty. How you stopped “marketing” and started helping your community — and found more new business than ever.
Best of all, you taught us not only how to do the work and sell ourselves better, but how to live our best lives. You reflected on empathy and reserving judgment, doggedness and advocacy, respect and dignity. You generously shared your defeats and triumphs and made us laugh along the way. And that’s what community is all about.
Happy New Year and massive thanks to everyone who submitted articles this year, from longtime contributors to first-timers. We appreciate you. (And if you’re still waiting for an edit, we promise — we’ll get to you.) And an extra-special thanks to Sarah Datta, our talented editorial intern, who singlehandedly launched our Tradecraft Tips series (and is going to do great things in life, we are sure).
Enjoy! And please: send us a pitch in 2023.
Best Journey of Self-Discovery
What Kind of Investigator Are You? —Ben Lopez
A long pandemic slowdown prompted a Chicago PI to recast himself in the professional role he was meant for — and taught us profound lessons about generosity and community. This story has it all: great stories, self-effacing jokes, the best marketing advice we’ve ever seen, and mic-drop insights.
I am now uncompromising when it comes to what roles I am willing to play: From here on out, I will only ever play myself.
Ben Lopez
Best Mindset Transformation
The Case of the Nonexistent Inventory —Leah Wietholter
A forensic accountant reflected on an early fraud case that helped her consider the subjects of her investigations in a new light — and showed us a thing or two about empathy and self-awareness. Her webinar interview with us this fall was equally excellent. (Excerpted from Data Sleuth: Using Data in Forensic Accounting Engagements and Fraud Investigations.)
The question of punishment isn’t my purview. I leave the judgements to the justice system and move on to the next investigation.
Leah Wietholter
Best Heart-Shattering How-To
How to Investigate War Crimes —Sarah Datta (interview with Maria Velikonja)
It’s impossible to choose our favorite from Sarah’s incredible Tradecraft Tips/How-To series. Pursuit readers loved her interviews with Mike Spencer and Rachele’ Davis about missing persons investigations and reuniting birth families. We loved her how-tos on negotiating with kidnappers and writing thriller novels, even though they flew under the radar. (And there’s more to come in this series.) But if we must choose, we’re going with this gorgeous piece on a former UN war-crimes investigator who worked in the Balkans in the 1990s. It will break your heart.
“To feel that this is difficult and emotional for me … it’s not something I dwelled on because there are children in those war zones. Everyone has lost a family member or friend. They’ve been fighting for years.
Maria Velikonja
Best Story About Carving Out a Niche
“Unsuiciding” — Investigating Deaths Ruled As Suicide —Lindsey Smith
When her dreams of being a homicide detective were dashed, she found another way to investigate unnatural deaths — and bring answers to grieving loved ones. Big takeaways here about how PIs can reinvestigate death cases AND how humans can reinvent themselves professionally — in both cases, via sheer doggedness.
Each case demands a different type of advocacy, but I always start out soft.
Lindsey Smith
Funniest (but Truest) Love-Hate Rant About the Job
“Be a private eye,” they said. “It will be fun,” they said. —Steve Koenig
Koenig shared some very familiar not-so-fun things about being a private investigator that made us all laugh … and think deep thoughts.
Treat everyone like they matter. The interviewee gets my respect and my full attention, no matter who they are, what they earn, or where they reside. That’s the job.
Steve Koenig
Best Revamp of an Archived Story
The Psychology of Kidnapping and Abduction —Sarah Datta
This oft-clicked 2011 article desperately needed an update, so we asked our editorial intern Sarah Datta to tackle it. She nailed the assignment, interviewing two former FBI hostage negotiators and researching this deep dive into types of abduction, from terrorism to express kidnapping. And would you believe this was her first ever published piece?
The reality is negotiating with the hostage takers and generally paying some sort of private ransom is the best path to safe release.
Zorka Martinovich, former Supervisory Special Agent of the FBI’s Crisis Negotiation Unit
Best Candid Chronicle of Learning a New Skill
Confessions of a Baby Defense Investigator —Jacob Osojnak
A PI/process server passed on some hard-won wisdom about what can go wrong — and right — when you’re learning criminal defense work.
Some days you’ll feel a like a hero, and other days, like the goat. Somewhere, sometime, you’ll end up making a big difference in someone’s life.
Jacob Osojnak
Best Devil’s Advocate Argument
I Like Big Data. —Robert Gardner
The Manage Risks Man offered a devil’s advocate defense of good-ol’ global search tools and dove deep into their strengths and limitations.
Big is not always best, but big data matters a lot in research. … It provides you connections and insight you may not see on your own. It points you to where to look.
Robert Gardner
Best Investigative Tool We Didn’t Know We Needed
Private Investigators and Preservation Letters —Steven Mason
When Steve Mason bequeaths us with one of his go-to tools, we listen. This piece on how to preserve evidence before it can be destroyed was pure investigative gold.
Speed often determines case outcomes. The window of opportunity to locate and preserve evidence closes quickly.
Steven Mason
Best Trash-Pull Haiku
Garbage: The Dirty Work —Susan Lehmann
A retired private investigator reflected on the grimier aspects of collecting evidence, taught us the hows and whys of trash pulls, and dropped a few wisdom bombs. As a bonus, there’s also a rubbish-themed haiku.
One man’s trash is the plaintiff’s treasure.
Susan Lehmann
Best Argument That Defied Conventional Wisdom
The Magic of Volume: Grab the Low-Hanging Fruit —Mark Murnan
Mark’s op-ed about the value of working lots of smaller cases made us reconsider some assumptions about quality vs. quantity as a business model.
It is possible to charge less and make more, but only as a strategy for growth, and not as a substitute for quality or integrity.
Mark Murnan
Best Fraud Prevention Tips
Fraud Defenses for Small Nonprofits —Charles Rabeno
Rabeno walked us through the ways fraudsters target nonprofit organizations — and offered PIs and org leaders solid, practical safeguards.
The goal is to erect roadblocks that make stealing difficult and not worth the risk.
Charles Rabeno
Best Research Primer for Investigators & Journalists
FOIA Requests & Open Records: What You Need to Know —Adnan A. Olia
Olia’s simple primer offered a great starting point for FOIA rookies and separated theory from practice.
There is no one centralized office that fields FOIA requests, which may mean you need a dig a bit to figure out where exactly to send your paperwork.
Adnan A. Olia
Best OSINT Toolkit for Newbies
A Process Server’s Guide to Simple OSINT Tools for Skip Tracing —Brandon LaVan
A Louisiana private investigator and process server offered an overview of some simple but lesser-known OSINT techniques. This one is already shaping up to be a popular favorite.
There’s more to open-source research than any one person can ever learn. It’s a continuing mission, and always an adventure.
Brandon LaVan
Most Creative Way to Solve a Case
The Art of Investigating —James Petrie
This is the only story we’ve ever published — or read — about a detective using his portrait-painter’s trained eye to solve a case and defend a client. Kinda makes us want to take up watercolors.
When I made a transparent photograph of my subject and overlaid it on the suspect’s photo, anyone could see the difference between the two faces.
James Petrie
Best Play-By-Play of a Cool Event We’ve Never Heard Of
A Global Search-and-Rescue Party in Cyberspace —Eli Wilkerson & Lindsey Smith
Eli and Lindsey — friends and colleagues — entered the TraceLabs Global Capture the Flag (CTF) Event, in which OSINT researchers competed to find new leads on cold missing persons cases. One highlight of this piece was their obvious admiration for each other’s talents — and the importance of working together.
This … proved to me the investigative firepower that investigators and subject matter experts can wield when we team up.
Eli Wilkerson
WEBINARS: Best Interview on Interview Skills
Tell Me Everything: The Story of a Private Investigation (interview with Erika Krouse)
Taking to onetime PI and literary star Erika Krouse was one of the highlights of our year. Her memoir, TELL ME EVERYTHING: The Story of a Private Investigation, has been included on lots of Best Of 2022 lists, and rightly so. It’s the story of her role in a landmark Title IX lawsuit involving sexual assaults at a university. In the memoir — and this webinar — she revealed her investigative methods and shifting motivations with blistering candor. Interviewing is her superpower, and she broke down the tactics brilliantly.