Category: Non-Fiction

A long wait for justice

November 23, 2013November 23, 2013 Brody No Comments

The following column appeared in The Herald-Sun in November 2013:

Jesse McBane and Patricia Mann saw a future together.

In 1971, he was an N.C. State student and she attended nursing school at Watts Hospital – now part of the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics campus within blocks of my home. He was 19; she was 20. They planned to marry.

On Feb. 11, on a cold, misty night, they went to a Valentine’s Day dance. Then they drove a car Jesse shared with his brother Marty to Crosdaile Country Club and parked near a pond.

Nearly two weeks later, they were found strangled, bound to an oak in an unpaved cul-de-sac just a couple of miles away over the Orange County line. It appeared that the killer repeatedly tightened and loosened the ropes around their necks, taking them to the brink of unconsciousness and bringing them back. It’s not clear how long that went on.

The murder drew detectives from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office, Durham County Sheriff’s Office, Durham Police Department and the State Bureau of Investigation. But in the past 42 years, none of those agencies has managed to crack the case.

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Journalism, Non-Fiction, Sample Columns

Waiting for the real work to start

November 20, 2013 Brody No Comments

The following column appeared in The Herald-Sun on Nov. 16, 2013:

My friend Colin – another adoptive parent – asked over lunch last week whether I felt like a dad now.

“Has it really sunk in?”

It’s been nearly six months since Catherine and I adopted John Michael in Asheville and brought him home to Durham.

The answer should’ve been an emphatic “Yes.” But as I thought about it, I grew less certain.

Journalism, Non-Fiction, Sample Columns

You had one job to do…

November 3, 2013November 3, 2013 Brody No Comments

Few things get my eye twitching like I’m Chief Inspector Dreyfus in “The Pink Panther” than a lead in a newspaper article like this:

“Fifty people gathered together at GreenSpacePark on Saturday for the Shiny Happy Music Festival.”

It’s not that an opening sentence such as this is technically wrong. The problem instead is that it’s a cop-out that cheats the reader (and the writer) of whatever the actual story might be.

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Journalism

Men Without Hats, Men With Vision

November 3, 2013 Brody No Comments

Here’s a goofy essay that I wrote on the web back in 2003. Saving it here for posterity:

In 1983, the United States was under the grip of a brutal dictator with a penchant for jellybeans and happy-go-lucky quips about nuclear annihilation in close proximity to live microphones. Betamax videocassette recorders were the rage. And an upstart network called MTV dared to make a go of showing music videos around-the-clock.

Yes, indeed, the fertile media in that cultural petri dish proved perfect for the adulation due a band known as Men Without Hats and their classic musical missive, The Safety Dance.

Essays