The Top 5 Longreads of the Week

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This week:

• Uncovering a century-old love triangle.
• Missteps and mystery in a high-profile legal case.
• A coming-out story for the (advanced) ages.
• How a gaming juggernaut lost its way.
• The cat who tore a neighborhood apart.

1. Secret in the Walls: Hidden Letters Reveal Love, Lust, Scandal in 1920s Baltimore Society

Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh | The Baltimore Banner | May 8, 2024 | 2,467 words

I read a lot this week, but not many pieces spoke to me. Frankly, I think I craved something different. So it was easy to get swept away by this Baltimore Banner story: a tale of “lust and scandal and fortune” and, ultimately, a love triangle between a woman and two men. Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh recount how Joanna Meade, a resident of Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood, discovered a black tin full of juicy love letters inside the wall of her house during a bathroom renovation. All 67 letters were addressed to a woman named “Mrs. R.A. Spaeth,” and all except one were postmarked in 1920 or 1921. Reading the cursive penmanship and old-fashioned language was difficult, but Meade was quickly hooked; “It was like eavesdropping,” she tells the authors. She enlists the help of her neighbors, as well as the Banner’s staff, to decipher the correspondence and gather clues from across city archives and the internet to piece together the mystery: Why were these letters stashed away inside her house? Who was Mrs. Spaeth? Who is “R,” the man writing to her? The scans of envelopes, letters, photographs, and newspaper articles enhance the read, like we’re discovering each detail as it’s uncovered in the newsroom. While the story’s premise is not new—it reminds me, in fact, of a piece in our sister publication called “Castles in the Sky”—there’s so much here to like: Secrets hidden in an old house, waiting to be found. A community working together to uncover information (through Nextdoor, of all places). And the power and sway of writing, of these words handwritten on delicate paper, more than a century later. —CLR

2. A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?

Rachel Aviv | The New Yorker | May 13, 2024 | 13,339 words

The day a Rachel Aviv story drops is basically Christmas for me—everything she writes feels like a gift. With the latest entry in her unparalleled catalog of features, Aviv delves into the investigation of Lucy Letby, a British nurse who last year was convicted of killing seven infants and attempting to kill six others at the hospital where she worked. Demonized by the press and reviled by the public, Letby is only the fourth woman in UK history to receive a life sentence. When the verdict came down, the judge accused her of a “calculated and cynical campaign of child murder.” The problem, as Aviv shows in exacting detail, is that there is no evidence of such a campaign. I’m not exaggerating. There is no proof of malicious intent or action on Letby’s part. The prosecution’s case rested almost entirely on the fact that Letby was on duty when the babies died, but it’s not even clear that they were murdered—their deaths might have been a result of natural causes or medical mistakes (and not necessarily Letby’s). Aviv’s piece is a brilliant analysis of failures within systems: the UK’s revered but overburdened National Health Service; a law enforcement apparatus eager for scapegoats; and a media sector practically salivating for content about a so-called “angel of death.” (I urge you to spend time on social media looking at side-by-side comparisons of Aviv’s story and previous reporting about Letby. The differences are shocking.) Ultimately, Aviv does what the systems she examines never did: she musters clear and convincing evidence to make her case. To read more about how she did this, check out this excellent interview she did with Nieman Lab. —SD

3. My Trans Awakening—at Age 66

Abby Tickel | Maclean’s | May 6, 2024 | 1,846 words

When I read Abby Tickel’s essay for Maclean’s, I found joy in an unexpected place. Tickel, who was assigned male at birth, first attempted to come out to her parents at age 10, in 1964. Shamed by her father for her so-called shortcomings as a male, she resigned herself to learning how to live life as a man. She married twice and had children. Keeping her true self hidden, she never dared to Google “transgender” for fear of being outed by her search history until one day, at age 66, she typed it into her Facebook search bar. Stunned and inspired by the community of people she discovered online, she came out to her wife. (If you have tissues handy, now would be the time to grab one.) “But for me, telling her the truth lifted a weight off my shoulders,” she writes. “It took tremendous energy to spend my whole life acting. The day I came out to her, it was like the sun shone for the first time.” Tickel’s wife was shocked after 18 years of marriage, yet it wasn’t long before surprise turned into loving support. Reading the piece, you get to share in Tickel’s joy at finally feeling truly seen for the first time in her life—and revel in the power she feels in paying it forward, by doing LGBTQI+ advocacy and education. I wiped away tears reading about how her life and outlook have changed: “I used to be a quiet person who rarely smiled and barely had friends. Now, I wake up every day looking forward to what’s ahead. . . . I’m finally the person I always was.” There are many beautiful things about Tickel’s piece, but the most beautiful of all is getting to hear her story in her own words. —KS

4. The Creator Of ‘Magic: The Gathering’ Knows Exactly Where It All Went Wrong

Nick Zarzycki | Defector | May 13, 2024 | 4,965 words

I’ve never played Magic: The Gathering. That’s not a nerd-doth-protest-too-much thing; I’ve got enough 20-sided dice in my house to know better. But it still feels like an important thing to point out, if only to assure you that you don’t need to know anything about the card game in order to enjoy Nick Zarzycki’s story. No matter how little you know about Magic, you know of it. It’s huge, and it’s been huge for 30 years. Pokémon wouldn’t exist without Magic. It single-handedly invented an entire genre of tabletop games in which players build decks of cards for battle, with each card having a different effect. But this is much more than the story of a man named Richard Garfield and his era-defining creation. (Though that story is fascinating in its own right.) It’s also the story of how Magic—or, more precisely, Magic’s publisher—strayed from Garfield’s intentions almost immediately. See, Magic decks aren’t fixed; new cards are released all the time. Garfield didn’t want this to be a game that rewarded those who spent more money to get more powerful cards, but over time, that’s exactly what happened. By one count, there are more than 27,000 unique cards that can be played in the game; meanwhile, the game’s publisher continuously tries to push players to use an online platform that prioritizes microtransactions and robs the game of its human element. Enshittification is all too common these days, but we’re accustomed to it happening online; with solid reporting and an accessible tone, Zarzycki’s piece winds up as a stunning indictment of how Magic’s publisher managed to do the same IRL. —PR

5. A Beloved Alley Cat Now Lives in the Watergate. Was She Kidnapped, or Rescued?

Andrea Sachs | The Washington Post | May 9, 2024 | 2,882 words

Welcome to the story of Kitty Snows, who lived in Foggy Bottom. While this may sound like the start of a fairy tale, it contains considerably more lawyers and strongly worded letters than Hans Christian Andersen tended to include. Kitty Snows is a cat who participated in the Blue Collar Cat program, a scheme to rehome strays that cannot be domesticated (having witnessed too much on the streets). Kitty gets adopted by the community of Snows Court in Foggy Bottom, belonging to “everyone and no one.” She lives in a box on a lawn until two locals—Tom Curtis and Barbara Rohde—find her with sores on her nose and take her to the vet. With the vet deeming her unfit for outside life, they move her to Rohde’s fancy apartment. As Andrea Sachs points out, no one knows how Kitty felt about her relocation from a box to a 14th-floor condo with “impressionistic paintings of a Russian forest . . . [and a] baby grand piano backed up against soaring windows.” (When two detectives turn up at the door, they are informed that Kitty is “unavailable.”) What we do know: the Foggy Bottom Association is not pleased, and the fight boils down to whether Kitty was stolen or rescued. The legal ramifications of this neighborhood dispute could have made for a dry read, but Sachs maintains a wry tone and delivers every detail delightfully. I am sure that, if available for comment, Kitty Snows—no longer of Foggy Bottom but of Watergate West—would agree. (Don’t worry, the “Kittygate” reference is there.) —CW

Audience Award

What recommendation attracted the most readers? The envelope, please:

In This Police Youth Program, a Trail of Sexual Abuse Across the US

Lakeidra Chavis, Daphne Duret, and Joseph Neff | The Marshall Project | May 1, 2024 | 3,122 words

Explorer programs, overseen by the Boy Scouts, are supposed to foster an interest in policing. As this investigation reveals, based on thousands of pages of documents and extensive interviews, the programs have faced nearly 200 allegations of misconduct. The Marshall Project uncovers what appears to be rampant abuse of power and influence, with profound consequences. —SD

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My Trans Awakening—at Age 66

For Maclean’s Abby Tickel shares her emotional journey of coming out as transgender at age 66, and the joy and efficacy she’s found in making new friends, LGBTQI+ education and advocacy, and most importantly, finally getting the chance to be herself.

Recently, I led a bird-watching event at the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary in the heart of the city. I invited a friend of mine who brought a few other younger trans men with him, plus a group of Rainbow Elders. It was a cold and blustery day, but we saw some great birds and shared good conversation. Halfway through the event, one of the young men told me that he hadn’t left his apartment much, and he was thrilled to be outside, getting sunshine and fresh air. He said it meant a lot to be talking to real people, rather than texting or speaking on Zoom. Afterwards, we went for brunch at a coffee shop. The friend I’d invited later told me that the sandwich he ate there was the first decent meal he’d had in a long time. It was just a bird-watching event, but it helped people in ways I didn’t expect.

After coming out, you begin to change in quite a big way. Everything can shift: who your friends are, who you can partner with, how society sees you. Many Rainbow Elders came out later in life too, and they understand what it’s like to have played the role of another gender for decades, and the difficulty of trying to shake that. In our generation, there are so many people who have gone through trauma, especially at the hands of our postwar parents and a bigoted society. Each Rainbow Elder has their own story, but we all share a similar vulnerability.

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I Went Undercover as a Secret OnlyFans Chatter. It Wasn’t Pretty

Brendan Koerner has a long, storied career reporting on stories and characters who feel almost too vivid to be true. For his latest at Wired, though, he turns that formula inside out—and becomes one of the army of hidden support workers who assume the identity of an OnlyFans creator in order to maintain chats with paying subscribers. Hilarious and deeply depressing in nearly equal measure, but never without the empathy that Koerner brings to all his work.

I found it quite easy at first to write the sort of run-of-the-mill smut the Serbs expected. (I’ll spare you the gory details, except to say I cribbed some color from Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 sci-fi film Strange Days.) For the less explicit chats, I imagined Miko offering to cook the subscriber a pasta dinner and feigning appreciation for his TV recommendations. I did make one glaring error that could have led to an entire chat being voided as unusable: Due to my hasty misreading of Miko’s bio, I characterized her as a fan of spicy ramen when she actually prefers her food mild. “I have to ask you to pay attention to these little facts,” Daniel wrote in his assessment. “In this case, these lines mentioning the food could have been rejected, and that could have led to the dialog’s rejection.”

But despite that mistake and a few other hiccups—my punctuation seemed unnatural because it was too accurate—Daniel offered me the job. I was to be paid 7 cents per line of dialog, with each dialog running for a minimum of 40 lines. For my first assignment, I had to compose 20 dialogs involving sex in public places—10 at the beach, five inside a car, and five in a forest or garden. There was a list of particular sex acts I had to include, as well as a stricture that I refrain from using emoji in more than 30 percent of lines. I had only 48 hours to complete the task.

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Secret in the Walls: Hidden Letters Reveal Love, Lust, Scandal in 1920s Baltimore Society

Joanna Meade moved into an old house in Baltimore’s Roland Park neighborhood. When they removed a wall during a bathroom renovation, they discovered a black tin box hidden among the plumbing. Inside, she found 67 “juicy turn-of-the-century love letters,” all except one postmarked 1920 or 1921. Tim Prudente and Stokely Baksh recount what Meade, her neighbors, and Baltimore Banner staff pieced together from the correspondence.

A woman in Waverly sent a newspaper article on Dr. Reynold Albrecht Spaeth. The zoologist and Johns Hopkins public health professor was ahead of his time, giving lectures on the merits of birth control and education for women factory workers. By 1920, he was 34 and already renowned in the field of immunology.

The love letters were to his wife, Edith.

What a sweet romance: an esteemed Hopkins scientist, whose research took him away from home, writing love letters back to his wife in Baltimore. Or so it seemed.

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Imagine Your Last Day of Work Ever. Here’s Theirs.

A fabric store owner, a surgeon, a TV-news traffic anchor, a Latin-dance-music D.J., a church organist, a letter carrier, and a firefighter share career highlights and their very last day of work before retirement.

There has always been a certain feeling of euphoria that comes to Tony Pabón as he looks out at the dance floor from his D.J. table at Salsannati Dance Company. “To play music and have people start to clap or move their body or dance — that’s powerful,” he says. “I have to pinch myself sometimes.” So when his job started to feel more like a chore than a joy, Pabón knew it was time to retire. (He will continue working a day job at a bank.) “Lately, I’m not having the passion,” he says. “I’m doing it because it’s my duty.” Besides, standing for four-hour sets was taking a toll on his knees.

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The Drawing the Art Institute Won’t Give Back

Timothy Reif is one the legal heirs of Fritz Grünbaum, an Austrian cabaret performer and art collector who died in the Dachau concentration camp in 1941. Since the 1990s, Reif and his family have been searching for Grünbaum’s collection—more than 400 pieces that had been scattered after the war, including Egon Schiele’s Russian War Prisoner, a drawing that’s worth $1.25 million. For Chicago Magazine, Kelley Engelbrecht writes an important story about contested ownership and the restitution of Nazi-confiscated art.

The meticulous documentation of forced sales of art by Jewish owners to the Nazis created a confusing veneer of legality after the war. In 1935, the Nuremberg Laws had been established to strip Jewish people of basic rights; by 1937, the Nazis had started requiring Jews to declare and register their property. Ultimately, this led to the confiscation and seizure of art, often masked by forced sales and empty promises: “Give us your art and” — in the case of the Gutmanns — “we’ll give you a train ticket out of Nazi Europe.” But, of course, it never went like that. And all that remained was a record that implied decision-making autonomy by the sellers, when in reality their lives had been at stake. In many cases, the proceeds from a sale were put into a bank account that would, in the end, be frozen.

The question I keep returning to, the one that I can’t shake, is if any of this truly matters. I know the answer is yes. That it matters if the collection was stolen or if it was lawfully sold to Kornfeld by Lukacs or if too much time has passed to do anything about it. But I can’t stop thinking about the simple truth that precedes all this complexity: that a terrible, tragic thing happened to innocent people. And if that terrible, tragic thing hadn’t happened, Grünbaum would have retained the agency to do what he’d like with his art.

The simple truths are often the hardest to acknowledge, and perhaps that’s why we make them complex. But what I know is that this story, as it seeks truth, is itself built on a series of simple truths: Art went missing. The people who know how Russian War Prisoner ended up in Chicago are now all dead. And the man who first loved the portrait, who hung it on his wall, was murdered. We don’t know definitively what happened between 1938 and 1956, and we may never know.

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A British Nurse Was Found Guilty of Killing Seven Babies. Did She Do It?

Colleagues reportedly called Lucy Letby an “angel of death,” and the prime minister condemned her. But in the rush to judgment, serious questions about the evidence against her were ignored. The incomparable Rachel Aviv on a case that shocked the United Kingdom—but perhaps for the wrong reasons:

The case against her gathered force on the basis of a single diagram shared by the police, which circulated widely in the media. On the vertical axis were twenty-four “suspicious events,” which included the deaths of the seven newborns and seventeen other instances of babies suddenly deteriorating. On the horizontal axis were the names of thirty-eight nurses who had worked on the unit during that time, with X’s next to each suspicious event that occurred when they were on shift. Letby was the only nurse with an uninterrupted line of X’s below her name. She was the “one common denominator,” the “constant malevolent presence when things took a turn for the worse,” one of the prosecutors, Nick Johnson, told the jury in his opening statement. “If you look at the table overall the picture is, we suggest, self-evidently obvious. It’s a process of elimination.”

But the chart didn’t account for any other factors influencing the mortality rate on the unit. Letby had become the country’s most reviled woman—“the unexpected face of evil,” as the British magazine Prospect put it—largely because of that unbroken line. It gave an impression of mathematical clarity and coherence, distracting from another possibility: that there had never been any crimes at all.

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