Danny Wicentowski

On April 9, 2020, St. Louis critical-care physician Mollie James flew to New York. She felt compelled to serve in the country's biggest city, which was facing mounting devastation from a terrifying new virus. It was a uniquely horrendous stretch of…

NEWSPAPERS.COM For about six days in 1918, William M. Riley was the first elected Black lawmaker in Missouri's state legislature. The St. Louis optometrist's win in the race for state representative, on a Republican ticket, made headlines across the…

Inside the salt room, Scott Mickey flew above the bright expanse of his own consciousness. His eyes were closed. A weighted blanket pressed his body into a recliner. In his arm, an IV delivered a few dozen milligrams of ketamine to his bloodstream.…

Separated by security glass in a visiting room in the St. Louis Workhouse, Mike Milton looked into the face of a broken system. It was a weekday in early April 2019, and the face belonged to Samuel Lee Scott. "The whole time, his head was down,"…

A camera recorded Sgt. Jason Groves of the Riverview Police Department as he explained his observations of two Black women who were walking together in the early morning hours of August 11, 2016. "They were acting very suspicious in nature," Groves…

In April, St. Louis artist and researcher Janna Añonuevo Langholz began walking the paths of Calvary Cemetery, looking for headstones. She searched section by section, hoping to see the names of four men and a woman, the oldest 43, the youngest…

From the roof of his downtown apartment building, Olajuwon Davis is surrounded by his past. In front of him curves the Gateway Arch, which was once widely reported to be among his potential bombing targets before his arrest in an FBI sting operation…

On STLMugshots.com, crimes are content. The site's visitors are treated to an endless scroll of thousand-yard stares, people reduced to their facial expressions at their lowest moments, with each mugshot, each click, leading to separate pages that…

On a recent afternoon in June, four boys, none older than ten, tumble out of the front door of a home in west St. Louis County, their playgroup already in motion. Three of the boys are trans. All four are friends, bonds they've maintained during the…

For a working jail, major parts of the Workhouse don't work. Every time it rains, water leaks through the flat tin roof and pools on the gymnasium floor. In its kitchen, which produces only bread, insects scurry near a wall-sized row of…

Overwrought and on camera, a white Rockwood parent began her soon-to-be viral moment in a trembling voice: “Just because I do not want critical race theory taught to my children in school," she told a room filled with parents, "does not make me a…

Inside a sunlit conference room high within St. Louis' federal courthouse, Komdown "Dow" Boyer channels her nervousness into her hands, lacing her fingers in her lap. Around the room, arranged like students before a test, are fifteen soon-to-be…

We already know several things about St. Louis' next mayor. She is a single mom with a school-aged son in the region's struggling education system. She supports redefining public safety in ways the city's progressives have long dreamed of. She's…

Politics in St. Louis can mean many things — frustrating things, mostly — but until now, there had always been perfect clarity about what it meant to win the primary, or first round, of a local election: It meant everything.That's because the city's…

It was December 21, 2020, and things were finally looking up for Jason Norman. The 45-year-old inmate was settling in at his new home in the Algoa Correctional Center, a minimum-security state prison on the outskirts of the capital in Jefferson…

It is October 2019, and the old Lyon School is dark. It sits on the end of a quiet street in south St. Louis, fenced and forgotten, a three-story brick castle with boarded front doors and a checkerboard of plywood patches over missing windows. During…

In her final hour as a St. Louis homicide detective, Sgt. Heather Taylor stands in the shade of the World's Fair Pavilion in Forest Park. She is surrounded by blue uniforms, though she's gone casual to her own retirement. Her long maroon cardigan…

Before the $300 million national scandal, the civil rights lawsuit and the accusations of fraud, the Northern Cherokee Nation meant something in St. Louis. It used to mean money. Instead, it is March 14, and some 200 miles west of the city, just…

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION VIA DANNY WICENTOWSKI America's most hateable villain might be the pandemic price gouger. They are the creatures who bought up ever last roll of TP, the economic villains who add zeros to every price tag. Last week, searching…

On a normal day in the unusual life of Dimetrious Woods, the 40-year-old convicted drug dealer climbs into the neat white trailer parked next to the Woods Auto Spa in Columbia, Missouri. He flicks on the trailer's ventilation system, tugs on a pair…