Since 2014, when I started writing about true crime and missing person cases, many of my photos have been published in newspapers and online.
Although I’m not a professional photographer, I hope you’ll enjoy this collection of my twelve best true crime photos.
On November 3, 2018, John Pelichowski (left) and his brother Jason Pelichowski, both with the Mono County Sheriff’s Office, searched the desert near the remote section of U.S. Highway 6 where missing teenager Karlie Gusé was last seen. This photo was used in an episode of People Magazine Investigates and ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
My most widely seen photo, which ran in USA Today and dozens of outlets worldwide, captured the moment when Hannah Kobayashi, the subject of an international missing person investigation, reunited with her aunt Larie Pidgeon on the U.S. side of the U.S.-Mexico border. It was December 15, 2024, and the prior day I’d ventured into Mexico to assist Hannah in returning safely to the United States.
After Guy Bartkus, an anti-life radical, blew up a car bomb in a suicide attack, destroying a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, federal and state authorities descended on the resort city east of Los Angeles. This photo, which ran in the Long Beach Post, shows FBI assistant director Akil Davis, Palm Springs Police Chief Andy Mills, and other officials arriving for a press conference on May 17, 2025.
After a storm wreaked havoc on a makeshift migrant encampment in Tijuana in November 2018, I spotted this toddler playing amid the debris. To capture the image I lay down on my stomach in the mud and waited for the little boy to notice me. A few days later, my photo ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
In another part of Tijuana in November 2018, I saw men waiting to be bused to the El Barretal migrant shelter in on the east side of the city. When I interviewed the migrants, I learned that most of them had journeyed from Guatemala or El Salvador. This photo ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal, and other photos I took of the migrants crisis ran in LA Weekly.
Early in the morning on July 27, 2023, I was driving through the rural desert town of Chalfant Valley, California, when I noticed smoke rising. When I detoured to investigate, I discovered that a house was on fire. After confirming that the sole occupant had gotten out safely, I took this photo while waiting for firefighters to arrive. A local paper, the Inyo Register, ran my photo in color on the front page.
After Jake and Rebecca Haro claimed that their seven-month-old baby Emmanuel Haro had been kidnapped, people in the community didn’t buy their story – they knew that Jake was a convicted child batterer. On August 23, 2025, I drove to Haro home in Cabezon, California, and saw neighbors gathered outside – including Cynthia Viruete, seen above. The Long Beach Post ran two of my stories about the case.
In December 2014, after a lengthy search, I located the desert grave where the bodies of Barry and Louise Berman had been buried after they were murdered in 1986 – the gravesite was where the steep embankment and smaller embankment intersected as seen in the middle of the photo. The rock pile in the foreground marked where a skull was found in 1988, which led to discovery of the nearby grave. At one point in December 2014, I lay down in the grave and stared up at the sky, trying to imagine the horrors that occurred in this remote wilderness that’s now part of Death Valley National Park. The photo ran with my LA Weekly cover story about the case, which was published in March 2015.
After Nancy Guthrie vanished from her home in the Catalina Foothills area of Tucson, I wanted to get a sense of what the scene must have looked like in the dead of night when she was kidnapped. On February 7, 2026, six days after Nancy was last seen, I took this photo and later published it on my website.
Early in the morning on February 8, 2026, a week after Nancy Guthrie was kidnapped, I photographed the makeshift shrine that neighbors had built outside her home. This photo was published on my website.
This selfie is another photo that was published on my website. Although the crime scene where nine-year-old Melodee Buzzard was murdered in the canyonlands of Utah hasn’t been publicly revealed, authorities released enough details that I decided to search. On January 10, 2026, with a bit of detective work, I located the site, said a prayer, and then reported back to Melodee’s grandmother, who thanked me for making the effort.
When Stuart Jeffries and I went looking for clues in the case of missing camper Bob Wildoner, our first challenge was to push through the snow-choked access route into the lonely desert valley where Bob vanished. It was March 22, 2023, and a late season storm had made the treacherous dirt road into Saline Valley nearly impassible. This photo ran in the Las Vegas Review-Journal along with two articles I wrote about the case.
