A couple of months ago, New York's James D. Walsh saw a headline about a prosecutor upstate who’d apparently fatally shot himself in his home. James decided to dig further into the story, and what he found was remarkable: a decades-long web of deceit, bribery, and fraud in a small Hudson Valley town. It was all unraveled by the harrowing testimony of a single woman, who alleged that for years she had been sexually, physically, and financially abused by her brother, a restaurateur who was close with many local officials. More than anything, this deeply reported feature shows how easily corruption can take hold.
—Katy Schneider, features editor, New York
