It has been over seven years since 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in Guerrero, Mexico, were taken by armed men in the middle of the night. They were never seen again. Their disappearance sparked mass protests, as the 43 became symbols of Mexico’s unchecked human rights abuses. In recent decades, tens of thousands of people have gone missing in Mexico, and almost no one has been held accountable. The culture of impunity is so ingrained that families often don’t go to poli...
Sep 23, 2022•51 min•Season 3Ep. 1
The second chapter of our three-part investigation into the abduction of 43 students from the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College in 2014 digs into the government cover-up of the crime. Weeks after the disappearance, the Mexican government released its official story: Corrupt police had taken the students and handed them to members of a local gang. The gang had killed the students, then incinerated their bodies at a garbage dump. But parents of the students had their doubts. International experts...
Sep 23, 2022•50 min•Season 3Ep. 2
The final chapter of our three-part investigation into the abduction of 43 Mexican students in 2014 looks at how an unexpected turn in Mexico’s politics leads to a new investigation with Omar Gómez Trejo as special prosecutor. With the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as president, Mexico’s investigation into the missing students is reopened, and Gómez Trejo gathers evidence to indict members of the previous government for manipulating evidence and forcing confessions. We hear an exclusiv...
Sep 23, 2022•51 min•Season 3Ep. 3
Reveal’s Anayansi Diaz-Cortes and the National Security Archive’s Kate Doyle talk to Al Letson about new proof showing who was involved in the disappearance of 43 Mexican college students in 2014. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Sep 23, 2022•12 min•Season 3Ep. 4
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since. Ten years ago, Reveal host Al Letson traveled to Lucedale, Mississippi, to report on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. While there, locals told him there was another story he should be looking into: Johnson’s suspicious death. During a traffic stop with a White deputy,...
Feb 01, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 1
Donate now to support Reveal’s journalism . ••• On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system begins to buckle. As Billey Joe Johnson’s family tries to get answers about his death, they get increasingly frustrated with the investigation. They feel that law enforcement, from the lead investigator to the district attorney, are keeping them out of the loop. While a majority White grand ju...
Feb 01, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 2
Donate now to support Reveal’s journalism . ••• After Billey Joe Johnson Jr. died in 2008, the state of Mississippi outsourced his autopsy. Al Letson and Jonathan Jones travel to Nashville, Tennessee, to interview the doctor who conducted it. Her findings helped lead the grand jury to determine Johnson’s death was an accidental shooting. However, Letson and Jones share another report that raises doubts about her original conclusions. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Feb 01, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 3
Donate now to support Reveal’s journalism . ••• Special Agent Joel Wallace of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was called in to investigate the death of Billey Joe Johnson. He worked alongside two investigators from the George County district attorney’s office. Wallace said that arrangement didn’t happen very often. And he now questions why they were assigned. “If you've got me investigating the case, then I’m an independent investigator,” he said. “But why would I need the district attor...
Feb 01, 2022•51 min•Season 2Ep. 4
Donate now to support Reveal’s journalism . ••• Billey Joe Johnson Jr. and Hannah Hollinghead met in their freshman year of high school. Hollinghead says Johnson was her first love, and in many ways, it was a typical teen romance. Friends say they would argue, break up, then get back together again. Some people were far from accepting of their interracial relationship. On Dec. 8, 2008, they were both dating other people. According to Hollinghead and her mother, Johnson made an unexpected stop at...
Feb 01, 2022•50 min•Season 2Ep. 5
Donate now to support Reveal’s journalism . ••• Black communities around Mississippi have long raised concerns about the suspicious deaths of young Black men, especially when law enforcement is involved. Curley Clark, vice president of the Mississippi NAACP, calls Billey Joe Johnson Jr.’s case an example of “Mississippi justice.” “It means that they still feel like the South should have won the Civil War,” Clark said. “And also the laws for the state of Mississippi are slanted in that direction....
Feb 01, 2022•50 min•Season 2Ep. 6
Donate now to support Reveal’s journalism . ••• The final episode of Mississippi Goddam shares new revelations that cast doubt on the official story that Billey Joe Johnson accidentally killed himself. This week marks the 13th anniversary of Johnson’s death. His family is still seeking justice. Our reporting brought up questions that the original investigation never looked into. Host Al Letson and reporter Jonathan Jones go back to Mississippi to interview the key people in the investigation, in...
Feb 01, 2022•54 min•Season 2Ep. 7
Penny Rawlings is relieved to finally get her brother into rehab at a place called Cenikor. She doesn’t realize that getting him out of treatment is going to be the bigger problem. This is the first chapter in Reveal’s American Rehab series, exposing how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 14, 2020•22 min•Season 1Ep. 2
Cenikor’s bizarre form of rehab has its roots in Synanon: a revolutionary rehab that started in the 1950s on a California beach. Its charismatic leader, Charles Dederich, mesmerized the nation by claiming to have developed a cure for drug addiction. The program became a phenomenon and quickly spread across the country. But soon, Dederich wanted to profit off its success, and this “miracle” began to change. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about ...
Nov 14, 2020•54 min•Season 1Ep. 3
After amassing a small fortune, Synanon’s megalomaniac leader turns the revolutionary rehab into a violent cult, with mass sterilization, a paramilitary group and a rattlesnake in a mailbox. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 14, 2020•1 hr•Season 1Ep. 4
He’s a liar, a killer and a wannabe country music singer. Luke Austin finds Synanon in prison and borrows from its philosophy to create Cenikor. But graft and violence nearly destroy it. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 14, 2020•51 min•Season 1Ep. 5
Cenikor rises from the ashes, thanks to the inventor of NFL football pads, the war on drugs and the endorsement of an American president. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 14, 2020•34 min•Season 1Ep. 6
Before sunrise, a line of passenger vans heads to job sites across Baton Rouge, Louisiana. They carry squads of unpaid laborers. The drug rehab Cenikor didn't want to show us where they were sending participants to work. So Reveal reporters Shoshana Walter and Laura Starecheski followed the vans to find out. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices...
Nov 14, 2020•23 min•Season 1Ep. 7
One man’s journey into Cenikor leads to almost two years of backbreaking labor. The program will change him. But can it help Chris Koon with his addiction? Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 14, 2020•50 min•Season 1Ep. 8
For decades, work-based rehabs have spread across the country. No one knows how many are out there, so we counted them ourselves. Learn more about American Rehab , and sign up to get our weekly newsletters . Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Nov 14, 2020•53 min•Season 1Ep. 9
Reveal’s American Rehab exposes how a treatment for drug addiction has turned tens of thousands of people into an unpaid shadow workforce. Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices
Oct 05, 2020•2 min•Season 1Ep. 1
