THE WEEKLY REVEAL

Hello! In this issue:

• A Philadelphia homicide detective closed case after case. But he was coercing and abusing suspects.
• Smuggled footage from Ukraine showed the brutality of war from the perspective of a volunteer medic treating anyone injured, including Russian soldiers.
• The Utah legislature passed a new bill governing religious confessions in the wake of our episode about the methods the Mormon church uses to keep child sexual abuse cases secret.

THIS WEEK’S PODCAST

The Suspect Detective

For years, The Philadelphia Inquirer has dug into allegations of misconduct against a star police detective: Philip Nordo, known in the Philadelphia Police Department for putting in long hours and getting results. Nordo had a hand in convicting more than 100 people investigated by the homicide unit.

Now, as decades of his investigations face scrutiny, many of those convictions are falling apart.

Philadelphia Inquirer reporters Chris Palmer and Samantha Melamed bring us the case of Milique Wagner, who was arrested in 2010 for a murder he says he had nothing to do with. He spent three days under interrogation by Nordo. The questioning took a shocking turn as the detective asked him some unnerving questions: Would he ever consider doing porn? Guy-on-guy porn?

Wagner would go on to be convicted of the murder in a case largely built by Nordo – and Wagner’s experience has led him to believe Nordo fabricated evidence and coerced false statements to frame him.

As officials investigate Nordo, they uncover a pattern in his communication with incarcerated men and find evidence of shocking coercion and abuse.

This week, in an update of an investigation we first aired in December 2022, we partner with The Philadelphia Inquirer to seek answers from the Police Department on how Nordo got away with it for so long and what happened to Wagner’s case.

A Quote to Remember

“After the first days, I remember that we took this card to our laptop and started looking for this footage. And it was … the hardest footage that I saw in my life.”

Vasilisa Stepanenko, a field producer with the Associated Press, was part of a team covering the first days of the Russian invasion in Ukraine in 2022. She smuggled out the SD card from the body camera of a volunteer medic who treated everyone – even captured Russian soldiers who thought they were going to be killed instead.

More From Us

Last year, we partnered with the Associated Press to expose The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ legal strategy: Keep evidence of child sex abuse from authorities by discouraging clergy from testifying about what they heard during a confession.

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