The journalist and the murderer

A disgraced New York Times reporter learns his identity has been stolen by an all-American hunk who killed his wife and three children. The result is the most unlikely "True Story" you'll ever read.

By Andrew O'Hehir

Read more: Andrew O'Hehir, Books, Journalism, Murder, Reviews, Book reviews

June 15, 2005 | Michael Finkel can't say he wasn't warned. At some point in 2002, when Finkel, a disgraced former reporter for the New York Times Magazine, was becoming friendly with Christian Longo, a man accused of murdering his wife and three children, he asked a forensic psychologist named Joe W. Dixon to read Longo's letters. In the prisoner's lengthy and surprisingly introspective correspondence, Dixon saw a classic case of narcissistic personality disorder. He also saw, in layman's terms, a pathological liar. People like Longo, he wrote, are incapable of honesty: "Lying is their nature. Not just their second nature, but their nature. Beware of their snares."

Dixon's phrasing echoes the old parable about the scorpion that can't help stinging the frog that's carrying him across a river -- even though it means they'll both drown -- because it's his nature. This warning made an impression on Finkel, but not as much as it should have. In Chris Longo, after all, Finkel was dealing with a guy who had fled the scene of a murder and lived for several weeks in Mexico impersonating someone else -- specifically, impersonating him.

In his absorbing chronicle "True Story," Finkel spends a lot of time chewing over the bizarre relationship with Longo that flowed from this unlikely coincidence. But all his rumination and self-scrutiny can't hide the fact that Finkel was fatally infatuated with a man who was suspected (and has since been convicted) of killing his entire family. Finkel had a fever that can be as consuming as love or drugs; he was a reporter with a hot story that he thought might save his career. He gambled that he could make it across the river with Chris Longo without getting stung.

Finkel has become an object of fascination for other journalists -- and the subject of much gossip and innuendo -- because he committed two unpardonable sins. First, in November 2001, he published a profoundly flawed cover story in the Times Magazine, a quasi-fictional weave of truth and invention that purported to be about a young boy trapped in the poverty of West Africa's chocolate plantations. (Although Finkel's fakery was nowhere near the level of Jayson Blair or Stephen Glass, his name will always be linked to theirs.) Then, after Longo impersonated him -- and Finkel, as a result, befriended Longo -- he got a huge, juicy scoop, a story nobody else could have gotten.

Now that Finkel has written a riveting book about his bizarre adventure, you might make that three unpardonable sins. Not only has he profited from his own crime (his scoop would not have been possible without his earlier misdeed), Finkel then had the gall to get back on the horse and establish that he's still a formidable writer and reporter. So when you read other journalists beating Finkel up in print, be aware that our contempt for him is equal parts fear and envy, part "there but for the grace of God go I" and part "why couldn't that murderer have impersonated me?"

As he explains in the first chapter of "True Story," Finkel was sitting at home in Bozeman, Mont., on the night of Feb. 20, 2002, waiting for the Times to publish an editor's note on Page A3 that would repudiate his tainted article and announce that he'd been fired. He had every reason to expect that his career as a journalist, at least for major and reputable publications, was over. When a reporter for the Portland Oregonian called him, Finkel congratulated him on being the first, and assumed the media onslaught had begun. But the Portland reporter wasn't calling about the Times scandal, which he hadn't even heard about. He was calling about Christian Longo.

Longo had disappeared from Newport, Ore., a couple of months earlier, around the time his dead wife and three dead kids -- 5-year-old Zachery, 3-year-old Sadie and 2-year-old Madison -- were being fished out of various bodies of water in the area. Longo drove to San Francisco, and a few days later used a stolen credit-card number to hop a jet for Canczn. He spent several weeks in and around the Mexican resort before the FBI and Mexican police caught up to him. He was popular, made a lot of friends and even started a relationship with a high-spirited young German woman. He told everybody he met there he was Michael Finkel, a reporter for the New York Times.

Given this supremely unlikely circumstance, I guess any reporter would have seen an opportunity and leapt at it. For Finkel, who literally had nothing to lose, the allure of this journalistic kismet -- a unique connection to the leading suspect in a spectacular murder case -- was irresistible. His mistake, if it was a mistake, was to be insufficiently cynical. He didn't simply approach Chris Longo with an eye to a juicy byline, a potentially substantial payday and a way back into his profession. He saw Longo as a moral and existential challenge, a gift from Providence, a chance at salvation.

Next page: Christian Longo becomes Finkel's therapist