Evan Wright: Celebrating the Rolling Stone Writer's Best Work

Evan Wright could write about anything.

The renowned journalist, who took his own life last weekend aged 59, was best known for his reporting in war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq in the early 2000s. His three-part series on Rolling rock“The Killer Elite,” won a National Magazine Award for reporting and served as the basis for his monumental 2004 book, Generation Kill. The book was later turned into a popular HBO miniseries of the same name.

In his years as a Rolling rock Contributing, Wright also profiled celebrities and athletes – including Shakira, Quentin Tarantino and boxer Lucia Rijker – dug into the dealings of shady businessmen and reported a number of true-crime sagas.

In honor of Wright's life and work, Rolling rock has selected some of his greatest contributions to this publication. These include classics such as “The Killer Elite” and “Mad Dogs & Lawyers.” exhibitions on a militant anarchist and sorority sisters at Ohio State University. an investigation into Robert Downey Jr.'s infamous drug bust. in 2000. and the story of a Russian immigrant who became involved in the illegal human growth hormone drug market.

Wright profiles “Swamp,” a militant anarchist who crushed the mostly peaceful Seattle World Trade Organization protests in 1999 and became the center of a thriving anarchist population in Eugene, Oregon, in the early 2000s. The 26-year-old activist — who names the Unabomber as one of his heroes – and his band of fellow anarchists roam downtown Seattle, breaking windows, setting fires and covering storefronts with anti-corporate slogans. Wright follows Schwab, who tries to remain anonymous throughout the story, on his journey to Los Angeles, before discarding his identity.

While it begins with the murder of Konstantin Simberg in Phoenix, Arizona, who worked in the illegal human growth hormone market, this story quickly draws in a Russian immigrant child, a man who claims to be a CIA agent, a pair of stripper sisters. cars and guns in a wild story of blackmail, confessions and murders.

Wright reveals the complicated relationship between Dale Crum and his 17-year-old son, Dennis, who is on trial and faces 45 years in prison for the murders of two high school boys he shot to death with his father's gun. The story examines their dysfunctional bond in intricate detail, set against the backdrop of Mariner High School and the small industrial town of Everett, Washington.

While RDJ's arrest on Thanksgiving Day 2000 at the Merv Griffin Resort Hotel and Givenchy Spa in Palm Springs was all over the tabloids at the time, few knew the swirling events that led to the hotel room drug bust. In Wright's dizzying investigation, the actor, his so-called friends, a bunch of strippers and a fatal confusion of mixed-up hairstyles converge on a holiday weekend turned nightmare.

In this August 2002 mission from Afghanistan, Wright chronicles the strange, meandering and uncertain early days of the War on Terror. Operation Cherokee Sky is a mission to target caves allegedly used by the Taliban and confront a warlord suspected of supporting terrorists while masquerading as a US ally. But none of this actually happens. Instead, it's a tale of a cave containing “nothing more than bat droppings,” weed-obsessed Special Forces soldiers, and an anti-escalation “raid” on a village that spawns bumblebees.

Wright digs to the bottom of the dot-com bubble with this profile of Seth Varsavsky, an early-game web whiz who rose to power with — what else? — pornography. (He was the guy who leaked the Pam Anderson and Tommy Lee sex tape to the Internet.) Warshavsky had grand visions of turning his adult-entertainment empire into a genuine media conglomerate, and he even had Wall Street on board. a series of moments, before being overwhelmed by federal investigators. It's a classic Internet con story—the kind that still feels relevant today—enhanced by a fascinating quirk: Wright actually spent nearly a year working for Warshavsky's company, Internet Entertainment Group, in the late '90s.

The Killer Elite, Parts One, Two and Three

Wright spent the harrowing first two months of the Iraq war embedded with the Marine Corps' First Reconnaissance Battalion. He didn't just tag along with the Bravo Company soldiers. His place was at the helm of the Humvee as the battalion began its brutal, bloody journey from Kuwait to Baghdad. Wright turned his experiences into the three-part series, “The Killer Elite,” which earned him a National Award for Excellence in Reporting from National Magazine. The series also served as the basis for Wright's seminal book, Generation Killwhich was later turned into an HBO miniseries by The wire creator David Simon.

This 1999 look at Greek life at Ohio University has pretty much everything you'd expect from an exposé about sororities and sororities: wild parties, rumors of hazing rituals, sex, and plenty of booze. But Wright pulls back from funny college stories to examine the racial, class, and gender dynamics that underpin Greek culture on campus.

Wright delivers a detailed account of one of the strangest true crime stories ever. It centers around the death of Diane Whipple, a college lacrosse coach, who is killed in her San Francisco apartment building after being attacked by her neighbors' dog (a giant Presa Canary named Bane). The shocking attack was soon compounded by details about the dog's owners, two lawyers named Robert Noel and Marjorie Knoller. The pair had acquired Bane, and another Presa Canarios, Hera, through a breeding operation organized by Paul “Cornfed” Schneider, a high-ranking member of the Arian Brotherhood prison gang. Not only that, Noel and Knoller had legally adopted Schneider as their son when he was 38, just days before Whipple's death.