Inside the Globe - tabloid newspaper reporting

Washington Monthly, June, 1999 by Jeffrey Scott Shapiro

One day Globe editor Joe Mullins told me he had information leading him to believe that now-former Detective Steve Thomas' mother had killed herself. (Thomas had just retired from the Boulder police department.) 'I'm not sure this is even a story for us. But it's something I thought I might use to get an interview with him, you know?" said Mullins. I was stunned. "How so?" I asked. "Well, I'm sure he wouldn't want it published, would he?" Two days later, he had an excuse to use it, after Tony Frost berated us all for not being aggressive enough about getting new information. "Maybe we're not being clever enough about how we get to people," said Frost in one conversation. "Steve Thomas, maybe we're not being clever enough there?' Craig Lewis replied: "This thing about Thomas' family that Joe and I are [sic] talking yesterday ... we kinda decided that was the best way to get into him. It's sort of a situation of backing him into a comer, in a nice way."

That night I found myself in front of Steve Thomas' house in my car, waiting for him to come home.

When I told Thomas to watch out for Globe reporters, he was surprised, since he had already declined tabloid offers of as much as $100,000 to give an interview. "They know about your mother," I told him. Thomas became concerned. "My mother?" he asked, amazed. "Yeah," I said. "What about my mother?" he asked angrily. "They know that she killed herself," I told him. "And they're going to use that to try and force you into talking to them." Thomas was speechless.

Two days later when Craig Lewis told me he was going forward with his plan, I left a letter on Thomas' doorstep warning him. The next morning, Thomas received a Federal Express package which included pictures of his dead mother. According to Margaret Miller, Thomas' lawyer, a Globe staffer told Thomas the paper had information that his mother, who died when he was six years old, had committed suicide--an allegation she calls a lie. "He was devastated," Miller told The Washington Post.

Within a week both Lewis and I received letters from Thomas' attorney. To my surprise, she not only accused Lewis of blackmail, she accused me too. When I called her in confusion she said "it was obvious" that I "was working in collusion with Mr. Lewis" I was stunned and hurt. But perhaps I shouldn't have been, given that I was still working for the Globe and I knew as well as anyone how devious it could be.

In late September, I gave a brief interview to Newsweek confessing my belief that John Ramsey was innocent. Frost called me into his office at once. "I didn't bring you back here to yell at you," said my editor. "I brought you here to educate you" Frost explained to me that the world is a dirty place and that in the end no one is really trustworthy. People only use others, and never really help them. Honesty and honor are illusions. Frost grinned as he looked at me across his desk. "You think the Ramseys are your friends?" he asked. He shook his head. "The Ramseys aren't your friends ... no." As I left his office, Frost added: 'gall these people, they'll come to you and tell you how great you are. But they just want to use you."