Pamela Colloff
Pamela Colloff is an executive editor at Texas Monthly and has been writing for the magazine since 1997. Her work has also appeared in the New Yorker and has been anthologized in three editions of Best American Crime Reporting as well as the e-book collection, Next Wave: America’s New Generation of Great Literary Journalists. Colloff is a four-time National Magazine Award finalist. She was nominated in 2001 for her article on school prayer, and then again in 2011 for her two-part series, “Innocence Lost” and “Innocence Found,” about wrongly convicted death row inmate Anthony Graves. One month after the publication of “Innocence Lost,” the Burleson County district attorney’s office dropped all charges against Graves and released him from jail, where he had been awaiting retrial. Colloff’s article—an exhaustive examination of Graves’s case—was credited with helping Graves win his freedom after eighteen years behind bars.
In 2013 she was nominated twice more, for “Hannah and Andrew” and “The Innocent Man,” a two-part series about Michael Morton, a man who spent 25 years wrongfully imprisoned for the brutal murder of his wife, Christine. The latter earned Colloff her first NMA.
Colloff holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Brown University and was raised in New York City. She lives in Austin with her husband and their two children.
Stories
Five years ago, Hannah Overton, a church-going Corpus Christi mother of five, was convicted of murdering her soon-to-be adoptive child and sentenced to life in prison. In April, she returned to court—and watched her lawyers put the prosecution on defense.
Williamson Country District Attorney John Bradley faced a resounding defeat in a race that became a referendum on his handling of the Michael Morton case.
David Jones, one of Overton's defense attorneys during her 2007 trial, broke down on the stand.
Ex-prosecutor Sandra Eastwood is put on the hot seat and questioned about whether or not she withheld critical evidence from the defense.
The leading salt poisoning expert testified on the second day of Overton's hearing.
Executive Editor Pamela Colloff reports from Nueces County, where testimony in the Hannah Overton hearing focused on scientific evidence supporting the Corpus Christi homemaker's claims of innocence.
Anthony Graves, who spent eighteen years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit, speaks out as the Washington County sheriff’s race heats up.
The legendary Houston criminal defense attorney will examine former DA Ken Anderson, who prosecuted Michael Morton. With this appointment, things just got a whole lot more interesting. Here's why.
The Court of Criminal Appeals ordered a lower court to examine claims of innocence by the Corpus Christi mother of five, who was charged with capital murder nearly six years ago.
On October 3, 2006, a four-year-old boy named Andrew Burd died in a Corpus Christi hospital. The cause of death was determined to be salt poisoning, an extremely unusual occurrence. Even more shocking was what happened next: his foster mother, Hannah Overton, was found guilty of killing him. But could she really have done what the prosecutors say?
Why did Jason Bourque and Daniel McAllister, two Baptist boys from East Texas, set fire to ten churches across three counties last year?
Anthony Graves had been behind bars for eighteen years when the prosecutors in his case abruptly dropped all charges and set him free. How did it happen? What happens next?
The faces—and voices—of eighteen Texans who are living the debate over illegal immigration.