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
Twenty-six years after Michael Morton was sent to prison for a murder he didn’t commit, his wife’s killer was finally brought to justice.
Arrest warrant is issued for former Williamson County district attorney Ken Anderson, the man who prosecuted Michael Morton and helped put him in prison for nearly 25 years for a crime he didn't commit.
“The big monster with the big mustache” is sentenced to life in prison.
On the third day of Mark Alan Norwood's capital murder trial, an old friend testified that Norwood sold him the .45 that disappeared from Michael Morton's home after his wife, Christine, was murdered in 1986.
DNA testing of a blue bandana exonerated Michael Morton. Could the small square of cloth also be the linchpin that seals Mark Alan Norwood's fate?
Prosecutors say they will prove that Norwood sold a .45 pistol that was stolen from the Morton home.
Al Reinert discusses An Unreal Dream, his new film about Morton, who was wrongfully convicted of killing his wife and served nearly 25 years in prison for the crime.
UPDATED: A Brownsville construction worker named Manuel Velez was sent to death row in 2008 after he was convicted of killing his girlfriend’s baby. Five years later, new testimony from a number of forensic experts suggests that the medical evidence against Velez was deeply flawed. Now he may receive the chance to prove his innocence.
The final day of the court of inquiry into alleged prosecutorial misconduct by former Williamson County D.A. Ken Anderson ended with the man who helped put Michael in prison for 25 years for a crime he didn't commit calling the accusations against him "so bogus it’s unreal.”
More testimony suggested that the former Williamson County D.A. may have withheld evidence that could have proven the innocence of Michael Morton.
Michael Morton testifies at the inquiry for the former Williamson County district attorney who sent him to prison for a crime he didn't commit.
Ken Anderson, the former Williamson County D.A. who prosecuted Michael, will essentially go on trial as the subject of a “court of inquiry,” an arcane legal procedure used to investigate possible wrongdoing by state officials.
Michael Morton spent 25 years wrongfully imprisoned for the brutal murder of his wife. How did it happen? And who is to blame?
The National Magazine Award–winning story about Michael Morton, a man who came home from work one day in 1986 to find that his wife had been brutally murdered. What happened next was one of the most profound miscarriages of justice in Texas history.
State district judge Jose Longoria stated that "all of the supposedly newly-discovered evidence ... was clearly known and discussed at the time of trial."