Alan J. Brown

On October 1, 1999, Alan J. Brown, a 36-year-old white man, died in Little Falls, New York. The basic identifying details about his death appear online only in sparse, fragmented form, without the kind of public, case-by-case reporting that usually preserves the first clear account of what happened, where it happened, and who last saw him alive.

What’s notably absent from the publicly accessible online record is the story that typically follows a suspicious death: an official narrative ...