Jonathan Kellerman: The Best American Crime Reporting 2008

Roughly two months after the shooting, I was in the high Himalaya on assignment. I had been on the trail in Nepal’s Himalaya for days, trekking up to fifteen thousand feet along knife-edge ravines and scrambling over rocks and boulders attempting to avoid the Maoist insurgents who controlled the mountains and had killed thirteen thousand so far in their bloody campaign for power in this tiny, poverty-stricken country. Heaving for oxygen in the thin air, we had hiked to the Chinese-occupied Tibetan border from Namche Bazaar, a mountain village at eleven thousand feet and a hub for the Sherpa communities. It’s the last place to hire porters and supplies before Everest base camp.

My Sherpa guide Ramesh, Tibetan translator Kunchok, and I were all trying to blend in as tourists and mountaineers. But while others went east to Everest base camp from Namche, we scurried west toward China. We were searching for Tibetan refugees escaping the murder, torture, and ethnic cleansing that were driving them from their homeland to the relative safety of neighboring Nepal, and then into safety in exile in northern India.

High up in the mountains in a hamlet called Thame, I was ushered into some traders’ tents under cover of darkness. I met two brothers, their faces lit by a flickering yak-dung fire, who were helping their three sisters, quietly observing me, escape from China to live peacefully as Buddhist nuns. The same two brothers were camp cooks with the expedition that observed the killing at Nangpa La Pass. After the shooting, they realized Tibet was becoming increasingly dangerous under the Chinese, so they wanted their sisters to have the chance of a better life.

The brothers also told me that two years ago they had worked with a climbing expedition and encountered a seventeen-year-old girl who had fallen down a crevasse while fleeing Tibet. “The people she was with tied clothes together and tried to pull her out but it wasn’t long enough,” said one brother, Tsering. “The other refugees could only string prayer flags over the hole, drop some barley for her to eat, and watch as the girl was swallowed alive as her body heat melted the ice and she slipped further and further into the crevasse. The climbers watched through binoculars and did nothing,” says Tsering. “They had ropes but they climbed the mountain instead.”

It disgusted me. When I returned home I also dug into the story of the climbers who witnessed the shooting.

After the story was published, the mountaineering community polarized around the issue. Some readers wrote in to cheer Luis’s brave whistle-blowing. But privately, still more attacked him for speaking out against his fellow climbers and the “brotherhood of the rope.” “This is a very dark secret at the heart of our community,” said Benitez. “I have been getting flak from a lot of people to keep my mouth shut. But this is a story that needs to be told. It’s just sad that more aren’t rallying around the cause. I have no regrets. I would do exactly the same again if I had to.”

GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENT is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

“The Ploy” by Mark Bowden, first published in The Atlantic Monthly . Copyright © 2007 by Mark Bowden. Reprinted by permission Dunham Literary, Inc. as agent for the author.

“Badges of Dishonor” by Pamela Colloff, first published in Texas Monthly . Copyright © 2007 by Emmis Publishing/dba Texas Monthly . Reprinted by permission of Texas Monthly .

“Dean of Death Row” by Tad Friend, first published in The New Yorker . Copyright © 2007 by Tad Friend. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Dangerous Minds” by Malcolm Gladwell, first published in The New Yorker . Copyright © 2007 by Malcolm Gladwell. Reprinted by permission of The New Yorker and the author.

“The Tainted Kidney” by Charles Graeber, first published in New York magazine. Copyright © 2007 by New York magazine. Reprinted by permission of Charles Graeber.

“Murder at 19,000 Feet” by Jonathan Green, first published in Men’s Journal . Copyright © 2007 by Jonathan Green. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“I’m with the Steelers” by Justin Heckert, first published in ESPN The Magazine . Copyright © 2007 by ESPN The Magazine . Reprinted by permission of ESPN Publishing.

“Mercenary” by Tom Junod, first published in Esquire . Copyright © 2007 by Tom Junod. Reprinted by permission of Tom Junod.

“The Story of a Snitch” by Jeremy Kahn, first published in The Atlantic Monthly . Copyright © 2007 by Jeremy Kahn. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“A Season in Hell” by Dean LaTourrette, first published in Men’s Journal . Copyright © 2007 by Dean LaTourrette. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“Day of the Dead” by D. T. Max, first published in The New Yorker . Copyright © 2007 by D. T. Max. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The Caged Life” by Alan Prendergast, first published in Westword . Copyright © 2007 by Village Voice Media. Reprinted by permission of Village Voice Media.

“The Serial Killer’s Disciple” by James Renner, first published in the Cleveland Free Times . Copyright © 2007 by Free Times . Reprinted by permission of Free Times .

“Just a Random Female” by Nick Schou, first published in OC Weekly . Copyright © 2007 by OC Weekly . Reprinted by permission of Ted B. Kissell, OC Weekly .

“The House Across the Way” by Calvin Trillin, first published in The New Yorker . Copyright © 2007 by Calvin Trillin. Reprinted by permission Lescher & Lescher, Ltd., as agent for the author.

JONATHAN KELLERMAN received his Ph.D. in psychology at the age of twenty-four. In 1985, his first novel, When the Bough Breaks , became a New York Times bestseller, was produced as a TV movie, and won the Edgar Allan Poe and Anthony awards for best first novel. Since then, he has written twenty-seven bestselling crime novels, including, most recently, Compulsion .

OTTO PENZLER is the proprietor of the Mysterious Bookshop, the founder of the Mysterious Press, the creator of Otto Penzler Books, and the editor of many books and anthologies, including the annual Best American Mystery Stories.

THOMAS H. COOK is the author of twenty-one books-two works of nonfiction and nineteen novels, including The Chatham School Affair , which won the Edgar Allan Poe Award for Best Novel, and the recent Master of the Delta .

[1] The victims’ names have been changed to protect their identities.

[2] The victims’ names have been changed to protect their identities.

[3] The victims’ names have been changed to protect their identities.