S. Thorne Harper

S. Thorne Harper is a Southern-born journalist and author whose reporting has taken him from the gang-ridden streets of 1980s Los Angeles to the battlefields of Iraq and the death chambers of Alabama. A recipient of the Knight Ridder Special Citation for Excellence and the Thomson Newspapers Award of Excellence, Harper has documented war, peacekeeping, and capital punishment for major newspapers and public television. His dispatches from the 2003 invasion of Iraq appeared nationwide, and his coverage of a U.S. soldier’s death by friendly fire inspired the 2007 film In the Valley of Elah. He also appeared in the PBS documentary Race to Execution.

Harper’s true crime book The Alabama Tryst Murder Mystery revisits a 1927 Birmingham electric chair case to examine race, retribution, and the moral cost of justice in the Deep South. He lives in Alabama with his family.