About

Stephen Singular has published 25 non-fiction books, many of them about high-profile criminal cases. He’s also written sports and business biographies and social commentary. He co-authored with his wife, Joyce, their two most recent true crime titles (see below).  Two of Stephen’s earlier books were “New York Times” bestsellers and his first title, Talked to Death: The Life & Murder of Alan Berg, became the basis for the 1989 Oliver Stone film, “Talk Radio.” Several other books have been made into TV movies, mini-series, and documentaries. Please visit the Books section of the website for description and reviews of each title. He has appeared on CNN’s “Larry King Live” “Anderson Cooper 360,” FOX-TV, MSNBC’s “Hardball” “The Rachel Maddow Show,” MSNBC, ESPN, ABC’s 20/20, and has served as a commentator on legal cases for TruTV.

A native Kansan and University of Kansas graduate, Stephen was a freelance writer in New York City from 1974 to 1981, publishing articles in New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Psychology Today, and Inside Sports, among others. In 1983, he began working for the Sunday magazine, Empire, at The Denver Post. Stephen’s 1984 Rolling Stone article about Alan Berg’s murder led to his first book, Talked to Death, and set the tone for his journalistic career. Published in 1987, it chronicled the assassination of a Denver Jewish talk show host, Alan Berg, by a group of neo-Nazis known as The Order. The book was nominated for a national award, the Edgar for true crime. In 2018, Stephen was interviewed by History Colorado for their podcast, Lost Highways: Dispatches from the Shadows of the Rocky Mountains. Click link below (Lost Highways).

Since 1987, Singular has published 24 more books that reflect a wide range of interests and diversity of styles. He’s collaborated with NBA legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, controversial NFL superstar Terrell Owens, and written biographies of Hollywood power players Michael Ovitz and David Geffen. True crime has remained the focal point of his work. His 1995 study of the O.J. Simpson case, Legacy of Deception, went beneath the media hysteria surrounding these murders and explored the racial underpinnings of the case. He found connections between the violent bigotry of The Order — which he’d written about in Talked to Death — and racism and corruption in the Los Angeles Police Department. The book was published years before police violence or evidence-planting entered the American news cycle. Singular’s 1999 book, Presumed Guilty: An Investigation into the JonBenet Ramsey Case, the Media, and the Culture of Pornography, conducted a similar probe for the infamous child killing in Boulder, Colorado.

Since 1991, Denver native Joyce Jacques Singular has partnered with Stephen on eight of the true-crime books. She’s the co-author on 2015’s The Spiral Notebook: The Aurora Theater Shooter and the Epidemic of Mass Violence Committed by American Youth and 2016’s Shadow on the Mountain: Nancy Pfister, Dr. William Styler, and the Murder of Aspen’s Golden Girl.   In 2014, the couple was hired by ABC as consultants for a special on the murder of Nancy Pfister.  In November, 2018, Stephen was featured on CNBC’s American Greed series for the same book.

The couple has an intense interest in the psychological aspects of murder, which has shaped their work together as forensic journalists. A number of their books have focused on the intersection of religion and violence. In 2001, Singular brought out The Uncivil War: The Rise of Hate, Violence, and Terrorism in America documenting the increasing dangers of the nation’s deepening cultural war. The same themes the author had first explored in Talked to Death – fundamentalist religion, racism and violence – were re-examined in this book. In his 2006 book, Unholy Messenger: The Life & Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer, Stephen again examined the convergence of distorted religious beliefs and bloodshed.

Stephen and Joyce were both featured on ID Discovery Channel in 2010 for Sweet Evil,( the story of a young mother who never had a parking ticket but gunned down her lover’s wife in the name of religion.) In 1995, Charmed to Death (the story of the notorious black widow killer in Colorado) was made into the Fox TV movie, “Legacy of Sin.”

Praise for Presumed Guilty:

“Veteran crime journalist Singular… offers an original perspective on the sadly epochal killing of JonBenet Ramsey. Singular was in Boulder, Colo., for much of the investigation, and he methodically details its progress, acutely portraying a volatile situation. He depicts many key players, from DA Alex Hunter and various investigators to talk-radio rabble-rousers and Globe scandalmongers; he asserts that the latter parties bear great responsibility for confusing the public perception of the case and for inflaming tensions among the DA, the cops, and other factions to the point where the investigation may be stalemated. He focuses on the carnivorous mode of the mass media, particularly their lurid, immediate indictment of the Ramsey parents. Singulars perceptive exploration of the near-universal call for the Ramseys’ heads reveals the gritty power struggles and class schisms that underlie the shiny, comforting facade of the Boulder region. Unlike his dirt-chasing peers, he gives nuanced attention to an unsettling aspect of the case that he considers overlooked yet central: the gray area in which the mainstreamed commodification of childrens’ sexuality collides with the abuse of child pornography. JonBenet was merely one of many little girls leeringly displayed as things of beauty by the pageant industry, whose evil twin is the underground of child porn producers and collectors, hugely expanded because of the Internet… Singular has produced a balanced, detailed, thoughtful consideration of an incident usually reduced to cultural dissonance.”

– Kirkus Reviews

“The best writing about the Colorado murder case.”
-USA Today

“Novel, interesting, and a great read… Presumed Guilty opens the Ramsey case to a larger phenomenon [and] a shocking, disturbing aspect of American life.”

-The New York Post

“Presumed Guilty is as close to the truth as we’ll ever get in this baffling case.”
-The Arizona Daily Star

“The book works at every level, from melodrama to murder mystery to sociology. Singular has much to tell us here, and all of it is disturbing.”

– Philadelphia Inquirer

Praise for Talked to Death:

“Mr. Singular offers a microcosm lesson in the workings of a violently racist mind… It is the story of how broadcast communications is evolving in our era and what it has cost us.”

– New York Times

“A chilling examination of American-born right-wing terrorism.”

– Chicago Tribune

Husband and Wife Team

Over the years Joyce has attended legal proceedings, visited inmates in prison, interviewed witnesses, studied forensic data, and been involved in developing ideas for stories, photo selection, editing, creative suggestions, and re-writing. She’s added a female perspective and dimension to the true crime books, three of which have been about women who committed murders. These include  A Killing in the Family which was an NBC-TV mini-series entitled “Love, Lies, and Murder“; Sweet Evil, about a young Colorado Springs wife and mother, Jennifer Reali, who killed another woman; and Charmed to Death, which became a FOX-TV movie titled “Legacy of Sin.”  In Anyone You Want Me to Be, the story of the Internet’s first known serial killer, Joyce was especially insightful in chronicling women who were drawn into online romances that ended with their deaths. Joyce, along with Stephen, appeared on ABC’s 20/20 on 10/4/19 about the case. Following the 20/20 program, they were featured on Denver’s KMGH (Channel 7) news program about several of their Colorado true crime books.

Stephen, Joyce, and Eric have written a fictional screenplay about the accidental discovery of an alternative energy. The story is set in northern New Mexico, among the Pueblo Indians and the national lab at Los Alamos and has been optioned by a producer in LA. Details to follow.