This powerful Reason investigation of the death of a young college student — who had been blackmailed by police into being an undercover drug war informant — won the Southern California Journalism Award and led to a 60-minutes report.
“The body of 20-year-old Andrew Sadek, a promising electrical student at the North Dakota State College of Science (NDSCS) in Wahpeton, North Dakota, was pulled from the Red River bordering North Dakota and Minnesota. Missing for two months, the young man was found shot in the head, wearing a backpack filled with rocks. The grisly death of a college student in one of the safest towns in the state, where violent crime is extremely rare, did not lead to a sweeping investigation. In fact, police immediately said they did not suspect foul play. Such a supposition strains credulity as it is, but what would be slowly revealed over the following months is that Andrew had been working as a confidential informant for the police, and that his school knew that authorities were busting its students and using them as bait to catch drug dealers”