These are some articles I wrote that really challenged my research, reporting, interviewing and writing skills. I found each story independently and conducted the interviews myself when I worked with the News Features desk at the Daily Mail. All these stories moved me and I learned so much - not just about storytelling but about the extraordinary people behind them
EXCLUSIVE: 21-year-old girl relives a period when her mother drugged her with sleeping pills and shaved her hair to convince her she was dying
A young woman who was drugged by her mother to convince her she was dying from childhood leukemia in a scam that duped their town has spoken for the first time about the grueling ordeal and says she believes her mother ruined her life.
Hannah Milbrandt, now 21, was seven years old when her mother told her she had cancer, shaved her head, drugged her with sleeping pills, and taped bandages to the back of her head to cover a non-existent medical port.
Their small, close-knit hometown of Urbana, Ohio rallied around the Milbrandts, donating money to help pay for Hannah’s medical bills and organizing fundraising events. Police said the couple fooled 65 people and businesses to raise an estimated $31,000.
Hannah's parents, Robert (left) and Teresa Milbrandt (right), received an estimated $31,000 during the nine-month hoax, police said at the time. The family is pictured here at Hannah's seventh birthday party held at their church, Faith Fellowship Church, a small congregation that raised $7000 to help the family with medical bills
Nine months later, in 2002, Hannah’s illness was revealed to be a hoax after teachers at Hannah’s school became suspicious.
In 2003, both of Hannah’s parents were jailed. Teresa was jailed for six and a half years for theft and child endangerment. Robert maintained his innocence, saying his wife took Hannah to all her medical appointments, but pleaded guilty to child endangerment and served four years and 11 months in prison.
In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Hannah, who spent a year in foster care after her parents were jailed before being taken in by her paternal aunt, spoke about how the cancer hoax affected her, how she’s struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts and how she has tried to move on with her life.
EXCLUSIVE: Rage of Emmett Till's family after white housewife who accused him of sexual threat 62 years ago so husband who lynched him would be cleared admits she lied
The family of Emmett Till, a black boy murdered in Mississippi 62 years ago after allegedly whistling at a white woman, have reacted with fury after the woman linked to the notorious case admitted that the most incendiary parts of the story she told about him were a lie and she now feels ‘tender sorrow’.
Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Chicago, was shot and beaten to death and disfigured beyond recognition by two white men in racially segregated Mississippi in 1955 after stopping at a store to buy two cents of bubble gum.
The men walked free, acquitted of murder by an all-male, all-white jury in an hour despite having already admitted the crime to law enforcement.
Carolyn Bryant, right, was 21 when her husband Roy Bryant, left, lynched and murdered Emmett Till after he allegedly whistled at her outside their store in racially segregated Mississippi in 1955. She told his trial that Emmett had grabbed her and been sexually aggressive. Her husband was acquitted of murder after little over an hour's deliberation by an all-white, all-male jury. He later admitted the brutal killing
In a newly revealed 10-year-old interview to be published in a book today, Carolyn Bryant, the wife of one of the men arrested for Till’s murder and the woman whose testimony carried the case, admitted her account was ‘not true’.
Speaking to DailyMail.com after Bryant’s confession was revealed, Till’s cousin Wheeler Parker who was with him the night of the incident – and when he was taken from his bed to his death, said: ‘My family thinks she’s trying to make money but being a preacher, I think she is trying to find a way to go heaven now.’
Parker, now a pastor of a church in Illinois that Till and his mother attended, added: ‘Whatever the motive, I am very pleased that she’s telling the truth.’
EXCLUSIVE: Beyoncé's songwriter finds her missing brother living on the streets of LA - 16 YEARS after he vanished
Beyoncé's songwriter Diana Gordon has been reunited with her long-lost brother after a remarkable chance encounter when she recognized him sitting, homeless, at a bus stop 3,000 miles from home.
The singer - who wrote the now-infamous 'Becky with the good hair' line and co-wrote on the album Lemonade - had given up hope of finding her brother David after he left their home in New York, 16 years ago.
Writing about the moment she found her older brother sitting on two crates on the street in Los Angeles, Diana, 28, said: 'After the first decade went by, I lost hope of ever finding him.
‘These last few years, I accepted the fact that we were never going to find him... in my heart I had put him to rest.'
He was living rough only 'a few miles' from her home in LA.
Back in the day: David and a Diana grew up in a family of seven in Queens, New York. David (pictured right) was the oldest of the six siblings and Diana was the middle child
The siblings were raised along with four other brothers and sisters by a single mother in Queens who struggled to take care of her six children abandoned by their father.
In the face of these challenges, David filled in for the absence of his father and would pack bags at the supermarket - before he was old enough for a real job - so he could raise money to help his sisters.
The siblings' paths couldn’t have been more different. Diana - who was the middle child in their home in South Jamaica - pursued a successful music career and landed her first record deal when she was 19 years old.
She's gone on to write hit songs for Mary J. Blige, Jennifer Lopez and Ciara, as well as Beyonce and is a successful singer and performer in her own right.
Of the moment she recognized him and stopped the car, she wrote: ‘My heart was beating, the tears had already begun to pour down my face. You see, after the first decade went by, I lost hope of ever finding him.
From Porn Star to Pulpit: The incredible and unlikely stories of women who've quit the adult movie industry to become Christian preachers
At a fundraising event in California, Crissy Outlaw stands at a pulpit wearing a glamorous billowing black mini with a pink flower carefully lodged in her dark hair.
The all-American 41-year-old beauty begins her sermon simply with: ‘Hi, my name is Crissy and I used to be a porn star.’
She opens with this same line to the other congregations she visits, narrating the chilling times she was abused time and time again from the age of four, the failed relationships that left her 'wanting to be dead' and how she gave up her career as one of the biggest names in the porn industry to become a prolific Christian preacher.
Crissy became a porn star in 2000 because the 'sense of danger was exciting', but six years into her career, she fell to the ground in her bedroom in California and prayed because she felt 'messed up' by her relationships and wanted to feel God. The next day, someone she'd just met asked her if she wanted to dedicate her life to Jesus Christ. Seeing that encounter as the sign she needed from God, Crissy quit porn that day. She is pictured here in September 2013, sharing this part of her story at the First Baptist Church in Orange Park, Florida
‘I can’t believe I ever went into the porn industry,’ Crissy told DailyMail.com.
‘And I never wanted to be a preacher but it happened because I felt called to let people know why I left the industry.’
Crissy grew up in Jacksonville, Florida in a lower-class, conservative and chaotic home. Her parents were divorced and she primarily lived with her father, who was adamant about sexual purity and often launched into diatribes about her maintaining her virginity until she got married.
While Crissy - whose mother couldn’t be as close as she wished during her childhood after a messy divorce with her father - believed in God, she says she was ‘confused’ by this advice on staying away from sex because for most of her childhood she was sexually abused by a predatory neighbor who touched her inappropriately - a secret she kept from her father.
‘I couldn't understand why I was being molested so many times; it was confusing to me,’ she said. ‘Why is it so easy for people to touch my body?
‘I couldn't make sense of it as a child. I thought it must be something about me that's making it happen.
‘I didn’t tell my father because I couldn't have a relationship with him, since he’s hard to get along with.’