It's a Holiday Weekend. Do Yourself a Favor and Read This Masterful California Crime Tale.

Jill and Kent Easter had it all—and risked everything for revenge. “Most incomprehensible case I’ve ever seen,” the judge says.

Anybody who went to school or is now a parent—which means just about all of us—will recognize the portrait of Jill and Kent Easter that Los Angeles Times reporter Christopher Goffard presents in his masterful tale of stunningly bad behavior, slick police work and needlessly wrecked lives.

Goffard pulls together a stranger-than-fiction account of parental obsession, revenge and destruction, leavened with infidelity and courtroom drama. It played out in an affluent L.A. suburb but could have happened wherever parents worry about their children.

Read it here.

Willamette Week

Nigel Jaquiss

Reporter Nigel Jaquiss joined the Oregon Journalism project in 2025 after 27 years at Willamette Week.

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