Hannah Shirley

Hannah Shirley

Hannah Shirley covers crime, courts and criminal justice for the Grand Forks Herald. She is a 2018 graduate of the University of Idaho and has lived and worked in Grand Forks since 2019. Prior to moving to North Dakota, she worked as a reporter for the Berkshire Record in Great Barrington, Mass., a receptionist for the Moscow-Pullman Daily News in Moscow, Idaho, and a barista in a New York City coffee shop. She can be reached by phone at (701) 780-1267 or by email at hshirley@gfherald.com.

"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings ... I am not in the least bit sorry," wrote Carl Panzram.
Nineteen-year-old farmhand George Miller maintained his innocence all the way to the gallows after he was convicted of murdering an Inkster, N.D., farmer's wife and 11-year-old son in 1885.
Kaylee Acevedo, 10, was on her bicycle on the sidewalk in downtown Crookston when a semi entered the sidewalk during a turn Monday evening. Acevedo became entangled in the semi's back tires and was dragged a block and a half, according to police.
A retired Grand Forks detective said Kristi Nikle's case disturbs him because the 19-year-old developmentally disabled woman seemed to vanish into thin air.
"In my lifetime I have murdered 21 human beings, I have committed thousands of burglaries, robberies, larcenies, arsons and, last but not least, I have committed sodomy on more than 1,000 male human beings. For all these things I am not in the least bit sorry."
What's it like to be a real-life crime reporter?
When Val Johnson crashed his patrol car outside Stephen, Minn., in 1979, the wreck left the front of his vehicle smashed, strange burns on his eyes, and the time on his watch and dashboard clock 14 minutes behind. Some believed Johnson encountered something extraterrestrial, and the folklore has been drawing tourists to this northwestern Minnesota town to see his damaged car ever since.