Next Saturday, Susan Orlean will discuss her new memoir Joyride at the Portland Book Festival. In it, Orlean tells of the stories she reported at WW . “I wrote about a horrible murder/suicide. It is the only murder story I have ever written. I was so haunted by it that I knew I could never do another.”

This is that story. It first appeared in the June 22, 1982, edition of WW.

There’s a photograph of Steven Wallace Irwin taken on the day he died. There he stands, a young man, nearly six-and-a-half feet tall, narrow build, black hair. His expression is shy, almost dour, and his stance has the awkwardness that only a camera can induce in us. The friend who snapped the picture (he had repaired her sink only moments before) probably teased him a bit to relax and pose more eas

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