Richard Lehr

Dick Lehr is a professor of journalism, an author and podcast host. His books include “White Hot Hate: A True Story of Domestic Terrorism in America’s Heartland”; “Dead Reckoning: The Story of How Johnny Mitchell and His Fighter Pilots Took on Admiral Yamamoto and Avenged Pearl Harbor”; “Trell: Nothing But the Truth,” a novel for young adults; “The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited the Battle for Civil Rights,” which was the basis for a PBS/Independent Lens documentary of the same title; “The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide”; the New York Times bestseller, “Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, The FBI, and A Devil’s Deal”, and its sequel, “Whitey: The Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss.” Black Mass was the basis for a Warner Bros. movie of the same title, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Johnny Depp as the Boston gangster Whitey Bulger; Lehr is the host of ABC Audio’s podcast series, “Truth and Lies: The Informant”, and “Truth and Lies: The Boston Strangler.”

Lehr previously wrote for The Boston Globe, where he was a longtime member of the Spotlight Team, a special projects reporter and a magazine writer. While a member of the Spotlight Team he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and won numerous national and local journalism awards. Before the Globe, he was a staff reporter at The Hartford Courant and The Weekly Old Lyme Gazette.