Bio

Mark Horner

Whether armed with pen, keyboard, microphone or camera, I enjoy storytelling.  My background includes 20-years of reporting for local TV stations in Washington, Arizona, Wisconsin and New Mexico. Sure, there were some awards along the way (that’s the type of thing reporters often list in their bio, isn’t it?).  I suppose I feel best about the awards for investigative reporting, documentary work and best editing.

I’ve also written a true crime book titled, September Sacrifice.  It’s about the murder and disappearance of a woman named Girly Chew Hossencofft.  I investigated that case for nearly five years and reported on it for KRQE-TV and KOB-TV in Albuquerque.  I started writing on the web about the Hossencofft case in 1999.  The resulting years of articles, photos and document-gathering can still be found at markhorner.com/hoss.

My Hossencofft reporting also resulted in appearances on Dateline NBC, A&E’s American Justice, Oxygen’s Snapped and several programs on truTV (formerly Court TV).

To my knowledge, I’m also the only journalist who ever interviewed the late David Parker Ray, the man at the center of New Mexico’s 1999 “sex-torture”/”toy box”/”house of horrors” case that captured international headlines and whose sadistic crimes against women are now chronicled in several books, to include Jim Fielder’s Slow Death and John Glatt’s Cries in the Desert.
Some of the other stories I’ve reported, include:

  • coverage from Ground Zero, the Pentagon and Shanksville, PA the week of the September 11th terrorist attacks
  • Northridge, California earthquake
  • “Heaven’s Gate” cult suicides
  • Cerro Grande fire in Los Alamos, New Mexico

But there have also been countless, less-known stories.  Many of them have stayed with me over the years.  The people at the center of those accounts include:

  • a high school boy killed by a drunk driver in north-central Washington in the late 1980s
  • a little girl named Beth who loved listening to New Kids on the Block and bravely fought aplastic anemia before loosing her life to it
  • a baby named Joseph who was violently shaken and killed by a babysitter (some of Joseph’s organs were donated to babies in Colorado and California)
  • an elderly blind woman on a fixed income whose freshly painted home was tagged with graffiti (after that story aired, several people who had viewed it were at the woman’s home the following day…painting).

I enjoy getting out ahead of a story.  It’s always been that way.  In 1987, I did a special report about “steroids” before most people had heard the word (one year later, sprinter Ben Johnson was destined to make steroids a well-known word following his performance in the 1988 Olympics).

During those first four years of TV reporting, I also shot and edited my video.  Usually two stories a day.  Yes, the proverbial “one-person band” armed with an Ikegami tube camera, a 3/4″ record deck, a light belt, a tripod and a bag containing large batteries, microphones and tapes. I actually used to enjoy trekking through the Cascade mountains with all that gear (sans lights) in pursuit of elk, Bighorn Sheep, bull trout, Peregrine Falcons and other wildlife.

I also shot a ton of sports, including some Seattle Seahawks games along the sidelines at the ol’ Kingdome.  Still, the Ephrata Tigers of the Caribou Trail League were more challenging to shoot.  Coach Bill Betcher’s Tigers ran the option oh-so-well; a simply brilliant execution of misdirection while hiding the football beautifully!

These days, I’m once again working in front of–and behind–the camera, producing videos for the state of Washington.  I’ve especially enjoyed getting up-to-speed with non-linear editing.  As with most everything, though, there’s always more to learn.
As time affords, I also continue to tell stories right here on this blog.

I enjoy finding and writing about compelling stories before they go mainstream.  Some good examples here include the Juliana Redding murder, the mystery of British Columbia’s floating human feet, and the murder of Jamiel Shaw II.

At all times, my goal is to be fair.  I’m of the opinion that it’s doubtful that any journalist can achieve pure objectivity.  So, I aim for fairness.  Don’t know if I always hit the bull’s eye.  But I like to think that if I didn’t hit it, then I wasn’t far off.  When readers challenge my fairness, I welcome it.  Not because I want to assume a defensive posture.  Quite the contrary.  Critical, thoughtful feedback helps keep me on my toes.  I believe reporters should remain humble.

I’m reminded of two of my favorite journalists: the muckraker  Lincoln Steffens and the brilliant electronic storyteller Charles Kuralt.
Steffens powerfully exposed political corruption and unjust social practices.   To this day, Kuralt’s gift for knitting together words, sound and pictures can give me goose bumps as I recall some of his stories.

Point is, that’s the kind of reporting I admire most: Revealing storytelling where the subjects are clearly brought into focus, fairly presented, and devoid of any moment wherein a reporter gets in the way.

Thank you for visiting Beyond90Seconds.com.

Sincerely,

Mark Horner