Michael Montgomery is a senior reporter and producer for Reveal. He has led collaborations with the Associated Press, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Frontline, KQED and others.
Previously, Montgomery was a senior reporter at American Public Media, a special correspondent for the BBC and an associate producer with CBS News. He began his career in eastern Europe, covering the fall of communism and wars in former Yugoslavia for the Daily Telegraph and Los Angeles Times. His investigations into human rights abuses in the Balkans led to the arrest and conviction of Serbian and Albanian paramilitaries and creation of a new war crimes court based in The Hague. Montgomery’s honors include Murrow, Peabody, IRE, duPont, Third Coast and Overseas Press Club awards. He is based in Reveal’s Emeryville, California, office.
There have long been concerns about the quality of investigations into suspicious deaths of young Black men in the state, especially when police are involved.
When a detective with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation finds out what Reveal has uncovered, he begins to wonder whether Billey Joe Johnson’s case should be reopened.
The autopsy of Billey Joe Johnson helped a grand jury conclude that his death was an accident. But an independent review of the autopsy came to a different conclusion.
On the morning of Billey Joe Johnson’s death, crime scene tape separates the Johnsons from their son’s body. Their shaky faith in the criminal justice system buckles as authorities fail to follow up on inconsistencies in the official story.
Billey Joe Johnson Jr. was a high school football star headed for the big time. Then, early one morning in 2008, the Black teenager died during a traffic stop with a White deputy. His family’s been searching for answers ever since.
A surprising group of investors is fueling a global scramble for water in the most unlikely of places – the Arizona desert. As wells run dry, there’s a race for profits.
The future of warfare is being shaped by computer algorithms that are assuming ever-greater control over battlefield technology. Will this give machines the power to decide whom to kill?
The final episode of our three-part series takes listeners inside the failed federal response to COVID-19 and explores the massive volunteer effort to collect data about the disease.
