Steven Charles Vincent (December 31, 1955 – August 2, 2005) was an American author and journalist. In 2005 he was working as a freelance journalist in Basra, Iraq, reporting for The Christian Science Monitor, National Review, Mother Jones, Reason, Front Page and American Enterprise, among other publications, when he was abducted and murdered in southern Iraq after investigating corruption by Shia militias. Early life Vincent was born in Washington, DC, but his family would soon move to northern California. The family spent four years in Palo Alto before moving to Sunnyvale, now the heart of Silicon Valley, in 1960. He graduated from Homestead High School in 1974, went to the University of California, Santa Barbara, then to University of California, Berkeley, from which he graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English and Philosophy. After a summer spent traveling around Europe, he hitchhiked to New York in 1980 to pursue a writing career, supporting himself by taking a series of jobs in the restaurant industry, driving a cab and doing temp work. Writing career His first professional experience came when he was offered the editorship of a local newspaper, The East Villager. From 1984 to 1991 he wrote, edited, laid out and oversaw the publication of each month's edition; during his tenure he also became deeply involved in local issues, and successfully used the paper as a forum to influence neighborhood politics. In the late 1980s he began his career as a writer of fiction and essays, publishing in various literary magazines and booklets. In 1997, he received a Dactyl Foundation Award for his essay on Pop Art, "Listening to Pop." He also self-published two issues of a poetry magazine, The Plowman. In 1990 he was hired by Art+Auction magazine, where he quickly became the senior writer, specializing in investigative stories of art theft, fraud, counterfeiting and malfeasance. After an abortive six-month stint at The Wall Street Journal, he returned to Art+Auction as a freelancer until his death. After watching United Flight 175 crash into the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, and the subsequent collapse of the Twin Towers, Vincent scaled back his art critic job to write instead about what he considered more timely and pressing issues. In 2003, after learning that his friend, the artist Steve Mumford, had gone to Baghdad following the start of the Iraq War, Vincent went as well, first in 2003,