Story of a Child Turning Violent," that once again pierced the secrecy surrounding foster care and juvenile services, this time in Toledo, Ohio. In its review, The New Yorker wrote: "In accounts of dysfunctional families, children are often the victims of violence; here, though, a child is both victim and perpetrator. The child in question is Johnnie Jordan, a fifteen-year-old Ohioan who brutally murdered his foster mother in 1996, hacking her to death with a hatchet and then setting her on fire. Through a series of interviews with Jordan, his foster father, and others within the child-welfare system, Toth constructs an agonizing portrait of a boy who was repeatedly abused from a very young age and repeatedly failed by the system responsible for protecting him." Controversy Cecil Adams' The Straight Dope, a widely read question and answer column, devoted two columns to the Mole People dispute. The first, published on 9 January 2004 after contact with Toth, noted the large amount of unverifiability in Toth's stories while declaring that the book's accounts seemed to be truthful. The second, published on 9 March 2004 after contact with Joseph Brennan, was more skeptical. Documentation of the individuals and locations described in The Mole People have been repeatedly catalogued in a variety of other media, from photographer Margaret Morton's The Tunnel (Yale University Press: 1995) to the New York Times to the "Jerry Springer Show," which featured one of the main characters, Bernard Isaacs, the self-proclaimed Lord of the Tunnels. Bibliography The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City (1993) () Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care (1997) () What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent (2002) () Bajo El Asfalto (Spanish translation of The Mole People) (2001) () See also Voices in the Tunnels References External links Views of Freedom Tunnel, which is featured in her book Are there really "Mole People" living under the streets of New York City?, The Straight Dope, 9 January 2004 The Mole People revisited, The Straight Dope, 5 March 2004 Living people Year of birth missing (living people)