The Sing Sing Files: One Journalist, Six Innocent Men, and a Twenty-Year Fight for Justice Audiobook

An NBC Dateline producer's cinematic account of his two-decade journey navigating the broken criminal justice system to help free six innocent men

The author's podcast, Letters from Sing Sing, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist. This program is read by the author and features sound design and original archival sound recordings from Sing Sing maximum-security prison, including letters written to the author. It also includes commentary from formerly incarcerated men.

In 2002, Dan Slepian, a veteran producer for NBC’s Dateline, received a tip from a Bronx homicide detective that two men were serving twenty-five years to life in prison for a 1990 murder they did not commit.

Haunted by what the detective had told him, Slepian began an investigation of the case that eventually resulted in freedom for the two men and launched Slepian on a two–decade personal and professional journey into a deeply flawed justice system fiercely resistant to rectifying—or even acknowledging—its mistakes and their consequences.

This book is Slepian’s account of challenging that system. The story follows Slepian on years of prison visits, court hearings, and street reporting that led to a series of powerful Dateline episodes and eventually to freedom for four other men and to an especially deep and lasting friendship with one of them, Jon-Adrian “JJ” Velazquez. From his cell in Sing Sing, JJ aided Slepian in his investigations until his own release in 2021 after decades in prison.

Like Bryan Stevenson’s Just Mercy, The Sing Sing Files is a deeply personal account of wrongful imprisonment and the flaws in our justice system and a powerful argument for reckoning and accountability. Slepian’s extraordinary book, at once painful and full of hope, shines a light on an injustice whose impact the nation has only begun to confront.

A Macmillan Audio production from Celadon Books.

Download and start listening now!

“A TV producer’s journey into the hellish landscape of wrongful convictions…An excellent addition to the body of work documenting a pervasive societal injustice.”

— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)