Richard Lehr

Richard Lehr is a professor of journalism, a journalist and author of six works of nonfiction and a novel for young adults.

Lehr coauthored Black Mass: Whitey Bulger, the FBI and a Devil’s Deal, and its sequel, a biography titled Whitey: the Life of America’s Most Notorious Mob Boss. Black Mass was a New York Times bestseller and Edgar Award Winner in the Best Fact Crime category. The Warner Bros. film adaptation, starring Johnny Depp and Benedict Cumberbatch, premiered worldwide in 2015. His nonfiction book, The Birth of a Movement: How Birth of a Nation Ignited The Battle for Civil Rights, became the basis for a PBS/Independent Lens documentary, narrated by Danny Glover, that was a finalist for an Emmy for Best Historical Documentary. Two other books were Edgar Award finalists: The Fence: A Police Cover-up Along Boston’s Racial Divide, and Judgment Ridge: The True Story Behind The Dartmouth Murders. His novel for young adults, Trell: Nothing But the Truth, is his first work of fiction.

Lehr previously wrote for the Boston Globe, where he was a longtime member of its Spotlight investigative reporting team, a special projects reporter and a magazine writer. While at the Globe he was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in investigative reporting and won numerous national and local journalism awards.