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Jason James Barry
JasonJamesBarry@icloud.com
Jason James Barry is an award-winning essayist, journalist, and author.
True Crime & Investigation
As a former police officer and DEA Special Agent, Jason is considered a crime and investigation subject matter expert.
An Arrest of a Cop
Twice now, and more so, I’ve been made privy to old friends or past co-workers who’ve been under arrest. The most recent was a “now...
Our Affinity For Arguing About Gun Violence — While Avoiding Why
The gun violence problem people have been talking about — when did ours begin? I’ve asked this out loud and to myself in the wake of the...
A Police Investigation: Glimmers of an Old, Cold Case
When I started looking into some of my father’s old police cases, I didn’t expect to get pulled in so fully, the same way I think he did....
A Time, Unblinkingly, To Follow The Facts
Special to Great Pacific Review | By Jason James Barry Police go where the facts and evidence lead. They need to. They can’t sidestep...
Kohberger: Comparisons to a Serial Killer
There is the impulse to compare suspected murderer Bryan Kohberger to reputed 1970s serial killer Ted Bundy. As facts bear out, we may...
More Than Just About Kohberger’s Hands
A great deal of focus has been placed on vehicle stops by police to view murder suspect Bryan Kohberger’s hands days before his arrest—...
U of Idaho murder suspect in custody: Where the case goes now
A man is in custody for the Idaho college murders — but the devil will be in the details to nail down a conviction. Authorities in...
The Harm in Trading an Arms Dealer
Thank you, covert negotiators. You’ve traded Viktor Bout. I want to believe there’s wisdom there, some even deeper deal afoot within the...
Letting Viktor Bout Escape
The indictment and charging papers, now all an open book since Viktor Bout’s arrest and subsequent conviction, read like a script for an...
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Email Jason at: JasonJamesBarry@icloud.com
General Publication Essays
(Un) coincidental
What if there’s no such a thing as coincidence, like in an M. Night Shyamalan “Signs” kind of way? What if my book sales dropped off to zero for my memoir about emerging from the shadow of my father (after my Facebook account was shut down since July for… and I’m just guessing here… trying to promote my book). And I get one more erroneous book sale, out of the blue and after a solid month of social-media-isolation — on the anniversary of the death of my father.
Chesterfield Road
The Why: A preface to the Chesterfield Road essay. The why. The question that comes when I dredge it all up, and now, after so long. For...
SAT Saturday
I never thought about suicide when I was in high school, but I was miserable. After waxing euphoric from the great expectations set at...
Travel & Food
When in Cowboy Country, Go Irish
All I thought of in the days leading up was the food. The real McCoy, the fall-off-the-bone barbecue stuff. After all, we’re in Dallas....
A Tale of Two Coffee Locations: Peet’s in Encinitas vs Solana Beach
Is a bad cup of coffee considered an existential crisis or a petty, first-world problem? I think the former. Or is it the latter?...
The Stop Past Death Valley — Primm, Nevada | Special to GPR Road & Travel
If you’ve ever made the drive to Las Vegas from parts of California — your foray sent you through a vastness of desert. And invariably,...
Politics & Commentary
A Commentary on Killing Charlie Kirk
The Left won’t like the comparisons. Then again, they never liked Charlie Kirk. But the assassination of a national change-maker such as...
Not Terror, Not True. Did the FBI Try Punting About Terrorism in New Orleans For Politics?
In the early stages of event unfolding, a truck plowed through a crowd of New Year’s revealers, followed by a police shootout with the...
Why I Voted For Obama, and Trump
In 2008, voting for Barack Obama was a clear decision to me. At the time, America was emerging from two-terms of George W. Bush, Ground...
Why California Likes Harris, Not Trump
Like it or not, out here in SoCal your family and mine qualify as coastal elites — owning million dollar properties just minutes from the...
A Verdict in Kenosha
On a Friday in 2021, in late November, a jury arrived at a verdict in Kenosha. For those who don’t know headlines from the saga, a...
In The Name of Hyperbole & The Failed Recall of Gavin Newsom
Once the tallies were in, and they arrived swiftly, almost within an hour or so of polls closing, the hope for change in California...
Pop Culture
Tech Logjam Angers Caffeine Junkies
The Millennial / Gen Z / Tech Alliance nearly caused a Starbucks revolt by VB parents (not us) at the Commerce Street location in Dallas,...
The Hitchhiker and the Vampire
At its core, he has fame and tremendous wealth. And she has beauty, youth, and adoration. And maybe something has to do with the...
Unscripted Consequences of the Writers Strike
In case you didn’t notice, for the better part of 140-some-odd days there’s been a writer’s strike. I actually think it's over. The...
1980s Gems on Streaming TV
Big budget films and CGI may grab audience attention, but some vintage films go where modern movies try paying homage to but fear to...
Riverdale: The Back-In-Their-Day Comparison
The cast of Riverdale surely is stocked with hotties. And Season 3’s “Griffins and Gargoyles” flashback plot line had Archie, Jughead,...
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