2025 REPORT FOR READERS
BIGGEST STORIES, FUNDING AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS
We got totebags too! Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
MALONE, NY Jan 1, 2026
2025 actually began in 2024 for The Free Lance News. It started Dec. 9 with the murder of Robert Brooks by guards at a New York State prison outside Utica named the Marcy Correctional Facility.
Because the killing took place in secret behind prison walls, it wasn't revealed until State Attorney General Letitia James called attention to Brooks' death in a Dec. 16 news release that said he died "following a use of force by correction officers."
Exposing what exactly was done to Brooks and holding everyone involved accountable instantly became The Free Lance's mission.
Even before James released video of Brooks' killing on Dec. 27, The Free Lance revealed a beat-up squad of Marcy guards killed Brooks and that the same beat-up squad had been exposed by another prisoner on Oct, 12, 2023—13 months before the same squad murdered Brooks.
Instead of dismantling Marcy's beat-up, James defended it, The Free Lance revealed Dec. 26, Prison Guard 'Beat-up Squad' Killed Robert Brooks, Operated for Years, Attorney General Letitia James's Office Knew It.
A day after The Free Lance's blockbuster revelation, James released body-camera video of the killing that the guards themselves unknowingly recorded, Worse Than George Floyd: Video Shows Prison 'Beat-Up Squad' Killing Inmate Robert Brooks.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, James and more public officials anticipated the video would cause the public to react like it did after Minneapolis police killed George Floyd in 2020 and rise up in mass public protests. It didn't happen.
A prisoner tortured-and-murdered in a deeply Democratic state wasn't news—not with corporate Liberal standard-bearers like the New York Times keeping New Yorkers' attention focused on Republican Pres. Donald J. Trump's return to the White House.
Decades of downsizing and outright death among upstate New York's local newspapers and TV markets also created an enormous hole in news coverage. What reporters were left were mostly young and inexperienced. But for the Albany Times Union, they lacked the chops to tackle a story as challenging to report as Brooks' murder—given the veil of government secrecy surrounding it.
The Free Lance stepped into the breach and devoted its modest but highly-experienced resources to uncovering the truth.
For example, The Free Lance correctly predicted Attorney General James would have to recuse herself from the investigation because she was already defending some of the same prison guards who killed Brooks from lawsuits filed by other prisoners beaten by them.
Excluding the eight reports on Brooks' death The Free Lance published in Dec. 2024, we published 90 reports on Brooks' killing and its aftermath. Among those were 29 reports on the wildcat strike by prison guards, which The Free Lance first reported within hours of its start Feb. 17.
One standout was The Free Lance visual investigation into Brooks’ killing. The Jan. 10 report identified, for the first time, 14 guards and one nurse by face and detailed their actions in the silent, recovered body-camera video, What Body Camera Video Tells Us About the Killing of Robert Brooks by Prison Guards.
The Free Lance's almost-daily coverage kept the pressure on the special prosecutor who replaced James, Onondaga County District Attorney William F. Fitzpatrick. After two months of waiting for Fitzpatrick to act, The Free Lance called him out on Feb. 4, 2 Months After Prison Guards Killed Robert Brooks, Why Hasn't Anyone Been Arrested?
10 days later, The Free Lance learned the guards had been secretly indicted and that arrests were coming.
The Free Lance broke that news on a YouTube broadcast by a retired NYPD officer, DutyRon.
One of the unique consequences of the Brooks case was that it forced alliances with police officers that would have not otherwise have happened. They were as outraged by the guards' murder of Brooks as everyone else was.
As one reader put it in a private message expressing thanks and admiration for The Free Lance’s reporting, "You're like an undercover detective."
Maybe not undercover, but definitely a true detective.
The Free Lance being interviewed by New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Todd Bookman fly-fishing on the banks of the Androscoggin River in April. Bookman’s report was published Sept. 4, New Hampshire said felons couldn’t be fishing guides. An angler sued to change that. Photo credit: JB Nicholas.
In between covering the Brooks case, the murder of Messiah Nantwi by guards at Mid-State, another prison across the road from Marcy, and the guards' strike, I managed to finish hiking the Long Path—a 100-year-old long-distance hiking trail that goes from the Adirondacks to the 175th A-train subway stop in Manhattan.
I had almost completed the trail, and finished it by hiking from the train station on the Hudson River in Garrison, through Harriman State Park and down the Palisades to Manhattan, A 100 Year-Old 'Secret' Long Path Goes From A NYC Subway Station to the Adirondack Mountains—I Just Finished Hiking It.
While I was in New York City, I met up with an old friend, Jennifer Gonnerman. I first met Gonnerman on the phone in 1998. I was serving a 19-year sentence for manslaughter at the time in New York's prisons, and Gonnerman was working as a reporter for the Village Voice. A protege of the legendary investigative reporter Wayne Barrett, Gonnerman made covering prisons a beat, her beat.
Flash forward 27 years. Famous for revealing Khalief Browder's horrific story, she scored a staff writer job for The New Yorker. We sat on a bench outside the library in Seward Park on the Lower East Side and caught up. The white buds of springtime burst to life all around us.
I'd just closed one circle in my life by finishing The Long Path and now with Jen another circle was clicking close. The energy that created was powerful.
Although she had wanted to leave covering prisons behind after almost three decades because, after all, it was mostly sad and depressing, Jen felt the need to take one more crack at it by sharing my story with The New Yorkers' readers. She didn't just do me, she did our special story and everyone else justice when The New Yorker finally published it Oct. 6—at the start of the trial of Brooks' killers in Utica.
Having been denied staff reporting jobs by New York City's media elite, having my reporting featured in The New Yorker—the high citadel of investigative reporting—was satisfying revenge.
While I was in the City, I also made time to attend a pre-primary rally for an upstart candidate for mayor I had a hunch would stun the political establishment and upset his opponent, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
I was right, Zohran K. Mamdani would win, and on June 15 I predicted it.
Back upstate, Gov. Kathy Hochul ordered the firing of the guards involved in Brooks' murder, but those guards were entitled to disciplinary hearings before they were actually fired. In New York City, a local law requires NYPD disciplinary hearings be open to the public. But no law requires the disciplinary hearings held for prison guards be open to the public.
The Free Lance requested access to the hearings the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision was holding for Brooks' and Nantwi's killers, but DOCCS refused to allow it. So The Free Lance sued and, after a judge who was the son of a prison guard dismissed the lawsuit, we appealed to the Appellate Division, Third Department in Albany.
The Appellate Division heard oral argument Nov. 13. If the court rules in our favor, it would open not just the disciplinary hearings DOCCS holds for its employees, but would effectively open all law enforcement disciplinary hearings across New York State to the public.
A decision is likely before the end of February.
Also in the legal arena but separate from The Free Lance, I won a legal victory in New Hampshire that removed a lifetime ban on former felons being licensed as fishing guides in November.
All that hard work paid off. The Free Lance's readership grew from 33,000 unique readers viewing 51,000 pages in 2024, to 129,000 unique readers and 199,000 pageviews in 2025.
Donations jumped from $252.82 in 2024, to $5,052.00 in 2025—most of which came in after Gonnerman's New Yorker report was published.
Two of the most-read Free Lance reports in 2025—one and three respectively—related to Brooks killing: Religious Leader Kills Himself Inside Prison Where Guards Murdered Robert Brooks, with 19,173 views, and Gov. Kathy Hochul Unleashes F-Bomb Barrage on Striking Prison Guards, with 12,213 views.
The Free Lance's second most-read report, with 15,711 views, covered a homeless man on a walk-a-bout, 'Blanketman' on the Move Captivates Upstate New York.
I finished the year like I started it: exposing evil doers involved in Brooks' killing.
One of the mysteries revealed during the October trial of Brooks' killers was who is "Mrs. A"?
During the trial, a prisoner who lived beside Brooks at the Mohawk Correctional Facility testified Brooks was transferred to Marcy—setting his killing in motion—because he'd been beaten by a gang there at the order of a guard called “Mrs A.”
That prisoner, Michael Peacock, testified Mrs. A had Brooks beaten because he threw up and didn't clean it up fast enough.
After weeks of investigation, I revealed not just that Mrs. A was Mohawk guard Sherri Abreu, but that she still worked at Mohawk, Guard Who Set Murder of Robert Brooks in Motion Still Working For State Prison System.
Finally, during their wildcat strike, the guards claimed a piece of prison reform legislation called the HALT law had caused violence to rise in New York's prisons by limiting how long prisons could place misbehaving prisoners in solitary confinement to 15 days.
It would be hard to investigate the impact of the law because New York has 42 prisons and each of them is different. But New York has three female prisons and I figured investigating HALT's impact in those would be easier because, for decades, those prisons were renowned as relatively peaceful places where women who wanted to rehabilitate themselves could.
If HALT was causing problems in those prisons, then the guards had a point.
I visited all three of New York's female prisons and talked to three women who, together, had served almost 70 years in those prisons. All three women said HALT was driving a rise in violence in their prisons, Even Tuff Girlz Say New York Prison Reform Law Goes Too Far.
Mission accomplished.
For tips or corrections, The Free Lance can be reached at jasonbnicholas@gmail.com or, if you prefer, thefreelancenews@proton.me.