Murder: Good Examples ...

... from some of youze. First up: a basic but to-the-point lede that goes to end result; a nut graf that answers questions created by the lede (what was the name of the employee? What did he do there? How did he die?); then a timeline narrative of how things unfolded, with frequent attribution and use of quotes.

One employee is dead after a robbery this morning at North Point Inn in Detroit.

Kevin Blohm, a cook at the Inn, was stabbed to death at the restaurant in the reception area this morning. 

According to fellow employee Nina Cortez, a bookkeeper for the restaurant, she arrived to work around 9 a.m. Blohm greeted Cortez in her office and the two chit-chatted for a few minutes before beginning their work.

“I asked him to make me some coffee,” said Cortez. “After he brought me a cup, I walked out to the corridor with him. That was the last I saw of him.”

Cortez said she then went to her office to count receipts and cash from the register when a few moments later, a man entered the room, carrying a knife. A startled Cortez screamed and fell to the floor. The man grabbed $130 from the desk and left, without a word.

“He just took the money and walked out,” said Cortez.

Cortez said she then heard another voice from outside her office door but having closed and locked it, she could not see anything else. A few minutes later, the cops showed up and that when she saw her fellow employee’s body.

“It was awful,” said Cortez. “There was blood on the walls and the floor.”

Cortez described the suspect who robbed her as male, in his early 20s, medium build, standing somewhere between 5’10" and 6’0" tall. He was wearing a blue plaid button-up shirt, blue jeans and blue tennis shoes. The suspect used a floral scarf to cover his face in the robbery. It is believed that a car was used in the crime, though there is no information on the model or make.

If you have any information on the suspect, please contact the Detroit Police Department.

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Next up is one that took a bit of a different tack with the lede regarding end result and ultimate outcome: it emphasized not the murder, but the police manhunt for the killers.

This is what we call a forward-looking lede, where the emphasis isn't on what happened; rather, it's on what is ongoing or anticipated to happen next. With such a lede, the nut graf addresses what has happened up to now, while the lede looks forward to now and the future.

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A man is on the loose after robbing a Detroit restaurant at knife-point this morning, leaving one employee dead.

North Point Inn chef Kevin Blohm was stabbed to death shortly after 9 a.m. by an unidentified suspect who robbed the restaurant of $130 before fleeing. 

The bookkeeper for the inn, Nina Cortez, was also at the restaurant at the time of the robbery, and said she came face-to-face with the suspect in her own office.

 “A man came around the corner carrying a knife … I started screaming and kicking. My chair was on rollers, and when I started kicking it fell. I fell on the floor, and he reached across my desk and grabbed $130 in $5 bills,” Cortez said.

Cortez said the man took the money and walked out of the office without harming her. Someone did attempt to get back into the office again though, alerting Cortez to the possibility that there might be more than one perpetrator.  

“I heard a man say ‘get that money out of there.’ Then someone tried to open the door to my office, but I’d locked it. Three or four minutes later the police were there,” Cortez said.  

The suspect was described by Cortez as a man in his early twenties, with a medium build, who was approximately 5-foot-10-inches tall. He was wearing blue jeans, a blue plaid button-up shirt, blue tennis shoes and a floral scarf which obscured the lower portion of his face.

Cortez said that the man who robbed the Inn did not look familiar to her, and that she had no idea why someone would stab Blohm. 

Cortez did, however, say that as she was going inside the inn, she saw a car in the parking lot that she did not recognize, and that did not belong to anyone who worked there.