At only five foot two, Mildred Burke was an unlikely candidate for the ring. A waitress barely scraping by on Depression-era tips, she wanted more, and she saw her chance when she witnessed her first wrestling match. Even against all odds, she knew that she could become a female wrestler. What followed was a gritty, glittering testament to the golden age of wrestling, when beauty and brawn captivated the world.
Jeff Leen is the author of two books, The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds and the Making of an American Legend (Atlantic Monthly Press, August 2009) and, with Guy Gugliotta, Kings of Cocaine: A True Story of Murder, Money and International Corruption (Simon & Schuster, 1989).
He received his A.B. in English Literature and Drama in 1979 from Washington University in St. Louis, where he worked as a senior editor on the school magazine, Subject to Change.
In 1982, he received his M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia. After graduation, he joined the Miami Herald as a reporter in the Gulf Coast Bureau. In 1985, he began covering the cocaine trade in Miami.
Beginning in 1987, he worked on the paper's investigative team in Miami. That year, he co-authored a 10-part series on the Medellin Cartel that became Kings of Cocaine. The series resulted in the seizure of Pablo Escobar's vacation home on Miami Beach and the druglord's $10 million apartment building in Broward County.
At the Herald, Leen also contributed to the coverage of Hurricane Andrew that was awarded the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for Public Service in 1993.
Since 1997, he has been a reporter and an editor in the Washington Post's investigative unit, where he was part of a four-reporter team whose investigation of D.C. police shootings won the 1999 Pulitzer Gold Medal, the paper's first since Watergate. As the Post's investigations editor and later assistant managing editor in charge of investigations, he has directed reporters investigating deaths among the mentally retarded and at-risk children, plutonium poisoning in Kentucky, overseas drug testing, the 9/11 terror attacks, the business activities of the Nature Conservancy, the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, federal farm subsidy abuse, the Dick Cheney vice presidency and the Chandra Levy homicide case. The work has been honored with five Pulitzer Prizes, including another Gold Medal and two for investigative reporting.
He is married to Lynn Medford, senior Style Editor at The Washington Post.
