Spouse Liz Kovacs | Children Alex, Xanthe | |
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Notable works Churchill’s Deception
Hitler’s Traitor Notable awards Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for the Denver Post in 1986 with Diana Griego Awards Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting People also search for Mark Boyden, Chris Ison, Sidney Sheldon Books Hitler's traitor, Churchill's deception, Fatal Redemption: A Mystery, Nothing Lasts Forever | ||
Lou Kilzer (born February 10, 1951) is an investigative journalist and author. He began work as a journalist in 1973 after graduating cum laude in philosophy from Yale University.
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Early life
Kilzer was born on February 10, 1951, in Cody, Wyoming, the son of Robert and Marjorie Kilzer.
Personal life
Kilzer lives in Escazu, Costa Rica with his wife, Liz Kovacs. The couple have two grown children, Alex, who lives in Colorado, and Xanthe, who lives in Idaho.
Journalist
Kilzer began his daily journalism career in December 1977 at the Rocky Mountain News. He covered police, courts and investigations. In 1983, he began a five-year stint on the investigations unit and city desk of the Denver Post, and then seven years on the investigative unit of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. In 1994, Kilzer returned to the Denver Post as investigations editor, followed by five years as investigative reporter where he had begun his career: The Rocky Mountain News. In 2008, Kilzer accepted the job of editor-in-chief of the JoongAng Daily in Seoul, South Korea. The JoongAng Daily (now known as the Korea JoongAng Daily) is published in partnership with the International New York Times. Kilzer returned to the United States in 2010, taking a job on the investigative unit of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. He retired and moved with his wife, Liz, to Costa Rica where he is pursuing a book writing career.
Book author
Kilzer has authored two books of history and one book of fiction. His controversial 1994 book, Churchill’s Deception, sought to prove that Great Britain tricked Germany into attacking the Soviet Union in 1941. It was published by Simon & Schuster. Kilzer’s second work of history, Hitler’s Traitor, tries to unmask the secret spy named “Werther” who operated in the German High Command and played a decisive role in defeating Adolf Hitler in the Second World War. It was published by Presidio Press.
Kilzer’s first book of fiction, co-authored with Mark Boyden, a British business consulting executive, is called “Fatal Redemption.” It is the first book published by a new UK publishing house, Enigmas Publishing. Kilzer and Boyden are writing a series featuring an aggressive, but often flawed journalist named Sally Will.
His works
Awards
Kilzer and partner Diana Griego won the Pulitzer Prize Gold Medal for the Denver Post in 1986 for a series that debunked the notion that millions of small American children were being kidnapped each year by strangers.
He won a second Pulitzer for investigative reporting in 1990 at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune when he and his partner Chris Ison uncovered that top officials at the Saint Paul Fire Department were profiting from the arson industry. He has also won over a dozen national journalism awards, including the George Polk Award for National Reporting, and the IRE award for investigative journalism.
His latest national award was the $10,000 William Brewster Styles Award given in 2013 by the Scripps Howard Foundation for his reporting on international money laundering. Kilzer won the award, together with fellow reporter Andrew Conte and Investigations Editor Jim Wilhelm for the work for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.