Jean Heller


Jean Heller is a writer and former investigative journalist. She is best known for breaking the news of the Tuskegee experiment in 1972, and reporting that the United States claims of an Iraqi buildup on the Saudi Arabian border during the Gulf War in 1990 was not accurate. She has reported for the St. Petersburg Times, Newsday and the Associated Press.

Life and career

Jean Heller graduated from The Ohio State University School of Journalism in 1964.
In 1972 whistleblower Peter Buxtun provided Heller with evidence that people enrolled in the Tuskegee experiment had been deliberately denied treatment for syphilis over four decades. Years later Heller called the scoop “one of the grossest violations of human rights I can imagine". Her subsequent story exposing the experiment was published in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972; It became front-page news in the New York Times the following day. The stories earned Heller the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, the Raymond Clapper Award, and the George Polk Award.
Heller also writes the Deuce Mora series of novels, which feature a fictional Chicago newspaper columnist.