Jennifer Toth

Toth was born in London to American parents Robert and Paula Toth.{{cite book |last=Toth |first=Jennifer |date=1998 |title=Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care |location=New York |publisher=Touchstone |page=315 |isbn=0-684-80097-7}} Her father was a national security correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and later a senior associate at the Pew Research Center, while her mother was a lawyer and special advocate for the state of Maryland.{{cite web |author= |date=June 30, 1996 |title=WEDDINGS;Jennifer Toth, Craig Whitlock |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/30/style/weddings-jennifer-toth-craig-whitlock.html |access-date=May 23, 2022 |website=The New York Times}} Toth grew up in Moscow, Russia (where her father was a reporter for three years) and Chevy Chase, Maryland.{{Cite news |last=Murphy |first=Brian |date=April 19, 2025 |title=Jennifer Toth, author who chronicled NYC's 'mole people,' dies at 57 |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/04/18/jennifer-toth-author-mole-people-dies/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20250419034730/https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2025/04/18/jennifer-toth-author-mole-people-dies/ |archive-date=April 19, 2025 |access-date=April 19, 2025 |newspaper=The Washington Post}}

She received her undergraduate degree in history from Washington University in St. Louis in 1989, before graduating from Columbia University with an M.A. in journalism in 1990.

From 1990 to 1992, Toth worked as a journalist for the Los Angeles Times in Washington, D.C. and New York, and afterwards for the Raleigh News & Observer from 1992 to 1995, after which she quit to focus on her book projects.Biography from the sleeve notes of the 1994 German edition of Mole People, {{ISBN|3-86153-079-1}}

{{Main|The Mole People: Life In The Tunnels Beneath New York City}}

In 1993, she published The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City through Chicago Review Press.{{cite web |date= |title=The Mole People |url=http://www.chicagoreviewpress.com/catalog/showBook.cfm?ISBN=155652241X |accessdate=March 27, 2015 |publisher=Chicagoreviewpress.com}} The book featured interviews with some dwellers of the "Freedom Tunnel". Her life was threatened by one of the mole people whom she befriended, who thought she witnessed him killing a crack addict. She consequently fled New York City to live with her parents in Chevy Chase, Maryland. Some critics cast doubt on the accuracy of Toth's accounts. Cecil Adams' The Straight Dope, a widely read question and answer column, devoted two columns to the Mole People dispute. The first,{{cite news |last=Adams |first=Cecil |date=January 9, 2004 |title=Are there really "Mole People" living under the streets of New York City? |url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040109.html |work=The Straight Dope |publisher=Chicago Reader, Inc.}} published on January 9, 2004, after contact with Toth, noted the large amount of unverifiability in Toth's stories while declaring that the book's accounts seemed to be truthful. The second,{{cite news |last=Adams |first=Cecil |date=March 5, 2004 |title=The Mole People revisited |url=http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040305.html |work=The Straight Dope |publisher=Chicago Reader, Inc.}} published on March 9, 2004, after contact with Joseph Brennan,{{cite web |date= |title=Fantasy in The Mole People |url=http://www.columbia.edu/~brennan/abandoned/mole-people.html |accessdate=March 27, 2015 |publisher=Columbia.edu}} was more skeptical.

In 1997, Toth published Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care, a book narrating the life stories of five young adults from North Carolina, California, and Illinois who overcame heavy odds to survive their childhood in foster care.{{Cite web |last=Dugger |first=Celia |date=June 8, 1997 |title=It's Never Enough |url=https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/08/reviews/970608.08duggert.html?scp=9&sq=Postal%20Worker&st=Search |access-date=April 19, 2025 |website=archive.nytimes.com}} Publishers Weekly called it an "eloquent and harrowing study", and "an excellent expose of a system that hurts those it is charged to help".{{cite book|title=Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care|first1=Jennifer|last1=Toth|first2=Karolina|last2=Harris |isbn=9780684844800 |date= July 2, 1998|publisher=Simon and Schuster }}

{{external media| float = right| video1 = [https://www.c-span.org/video/?169320-1/happened-johnnie-jordan Booknotes interview with Toth on What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?, 12 May 2002], C-SPAN}}

In 2002, Toth released another narrative about a young man, What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent, that once again addressed foster care and juvenile services, this time in Toledo, Ohio.{{Cite news |last=Bernstein |first=Nell |date=February 10, 2002 |title=System Failure |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/entertainment/books/2002/02/10/system-failure/bb1d6f24-cc99-49f2-b0aa-9228e104bc52/ |newspaper=The Washington Post}} In its review, The New Yorker wrote: "In accounts of dysfunctional families, children are often the victims of violence; here, though, a child is both victim and perpetrator. The child in question is Johnnie Jordan, a fifteen-year-old Ohioan who brutally murdered his foster mother in 1996, hacking her to death with a hatchet and then setting her on fire. Through a series of interviews with Jordan, his foster father, and others within the child-welfare system, Toth constructs an agonizing portrait of a boy who was repeatedly abused from a very young age and repeatedly failed by the system responsible for protecting him."{{cite web|url=http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2002/03/25/020325crbn_brieflynoted3 |title=What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? |publisher=Newyorker.com |date=March 25, 2002 |accessdate=March 27, 2015}}

Toth married Craig Whitlock, a journalist and national-security correspondent for The Washington Post, in 1996.{{cite news |last1=Partlow |first1=Joshua |last2=Whitlock& |first2=Craig |date=May 31, 2011 |title=Craig Whitlock |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/craig-whitlock/2011/02/28/AB5dpFP_page.html |newspaper=The Washington Post}} From 2004 to 2010, the couple lived in Berlin, where Whitlock was stationed for work. She had one child.

Toth died April 12, 2025, at the age of 57, in Silver Spring, Maryland from respiratory complications.{{Cite web |url=https://www.goinghomecares.com/obituaries/Jennifer-Toth?obId=42007421 |title=Jennifer Toth |website=GoingHomeCares.com |access-date=April 19, 2025}}

• The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City (1993) ({{ISBN|1-55652-190-1}})
• Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care (1997) ({{ISBN|0-684-80097-7}})
• What Happened to Johnnie Jordan?: The Story of a Child Turning Violent (2002) ({{ISBN|0-684-85558-5}})
• Bajo El Asfalto (Spanish translation of The Mole People) (2001) ({{ISBN|84-8109-297-5}})

• Voices in the Tunnels

{{Reflist}}

• [https://web.archive.org/web/20080610092322/http://www.citynoise.org/article/8210 Views of Freedom Tunnel], which is featured in her book
• [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040109.html "Are there really 'Mole People' living under the streets of New York City?"], The Straight Dope, January 9, 2004
• [http://www.straightdope.com/columns/040305.html "The Mole People revisited"], The Straight Dope, March 5, 2004
• {{C-SPAN|93019}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Toth, Jennifer}}

Category:1967 births

Category:2025 deaths

Category:20th-century American journalists

Category:20th-century American women journalists

Category:20th-century American women writers

Category:21st-century American women writers

Category:Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism alumni

Category:Los Angeles Times people

Category:Respiratory disease deaths in Maryland

Category:Washington University in St. Louis alumni