A Teen’s Fatal Plunge Into the London Underworld

After Zac Brettler mysteriously plummeted into the Thames, his grieving parents discovered that he’d been posing as an oligarch’s son. Would the police help them solve the puzzle of his death?

By Patrick Radden Keefe

February 5, 2024

On November 28, 2019, Zac Brettler, a nineteen-year-old from West London, went to spend the night at the Riverwalk complex, which overlooks the Thames.Photographs by Lewis Khan for The New Yorker

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Patrick Radden Keefe, a staff writer at The New Yorker, is the author of “Empire of Pain.” His new book is “Rogues: True Stories of Grifters, Killers, Rebels, and Crooks.”

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