From the Publisher: Inside View 

click to enlarge

• John James
• Colin Flanders and Derek Brouwer

In December 2022, Jeff Hall landed in a St. Albans prison cell with Mbyayenge "Robbie" Mafuta. Both men were being held for property crimes, and each had previously been homeless in Burlington's City Hall Park.

Their cohabitation at Northwest State Correctional Facility was short-lived. Within 48 hours, Hall, 55, was found unconscious in a pool of blood; he died three months later. Mafuta, 22, is charged with killing him.

Reporters Derek Brouwer and Colin Flanders wanted to know more about the events that led to this tragic, fatal encounter. They sought to tell the story of both men's life trajectories up to that moment, a tale they knew would trace the contours of the city and state's most intractable problems of homelessness, mental illness and substance abuse.

Seven Days editors approved the story approach as soon as Derek and Colin proposed it, in March. But the victim's family members and the lawyer they'd hired weren't persuaded. They chose not to speak with the reporters. Talking with the paper would neither bring back Hall nor strengthen their case in a potential civil lawsuit against the state.

Mafuta's attorneys — both public defenders out of the Franklin County office — had a different view. Their client, an immigrant from the Democratic Republic of the Congo diagnosed with schizophrenia, pleaded not guilty and plans to raise an insanity defense. At the urging of Derek and Colin, they agreed to make Mafuta available, but arranging an interview took months. When the reporters finally got the chance to speak to Mafuta by phone from the state prison in Springfield, where he'd been moved, he spoke candidly about his troubles. He also gave them permission to use his medical records in their investigation.

Thus, the narrative changed from a tale of two cellmates to a detailed account of Mafuta's steep descent into mental illness. In this week's cover story, Derek and Colin seek to understand how a charismatic young man, full of promise, went from playing on the football team at South Burlington High School to hearing voices, vandalizing cars and homes, and sleeping on the streets.

It pieces together documentation from medical professionals and police and draws on interviews with Mafuta and the people who knew him, including inmates on the cellblock where the homicide happened.

Landing the story took persistence, patience and skill. And, of course, time — the most precious commodity in this business. Seven Days isn't big enough to let two reporters work on one piece exclusively for as long as it takes. So, while Derek and Colin were making incremental progress on what turned out to be a six-month project, they kept covering everything else. Colin wrote a long-form story on how tainted drugs were changing the face of the opioid crisis in Vermont; both reporters covered July's flood.

But they kept coming back to Mafuta's story, which shows how, despite access to services, he found himself alone, alienated and falling apart in the place where he grew up. Unique as his circumstances may be, they reveal systemic problems in how we treat people with mental illness, including those who seek help.

No one person or entity is to blame. There is plenty of gray mixed in with the black and white. But it's a story that nonetheless deserves to be told.

We think you'll agree: This one was worth waiting for.