James Renner

James Renner is a Cleveland journalist and author best known for his true crime work. As a reporter for Cleveland Scene and the Free Times he covered some of the strangest stories to come out of the city, uncovering new clues in the cold-case murder of Amy Mihaljevic, and his reporting helped close the Tina Harmon case in 2009. His writing has appeared in the Best American Crime Reporting anthology.

His books include the novels The Man from Primrose Lane and The Great Forgetting, the local legends collection It Came from Ohio, and the nonfiction True Crime Addict, Little, Crazy Children, Scout Camp (2025) and A Cruise to Nowhere: My Search for Amy Lynn Bradley (2026). He hosts the podcasts True Crime This Week and The Philosophy of Crime. He also founded The Porchlight Project, a nonprofit that pays for new DNA testing in Ohio cold cases; its funding of genetic genealogy led to an arrest in the murder of Barbara Blatnik in 2020.