Nicole Weisensee Egan
Nicki Weisensee Egan is an award-winning journalist, podcast host, and former People magazine senior writer turned author who was the first reporter in the world to dig deeply into the Bill Cosby drugging and sexual assault scandal in 2005 when she worked at the Philadelphia Daily News, breaking story after story while other reporters shied away. When the scandal bubbled up again in October 2014 she was able to quickly reconnect with those victims and sources and began breaking exclusive stories for People, including the news of Cosby’s arrest on Dec. 30, 2015.She continues to covers it to this day on her Substack, CHASING JUSTICE, has written opinion pieces about the case for The Daily Beast, The Cut, the Los Angeles Times,The Philadelphia Inquirer, and The London [Sunday] Times and is a frequent guest on podcasts discussing the case.
During her tenure at People Egan convinced subjects of some of the nation’s most high-profile crime and human-interest cases to tell their story to her before talking to any other media. When Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old terminally ill woman who became the face of the controversial right-to-die movement before ending her own life on Nov. 1, 2014, she talked about her decision first with Egan.After Andrew Madoff, one of Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff’s two sons, found out his cancer had returned, he opened up only to her. When Illinois cop Drew Peterson, suspected in the disappearance of his fourth wife, holed up in his home to avoid the hordes of media camped outside his front door in November 2007, Egan convinced him to do an interview. He snuck out the back door of his home, jumping over his fences, to meet with her at a neighbor’s home. And in 2017 Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald, the Green Beret surgeon convicted of murdering his wife and two children in 1970, broke his 13-year silence to explain to her why he will never stop fighting to prove his innocence.
Egan left People in June 2017 and published her first book, CHASING COSBY, in April 2019 then hosted and executive produced a podcast based on the book, which debuted in January 2020. Her second book, VICTIM F, which she coauthored with the subjects of the book, came out in June 2021. She ghostwrote her third book, a memoir for a client, which was published in September 2023, and is currently working on several other book, podcast and television projects. She also works as an investigator for On Point Investigations.