It became the test. Some, seeing the photo, would say Porter appeared cold and self-absorbed. Others insisted they saw numbness, despair, a sense of something irrevocable.


Her face, identifiable at last, was no longer just a face. It had become a blank canvas on which a multitude of assumptions could be projected, on which the boundaries of justice and human frailty could be debated, on and on.


We can’t say it any better than the Times writers did. Read the series for yourself.