Jennifer N. Toth

Jennifer N. Toth, of Silver Spring, Maryland died on April 12, 2025, at Holy Cross Hospital, of respiratory complications from a long illness. She was 57.

An award-winning non-fiction author and journalist, Jenny was truly beloved by her family and friends for her kind heart, intellectual curiosity and empathetic ear. People trusted her instinctively, including strangers and an array of fascinating characters from around the world who populated her books and enriched her life.

Born in London, Jenny was the daughter and middle child of Robert C. Toth, a foreign correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, and Paula Goldberg Toth, one of the first female engineering graduates of Washington University in St. Louis. During the height of the Cold War, Jenny and her family moved to Moscow, where she attended the Anglo-American School, began to learn Russian and crossed paths with all manner of diplomats, spooks and dissidents. Natan Sharansky, the Soviet refusenik and human-rights activist, taught her how to play chess. When she was 9 years old, the KGB arrested her father on trumped-up espionage charges to silence his news coverage. After an international outcry, he was released several days later and the whole family was kicked out of the U.S.S.R.

Jenny spent the rest of her childhood in more tranquil suburban Maryland, where she graduated from Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School in 1985. She attended her parents' alma mater, Washington University, and graduated with a degree in history. For her senior honors thesis, she delved into the history of the St. Louis chapter of the Communist Party USA, which had been led in part by her maternal grandparents. True to form, Jenny cajoled them to give her legal authorization to obtain their FBI files under the Freedom of Information Act.

She decided to become a reporter like her father and obtained a master's degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1990. While living in New York, she discovered communities of homeless people living in the subway tunnels under Manhattan. She spent a year wandering the tunnels and building people's trust so she could tell their stories. In 1993, her seminal work, "The Mole People: Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City," was published by Chicago Review Press to rave reviews. Jim Dwyer, a New York Times columnist, called it "a book that is honest and above all, loving, to people who are nobody's friends. We should all do so well."

Shortly before the book's publication, Jenny moved south to become a reporter for the News & Observer in Raleigh, NC. Right away, she made an indelible impression on another young reporter, Craig Whitlock, who became hopelessly smitten with her shy smile and innocent, hazel-brown eyes. After a year of plotting and scheming, he finally persuaded her to go out with him to a concert at the Bull Durham Blues Festival. They married in 1996.

By then, Jenny had left the newspaper business to devote herself to writing books. In 1997, after two years of research and reporting, she published "Orphans of the Living: Stories of America's Children in Foster Care" (Simon & Schuster). Once again, Jenny won the trust of five children and young adults who had grown up in orphanages and foster homes across the country, enabling her to tell their stories in their own voices – and to shine a light on how society was struggling to care for children from shattered families. The New York Times Book Review was full of praise, saying: "The strength…lies in her empathy with her subjects, her willingness to let them have their say and the evident determination not to edit out what makes them so difficult to help."

In 1998, Jenny and Craig moved from Raleigh to Silver Spring, Maryland so Craig could take a job at the Washington Post. Two years later came the best thing that ever happened to them: the birth of their son, John Kyle Whitlock.

While pregnant with Kyle, Jenny reported and wrote her third book, "What Happened to Johnnie Jordan? The Story of a Child Turning Violent." Published in 2002 by Simon & Schuster, it profiled a 14-year-old boy in Ohio who had inexplicably murdered his elderly foster mother, one of the few people in his life who had shown him kindness and love. Jenny repeatedly interviewed the boy in prison, obtained his confidential social-services files with his permission, and pieced together how his life had spiraled out of control. She made frequent television appearances about her books and was interviewed by, among others, Jerry Springer, Katie Couric and Rosie O'Donnell.

In 2004, Jenny and her family moved to Germany, where Craig served as the Berlin bureau chief for the Washington Post. For the next six years, she was in her element, navigating foreign cultures and traveling all over Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. She befriended Ukrainian gangsters, German artists, British diplomats, Polish prostitutes, anyone with a fascinating story to tell. When Craig was assigned to cover fighting in Israel and Gaza, Jenny insisted on coming along – and bringing Kyle with her.

Her son was the light of her life; nothing made her prouder. She loved showing him how to transition back to American life when the family returned to Maryland in 2010, and reveled watching him grow into a spectacular young man during his high-school and college years. Family meant everything to her, especially her parents; her sister, Jessica; her brother, John; and her nieces and nephews.

Jenny's insatiable curiosity manifested itself in eclectic ways. She was an avid reader of scholarly biographies and the New York Review of Books, but she also relished Spanish soap operas, gossip magazines and a good pulp fiction novel. On Sunday evenings, she was a devoted listener of the Big Broadcast on WAMU-FM, featuring vintage radio classics like Johnny Dollar and Gunsmoke.

Jennifer Toth is survived by her husband, Craig Whitlock, of Silver Spring, MD; her son, John Kyle Whitlock, of Arlington, VA.; her mother, Paula Toth, of Chevy Chase, MD; her sister, Jessica Toth, of Cardiff, CA; her brother, John Toth, of Chevy Chase, MD; and 11 nieces and nephews.

The family will hold a private memorial service. In lieu of flowers, the family encourages donations in Jennifer's name to any appropriate charity.