He is best known for several of his books, including A Beautiful Child, which told the tragic story of "Sharon Marshall" and her "father" Franklin Delano Floyd, and the sequel Finding Sharon, which is a memoir about his ten-year effort, along with the FBI and National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, to find Sharon's true identity. The books were adapted by Netflix for the film Girl in the Picture, which was released in 2022 and became a global phenomenon earning the #1 movie ranking worldwide. The film was directed by Skye Borgman, with Birkbeck serving as executive producer.
His debut work of fiction, The Wicked, was published in 2025.
Birkbeck during his career has written magazine pieces and features for a variety of publications, covering the aftermath of the 2004 Super Bowl riots for Boston Magazine, the cross-country pursuit of a civil rights worker by white supremacists for the Philadelphia Inquirer, features for The New York Times, the Robert Durst investigation for Reader's Digest and People magazine, the U.S. Secret Service and FBI investigation of baseball legend Denny McLain for Playboy, and others.
Career
Birkbeck worked as a newspaper reporter first at the Pocono Record, where he won an Investigative Reporters and Editors award for his series on housing fraud, and then at The Morning Call[2][3][4] he covered the federal courts in the Middle District of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Allentown and wrote investigative stories. His lengthy reporting from 2005 to 2010 on Pennsylvania's casino initiative exposed political corruption at the highest levels of state government, including then-Governor Ed Rendell and the state Supreme Court.[5] In 2009 Birkbeck was subpoenaed to testify before a special prosecutor appointed by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to investigate alleged leaks in the prosecution of a businessman with alleged mob ties who was awarded a license to operate a casino.[6] Birkbeck's reporting on the case served as the basis of his bestselling book The Quiet Don.
He also served as a correspondent for People magazine from 1998 to 2004 covering mostly crime and human interest stories including the 1999 death of John F. Kennedy Jr., and the Robert Durst investigation. His reporting on the Durst case led to the publication of his first book A Deadly Secret, which subsequently served as the roadmap for law enforcement in their pursuit of Durst. Following Durst's arrest in 2015, police found two copies of A Deadly Secret inside Durst's Houston condo.[7]
Birkbeck joined niche business publisher Harrison Scott Publications in Hoboken, N.J. in 2010. HSP was sold to Green Street in 2020.
Girl in the Picture debuted on Netflix on July 6, 2022, and is based on A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon. It was directed by Skye Borgman, with Birkbeck serving as executive producer.[8] A day after its release, it was Netflix's number one movie in the world, and remained there for several weeks.[9]
Birkbeck received an Investigative Reporters and Editors Award in San Francisco in 2002 for his groundbreaking stories on mortgage fraud in the U.S.[11] He wrote a multi-part investigative series A Price Too High in 2001 that exposed how home builders, appraisers, mortgage companies and major banks conspired to defraud thousands of homebuyers, mostly minorities from the New York area, and forced them into bankruptcy and foreclosure. His reporting spurred numerous state, local and federal investigations, as well as Congressional hearings. The New York Times followed up his reporting with a lengthy feature in April 2004.[12] Birkbeck and the Pocono Record were sued for libel by a home builder in 2003, and the case went to trial in Monroe County, Pa. in 2010 before a jury, which ruled in favor of Birkbeck and the newspaper.[13]
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