Bill Sammon was born and raised in Cleveland. Upon graduation from Miami University in 1982, he joined the News-Herald, a suburban daily near Cleveland, where he covered nuclear power and investigative projects. In 1985, he won more awards from the Associated Press Society of Ohio than any other reporter in the state. In 1990, after a two-year stint as spokesman for a billion-dollar utility, he joined the staff of the Plain Dealer in Cleveland. His stories of voter fraud at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and corruption in other governmental agencies led to a variety of federal and state investigations, and resulted in numerous criminal convictions.
 
In 1995, Bill moved overseas to cover the civil war in Bosnia for The Stars and Stripes. During the fall of Srebrenica - the worst massacre in Europe since World War II - he was the only journalist to locate and interview the American military officer who was secretly running a refugee camp for survivors streaming out of the killing fields. Six months later, when President Clinton and Congress authorized the deployment of U.S. forces, he covered the historic crossing of the Sava River, and he rolled with the troops into the snow-covered minefields of Bosnia. Over the next year, he chronicled the cessation of hostilities, stumbled across previously undiscovered mass graves, and traveled to the Hague for the opening of the first international war crimes trial in half a century.