Police Line Do (Not) Cross: True Crime TV & Podcasts

Instead of clogging up the book thread with my nonsense i thought i’d start a separate thread

A few to start

Manhunt: Unabomber - Discovery ID’s “event” series. Kinda mindhunter lite - nostalgic setting with big glasses, cornball dialogue & situations but the process aspect is done pretty well & i dont hate it?
Still feel very ambivalent/conflicted that the show hinges on his “genius” & “troubled background” and hits it SO hard when so little of the show is about the victims... who make up, what, 20 years of the story before the true hunt for irl Ted even began? I know you cant do both but god when can these families ever stop hearing about fuckface Ted’s brilliant mind

Heaven’s Gate podcast: Glynn Wallace’s new series about the Heaven’s Gate cult, from his unique perspective as a former cult member himself
Enjoying this for the understanding he brings, highly recommend

Dirty John - 6 episodes & done, crazy con man story & for a nice change ***told professionally***

Accused podcast has a new season - a few eps in & it’s pretty interesting. I really enjoy their reporting, I hope this series runs for a long time, they do a+ work

I’d really like the woman who reported on In The Dark to do another series

Have you listened to Trace? I really want to hear updates on the new evidence

I’m still listening to Hollywood and Crime - I wonder if they’ll address the new book that claims Leslie Dillon was the Black Dahlia Killer (I just listened to the Dillion ep a couple days ago)

Black Hands, the NZ podcast about the Bain Family Murders was pretty interesting - I didn’t have a real opinion on his guilt beforehand but now I do

theres a show on Maura murray's disappearance in new Hampshire on some tv channel rn that im watching, its ok

ooh i hadnt heard about that Black Hands/Bain Family Podcast ... gonna check that out

i havent heard Trace -is it good?

Trace is good - but it’s very short and unresolved. It seems like they’ll come back with more eps when there’s new updates.

I have circled back to Last Podhouse on the Left again - i didnt like it the first time but it’s ok this tome around. The comedy/tone is still very reddity but they do pretty decent research ... also they have a new 4-parter abt Robert Pickton & my curiosity got the better of me

Bloody Murder. I know I've spammed it a bit, but it really is good! True crime with a comedy bent and lots of swearing and australianness.

They did Roger Rogerson a few weeks back, which was a popular one.

That was a good episode! Good fun aussies

Theyre doing a Chopper special this week.... prob recording it as I type actually.

Uncle Chop Chop! good value

Really liking Cults so far - https://www.parcast.com/cults/

Never heard of the Ant Hills Kids and the crazy story about the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God in Uganda

ooh i have a few podcast recs

Atlanta Monster - almost like an oral history of the Atlanta Child Murders. so good. focuses a lot on the racial aspect of the case from people who grew up in Atlanta at the time, victims families, etc (race is, if anyone’s familar, a huge part, if not the whole part, of it)

Cold Case Files: pretty much the podcast of the show. All the classics from every episode.

Real Crime Profile - a former FBI profiler & a former Scotand Yard behavioural analyst talk about tv shows & current cases. they are right now doing a multi-episode deepdive into the Mindhunter netflix show - highly recommend if you were into Mindhunter. lots of great insights into real life profiling

and i just started bingeing the crap out of Hollywood & Crime (recommended upthread). Soooooo good.

gonna subscribe to Cults - that sounds like my ACTUAL entire wheelhouse

One more that I think I mentioned on the other thread... FBI Retired Case File Review - http://jerriwilliams.com/hello/podcast-2/
Retired FBI special agent (turned crime fiction author) interviews other retired FBI agents about their biggest cases.

(subscribed fo Cold Case Files and Real Crime Profile immediately)

Real Crime is good...Jim can be a bit overbearing at times but Laura balances him out

not to harp on but Hollywood & Crime is so well put-together, i’m really loving it

the amount of work they have put in on the Black Dahlia season alone, to bring in the related cases & reconcile all the different theories, my hat is well and truly off.

on the tv front-

i missed the first ep of the new Gianni Versace series, have it dvr’d. dont have high hopes but the OJ series was so much better than i expected so maybe it’ll surprise me

Jodi Arrias three-parter on Discovery ID- watched first ep & as always i fkng hate the production. ominous narration, corny reenactment & talking heads that say shit like SHE WAS A BLONDE BOMBSHELL. u_u

Another take on the In Cold Blood story.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/news/cold-blooded-new-doc-expands-on-in-cold-blood-w515648

Jeez,I never heard of this one before:
UPDATE Jan. 21 2018, 12:10 p.m. PT: Sources familiar with the investigation tell Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hansen cadaver dogs may be used at every known residence of the Turpin family.

Sheriff’s Department Also in Discussions to DNA Test All 13 Children to Determine Relation
https://crimewatchdaily.com/2018/01/18/article-2018-01-18-turpins-charged-with-torture-child-abuse-false-imprisonment/

yeah it’s awful. i think it could take a while before we know anything like the full story, but the fragments that are known are horrifying. i saw some other stories that suggest things were more “normal” 6 years ago, and that something may have triggered the current conditions. whatever the case, those poor fkn kids.

anyhoo not quite the thread for it? idk if there’s a general “terrible news stories” thread

Sorry, I meant I'd never heard of Crime Watch Daily with Chris Hanson, which I thought might fit this thread.

oh! i missed that. yeah i didn’t know he had another show!

Curtis Flowers has been tried six times for the same crime. For 21 years, Flowers has maintained his innocence. He's won appeal after appeal, but every time, the prosecutor just tries the case again. What does the evidence reveal? And how can the justice system ignore the prosecutor's record and keep Flowers on death row?

New season of In the Dark officially announced

Folks, when you have finished whatever it is you're watching/listening to now, go directly to Evil Genius on Netflix. It's a four-parter on the Erie, PA bank robbery by the guy with the neck bomb that went off. You know the story. I didn't know the back story and HFS the real world is far more messed up than you think.

perfect timing Elvis!

starting this now. I know a little of it from The Dollop episode, that’s the first I ever heard about it, but I’m interested to learn more.

There was a Wired story from 2010 that I vaguely remembered reading back then, but I'd just go direct to the series.

ok i’m done

wow

Marjorie is a PIECE of fucking WORK, my god. What a hideous woman.

We just watched this last week. I'd never heard of it before! And yeah that woman is genuinely disturbed. Mind you by the end I felt like dungarees guy was just as complicit... but we'll never really know.

Oh yeah Rothstein def seemed like he was just as awful.

Anyone have any thoughts about the push for an appeal for Scott Peterson? I don't know if this is the right thread for it. Some true crime fans I know are convinced he's innocent, for some reason.

fucked if I know why

i havent read anything in the affirmative so far that has convinced me it’s not him.

everyone is innocent iirc

Not a podcast, but in the theme of this thread I have a personal interest in the Michael Gargiulo trial that may start in a few weeks, given that his first alleged victim was a high school classmate of mine. Her murder happened 25 years ago this month, in the summer after our class's graduation. She was supposed to attend the college I headed to as well.

http://sprocket-trials.blogspot.com/2011/12/michael-gargiulo-quick-links.html

This lady here has been covering it, and I appreciate that since otherwise I would have no idea what was going on or why it's been a decade since his arrest.

(As it happens, the case of my high school classmate won't appear in this trial, but still...)

highly recommend Teacher’s Pet podcast. Australian joint about a 30+ years old cold case of a missing woman presumed murdered by her ex Rugby player husband, a PE teacher who was boning the 16 year old student he also hired as a babysitter. 2 eps in and I am hooked

Fucking hell

Teacher’s Pet got me hooked like nothing else.
I sat on my couch all day catching up on the series - never donw that before.
So many layers!! Highly recommend.

the endless recapping & dragging it out gets a bit exhausting but the investigative journalism is pretty good. lot less tailchasing than a lot of stories, but he has a lot of cooperation from a lot of different groups which def helps push the story along, and the publicity has been insane

just started listening. holy shit.

right?

i kinda want to listen to it again

have been talking with a friend back home aboutthe way friends & even the family remained so inanely *passive* after her disappearance, and how recognizably Australian that behavior is, and that it is actually much more passive-agressive than it seems on the surface of it.

the slang is glorious too - crime scene investigator says he was “spewin” about an outcome & i nearly died laughing

In the end, I liked Teacher's Pet but the last few episodes dragged on quite a bit with repetition. I'm still trying to reconcile that I'm actually sharing the planet with some of these horrible people.

New fave: Forensic Transmissions. 911 calls, confessions to the police, interrogations, trials - all presented straight up without interruption.

Binged Dr Death this week... holy crap, that was a ride and a half. Feels like an impostor story at first but it's WAY weirder.

I will say I'm not a huge fan of Wondery's tendency to overproduce their shows, with occasional dramatic re-enactments and such, it can veer into radio play territory which I don't always love.

But I can overlook it when the reporting and the story is that good. Warning, if you are grossed out by medical procedures this will give you the fuckin PHEAR jesus christ.

It deeply disturbed me! As if I don’t already completely mistrust the medical system in this country. Jesus.

I agree with you about the over production. Couldn’t get into the wonderland season or the Manson one at all.

The one thing that I loved about Dr Death was that the focus was this hideously grotesque awful doctor, but he was brought to justice by two AWESOME doctors who actually gave a shit. It was a great contrast.

But yeah, I've noped out of two Wondery shows within the first 5 minutes based on re-enactments alone.

i agree 100%. dr death is a great story but i'd like it better if it was not wondery. just listened to their aaron hernandez podcast, same.

:/

Just started listening to the Bear Brook podcast by NHPR - bodies found in 2 barrels in a New Hampshire forest 15 years apart, all within 300 feet of each other. Really good, solid reporting & not too many gimmicks. I’m only 2 eps in & i’m hooked.

have also subscribed to 2 more that sounded interesting
-Death in Ice Valley by BBC World Service about a Norwegian coldcase
-Breakdown by the Atlanta Constitution Journal about the murder trial of an Atlanta businessman

Bear Brook is a remarkable story.

Isn’t it just!? The way it intersects so many people’s lives, and time periods.

It makes me so sad that the orginal bodies haven’t been identified - that memorial service really got to me.

Also, of all the things, one I can’t stop thinking about is the whole idea of him killing one tiny daughter & keeping another alive. Like, he’s already clearly a fkn monster obv but that detail just fucks me up.

No love for Phoebe Judge's Criminal?

I used to like Truth & Justice, when it was about trying to undo wrongful convictions. Now, it's pretty much all about unsolved murders, and while I admired Bob Ruff's work on behalf of the wrongfully convicted, he's just not that good a host.

i enjoy Criminal! phoebe is great

I'm totally into Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Her voice is enchanting.

Brand new this week: “The Sunshine Place”: New podcast that goes deep into Synanon (produced by RDJ & his wife)

I’ve listened to the first 2 eps and am impressed by the amount of detail & it’s use of mainly primary sources. Long interviews with members & family members. Host is daughter of a Synanon couple.

Incldes interview w a 95 year old (!) survivor, who joined Synanon all the way back in 1960. Maybe the only one left from that time. She’s remarkable, and so lucid - she truly sounds like she’s about half that age irl.

Hoping for something in the general vicinity of the Heaven’s Gate series by Glynn Washington? Maybe that’s a big ask, idk. That for for me is still the only series about a cult that felt different, and interesting, and like it was saying something new. We’ll see.

Synanon has a lot of interesting & weird aspects to it & a lot of just straight bugfuck nuts stuff (snakes in the mail!) so i’m already intrigued by the inside stories from ppl who were in it rather than just “OMG THIS IS SO CRAZY” secondhand retellings of wikipedia articles

Just now getting around to “Black Bird” on Apple+

Only 3 eps in but really well done - wasn’t familiar w the true story but can def see why they picked it for adaptation, wild. Hauser is creepy as hell, so weird to see him like this - i mainly think of him as the home depot guy from Cobra Kai lol

I’ve always been a big fan of Lehane’s novels, his attention to detail & ear for dialogue def serves this show well

The investigative reporting series Reveal is rerunning its coverage of US rehab joints exploiting clients as free labor, with the story of Synanon as role model, with one link being a guy who was actually in Synanon, and later started Cenikor---late in interviews with a very early Synanoneer, he says he remembers the Cenikor cowboy, Luke, but dies before they can find out more. Lots of careful detail about the original organization and follow-ups, which are still with us as an industry, despite some corporate cock-ups (deaths etc.)https://revealnews.org/american-rehab/

Lots of interviews, transcripts as well as podcasts:

So, like Synanon leader, Chuck Dederich said, experimental society. One thing about communal living, it means lots of intimate aspects of life are known by and influenced by the community. Since Phil brought up relationships, let’s talk about it. When Lynn met Phil for the first time, she was already going steady with another square inside Synanon but she caught Phil’s eye, they started talking, they had a leisurely meal in a Synanon dining room. They sat at the bar without any booze and Lynn started to get the feeling that she was into Phil, but before she could tell her boyfriend that she wanted to see someone else, she stepped into a game. One where other players had already seen her have this flirtatious meal with Phil, so they laid into her. It was the most gossipy parts of life institutionalized.

*nursery* days, that should be!

My Favorite Nurder

typos aside, this looks really interesting. I'll check it out.

I can’t decide if I like “Welcome To Chippendales” on hulu or not

kumail & murray are really good as banerjee & de noia
but it also feels way too long?
& tonally confused, like full musical numbers & comedy & idk idk

who killed robert wone? on peacock was p good

casefile has a new episode up today on Sherri Papini

not ashamed to admit i mashed “download” immediately
i am what i am

Didn’t realize until earlier today that HBO was about to start a four part documentary adaptation of Elon Green’s _Last Call_, easily one of the best books in the field I’ve read in a while precisely because it was the stories of those who died that were centered first. Pleased to say that the first episode sticks to that well plus adding further context from good and appropriate voices. Recommended.

Yeah, I also thought the book was great and am looking forward to watching the series.

i’ll def check it out! thx

Last Call is now complete to watch, and again, I really strongly suggest watching it. It's very well done and very moving (and infuriating).

Excellent interview here:

https://www.vulture.com/article/last-call-anthony-caronna-elon-green-interview.html

And again, I highly recommend the book.

Monday night, HBO aired the first of three installments in its documentary series Murder in Boston: Roots, Rage & Reckoning. Directed by Jason Hehir (who made The Last Dance), it's about the October 1989 murder of Carol Stuart. The murder was originally reported by her husband, Charles, as a carjacking by a Black assailant in which they had both been shot. She died, as did the baby she was carrying. By January, Charles' brother confessed that he had assisted Charles in murdering his wife and that Charles' own injury was essentially a misdirect; the carjacker never existed. In the intervening months, a manhunt had resulted in the police stopping, searching and harassing large numbers of Black men in Boston, one of whom they even arrested. Charles Stuart identified him as the — as it turns out — fictional murderer, then took his own life shortly after his brother gave him up to the police.

There is an obvious way this series could have gone: exacting detail on the Stuarts, their families, how beautiful Carol was, how it all went wrong — on other words, on Charles' decision to kill her and his brother's decision to turn him in. Instead, it wisely focuses not on the murder itself, but on the police investigation, both its origins and the deep scars it left. The bulk of the first installment is spent on the history of segregation and racism in Boston, with particular focus on the ugly protests against busing as a way to desegregate public schools. It's a bit of a salutary bait-and-switch, seeming like another true-crime story, but really taking this case and using it as only one example of much broader problems. The result is far more satisfying and substantial.

i want to watch this! - dont have hbo anymore but will def grab it

watching “Under The Bridge” on Hulu - based on the murder of Reena Virk, starring Lily Gladstone & Riley Keogh

it’s really good, does a nice job so far of centering Reena in the story so that it’s not just about the group that killed her.

but holy fuck it is a tough watch. triggers so many of my own lesser memories of my own teen years and bullying. and just all the desperate, terrible things you do to try to fit in with people who don’t even like you that much! ugh.

It was a good watch but I thought it was weird that they used some real names and added a lot of fictionalized content. Unless a story is truly based on actual events, I think it’s troubling to mix up the two things.

Did anyone watch the Sherri Papini doc?? WILD STUFF!
- at the start I thought it was gonna be kind of a junky/sensationalized waste of time but it was decently made
- I can’t believe I didn’t hear more about what happened with her getting arrested, when it happened
- the husband kind of surprised me. He comes off in the early police interviews as a bit of a dick and kind of sus but he appears to have changed quite a bit. He seems really traumatized by what happened.
- holy shit the whole muchausens by proxy was quite a shock. I’ve never heard about that. But also not a surprise I guess, as the further along the documentary gets the more apparent it is that Sherri could be a sociopath
- I thought it was fucked up that they had the kids faces in the doc. Like I know they’ll never be anonymous but it seemed really wrong to me to just put them out there like that. Those kids’ lives are permanently damaged. Also don’t think they should’ve shown footage of the boy freaking out and crying when Sherri eats the ghost pepper.

Sorry if it wasn’t clear, the first para is responding to veggirl

re the changed names, some of that is they couldnt use some of the real names b/c of legal reasons, separate trials and all kinds of mess

the main culprit has some kind of whizz bang defense lawyer so they cant even use her name

i havent watched the Pappini doc but the Casefile podcast did an episode on her a while back and while i knew the basics & that she’d faked it i was definitely surprised to learn the pathological extent of her deceptions

the boyfriend seemed like such a dopey smoothbrain to go along with all of her weird asks

Dusty’s daughter is on TikTok spilling all the goss about her mum. She sounds like a piece of shit.

A really sad story.

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/article/2024/aug/14/the-life-and-tragic-death-of-john-balson-how-a-true-producer-documented-his-own-rising-horror

Jesus that is absolutely devastating.

I’ve started watching Monsters: Lyle & Eric Mendendez Brothers Story - am only 1 episode in but am pleasantly surorised by depth of detail already, I feel like this may fall in line with the Versace series in “rare Ryan Murphy that is kinda good” but maybe not AS good as that one.

(fyi the Milli Vanilli needledrop at the memorial was not Murphy being cute: that really happened)

I’m interested enough to keep going, anyway.

i have just finished ep 5
which is heavy but good

- the long scene about the details of Eric’s sexual abuse was really well-acted by Cooper Koch. Lot of dialogue heavy lifting but it feels very real. when he starts defending his mom it brought up a lot of weird feelings for me w my own family shit, i actually had to go for a walk and decompress a little bit, like it got a little too real for me.

- BUT the very last like, 5 seconds of that episode, Eric is in fullcloseup, tearfully saying to the lawyer “i’ll never really know who I am” and he just stops and very slowly cuts eyes to her while the camera stays locked on him…. !!!!. like it kind of undercuts the whole scene and yr like “sociopath y/n”

that was a great touch.

ok i finished the series & it’s pretty decent? gives a few different angles on the case & doesn’t seem to lean super-heavy in either direction, feels more like a both things could be true version to me which is prob where i land anyway.
ie that they were entitled choads who were maybe also abused.

weirdest thing i learned is there is a whole subreddit dedicated to the brothers
and a lot of ppl are really in the bag for them just going free or whatever & i was like yikes ~homer gif reversing into the bushes~

anyway theres some good performances, Cooper Koch is pretty remarkable the way he shifts from vulnerable to menacing so quickly, often in a single scene. And Bardem of course excellent.

is there a more confounding piece of crime evidence than the jon benet ransom note? all the moreso that it has never been explained, debunked etc

New podcast starting on The Cotton Club murder as in the film. Having watched the film a couple of months back in a theatrical screening, figure this could be good.

The Dream interviews Terra Newell, the survivor of the attack depicted in the LA Times "Dirty John" series. Unsurprisingly, the LA Times and the entire true-crime entertainment complex comes off as complete garbage. I'm glad I never listened to the series...

https://podcasts.apple.com/mk/podcast/dirty-dirty-john/id1435743296?i=1000699105752

The first episode of The Yogurt Shop Murders on HBO last night was a promising start. I get a feeling it's as much a meditation on attempts to talk about the story as the story itself.

interested in seeing this

Following up but yeah, The Yogurt Shop Murders was very good, I thought; I won't go far as to say it was truly groundbreaking, since there's been high profile work about calling police interrogations and the like into question already, but I appreciated how it was a frayed, fraught narrative that went against the idea of 'closure' without using the word once, to my memory. Just this sense of layers upon layers of damage across time. The whole series can be streamed now, I'd recommend it.

Meantime I just watched Unknown Number: The High School Catfish on Netflix and Christ on a bike. Credit to the creative team, though: I guessed a few minutes in that it had be one of the parents, so when they featured all four of them initially soon after I thought "Oh, huh...a teacher maybe?" And then of course, things get revealed.

ive watched more than a dozen netflix tru-crime docs over the 3-4 months and my father the btk killer is i think the first one the police come out of well

(i guess they did catch him, thx to his super-weird credulity abt the floppy disc being untraceable)

anyway kerri rawson comes across as earnest, very damaged and very angry, damned if she speaks and broken if she hides away, holding it somewhat together except when she exidently isn't. very hard not to feel desparately sorry for her, even when she's said things -- as she has in the past -- that make you flinch a bit. commenting on her book on th true crime books thread ilxor eliza d. said it was heavily religious: the doc isn't at all (the fact of the local church communty is mentioned but faith doesn't feature as a topic).

the 3-parter on the 6 aug 2005 heist from banco central in brazil's fortaleza is both flawed and also terrific: R$160 million taken and they got into the vault via a v patiently built 100-yard tunnel from several streets away, where they'd set up a fake storefront for an artificial grass company

it's in portugeuse (which i find a nice language to listen to) & not always easy to follow, not least bcz the post-heist story gets pretty tangly: those who got away with the money (largest bank raid in brazil's history at the time, and possibly since) were immediately targeted for extortion, with at least one senior figure simply being executed by his kidnappers: and it turned out that while the property-crime team were just as patiently tracking them down, identifying them and rounding them up, the lads extorting them were often-times fellow cops who already knew who they were & decided it was time to hlep themselves

the extortion-by-cop got so bad that several of the heisters, when finally arrested by NON-crooked cops, were like "thank god i thought you'd never find me! slap the cuffs on and take me away, im safe now, ps the rest of the money's in a cellar hidden under the stove"

in fact the extortion-by-cop got so bad that the largest drugs gang launched a notorious series of extreme actions against the police & other security forces in may 12-14 2006 : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_São_Paulo_violence_outbreak (wikipedia entry doesnt link it to fortaleza banco central heist: the theory put forward in the doc is that the huge new amount of money now washing around crimworld was at a minimum very destabilising of the normal uneasy balance of power)

(this theory is not v well explained or explored IMO: probably it requires its own documentary)

anyway it's lots of very engaging interviews (plus a couple that are amusingly shy and stiff): several cops are anonymised & at least one wrong un (this too not explained: was this someone they hadn't yet caught? or interviewed in jail?) -- they could have gone into more depth abt the catching of the corrupt cops (e.g. none are named, unlike the entire burglary gang) and the aftermath of their being caught (assuming all opf them were). this aspect is a little bit moving-swiftly-on-hem-hem

the general conclusion is: heist? superb, ingenious, full marks! laundering? they just didnt think it through…

raoul moat: inside the mind of a killer

don't feel we got "inside the mind” of same: except maybe brief pain-empathy spasms for a man -- based on trasncripts of his DMs and scribbled messages -- mostly fully out of his brain on selfi-pitying rage (first destructive then self-destructive) -- his intention surely always basically suicide by cop, hence the very first shooting (he wrongly believed the boyf was a cop)

the big reveal has been his real dad emerged from total obscurity to discuss it all: and (not said out loud but implied) the possibility that gazza turning up (dealt with very brusquely) put the kibosh on any actual friends or lost relatives being allowed near to help talk him down (moat's self-diagnosis of his MH issues very much included never having a real dad as a better model) (of course the model he chose instead was roided & coked beefy gym-boy) (no offence to any ilxors this also describes)

doc delicately treads the line between "why did a nice smiling little red-heaed boy end up like this?" and "he was a worthless dangerous cowardly arsehole loser"

otherwise the main thing i learned was that this played out mainly in pleasant-looking suburbs and verdant bosky leafiness (in my minds eye during the legendary ilxor coverage he was instead lying out on some blasted heath of a moor) -- turns out it's only bleak up north mentally

(not to derail this thread, which has other fish to fry: but i feel that the moat story actually is that rare instance -- per discussion on the britpol thread -- when a letter from his real dad a few months after his 18th birthday might have made a difference?)

2 eps in to the new series on Peacock “Devil In Disguise: John Wayne Gacy” w Michael Chernus, Diego Luna & James Badge Dale

It’s pretty good so far - director aims to ultimately center the victims more than Gacy (that starts to be more evident in ep2), which is relatively unique for these things. has a mostly queer writers room, apparently they got the blessings from families of i think 5 of the victims idk

regardless, it’s a damn sight better than whatever the fuck Murphy’s doing w that Gein nonsense. (which i havent watched and maybe wont at all now)

GABRIEL Luna oops

i put this in the ART THIEVES thread bcz it's tonally very unlike most tru-crime: Art Thieves GO CRAZY!

(like the burglar never laid hands on anyone)

STOLEN: HEIST OF THE CENTURY (netflix, 90mins, 2025) -- abt the massive antwerp diamond robbery in 2003 -- has a very likeable vibe to it (plus a hilarious shock twist hard up against the closing credits)

the charm derives from their key interview: a participant in the heist tho not (he insists, the cops demur) its mastermind. he has done his time (six years), his loot (a lot of it) is presumably squirrelled away somewhere (tho he seems to be hinting that the mastermind, true name & whereabouts unknown, in fact made off with it all). he is from turin, which boasts a entire “school” (as the italian police call it) of dedicated safe-breakers: he knows what he's about and describes it all very matter-of-factly. when his version fails to accord with what the police believe happened, they basically say "he would say that, he never stops fibbing!"

the doc makers are happy to challenge both him and the cops in their versions and their perspective: this makes it a complex and interesting unveiling as they disagree. the cop view is that this heist was suberb in the planning and execution, sloppy to the point of being silly in the aftermath (just as we saw in the brazil heist discussed above), and here the participant does not disagree

at one point he's asked if he feels bad that ppl lost everything they had in their bank vaults and he says "no! everyone claims twice as much as they had on insurance!" -- and we cut to a victim angrily saying "no! it's stupid and vulgar to say this! we did NOT have insurance because we never thought we'd need it!" this isn't put to the participant but it's hard to imagine him being especially sympathetic

the final element that makes him so likeable is that he's just a massive wife guy: they were sweethearts in their teens, the day of the heist is the day after valentines's and he is getting grief from her for being in another country and not with her (she knows he's a bad kid but not about this heist). he grins and says "when she gets mad she's terrifying!" -- and then when it all goes pear-shaped she too is arrested and he finds this very upsetting and starts to cry.

(one of the cops also starts to try at one point, this is a very intense affair!)

anyway as you can perhaps tell i liked it

Two well structured and watchable docs with, at their centre, a mastermind who lives in a self-built tree-house, one in the wild woods outside seattle (HOW TO ROB A BANK, 2024), one out in the flatlands of argentina BANK ROBBERS: THE LAST GREAT HEIST, 2022): both evidently very bohemian, drawn to this life by a species of self-absorbed existentialist creativity.

The outcome of events mean we never meet the seattle mastermind: all get is extracts from his diary, which as selected paint him as a confused self-important emo twerp, despite being FIT AS FUCK PHYSICALLY (tall, slender, strong, super-handsome in a repulsively byronic kind of way), plus descriptions from his fond close friends, which cause him to land (to me) as ABSOLUTELY FUCKING INSUFFERABLE, the worst kind of seattle-formed bohemian type. (One of his companions — unclear exactly how crime-adjacent he was — is one-time drummer for the band LOVE = alban “snoopy” pfisterer)

The argentinians are also p insufferable, which their doc holds at bay by making an arty virtue, via faintly precious presentation. One of them, a professional Urugayan thief, has a very borges-villain feel to him: almost archetypal in his presence. Their mastermind is the centrepiece, an intense, poised, wildly pretentious artist (like literally a painter, with brushes & easels & everything) who conceives of his heist as a GREAT WORK OF ART = it must be something no one ever did before. He has great focus and a somewhat toxic & sinister charisma (perhaps unfairly I feel Momus would love him)!

And tbf in technical terms he kind of pulls this off as an art project? Combining the two types of bank robbery = one you walk in the the front with guns during opening hours, two you tunnel in over the weeked… via method one they ensure the cops out front are besieging them; at which point they scamper via method two through the basement and down the secret hole they dug into the sewers and away!

The law-guy side comes across p badly in most of the true-crime docs I watch: here it does a little better perhaps simply because the interviews stay lightly if firmly sceptical of the cops-eye-view? In the seattle doc the cops interviewed have contradictory versions of how they approached their task and two of them clearly greatly dislike one another (which is good fun). The seattle robbers stuck up many banks before it all went pear-shaped — and become more an more stressed, increasingly base their judgments on dreams getting steadily worse (one of them dreams that sharks bite his legs off while sea-swimming — is that good lads?)

They also psych themselves up before their one last job by watching HEAT (1995), which by its nature freaks them all out.

Anyway things end badly for both heists, tho the Argentinian blunder is much funnier — no one dies plus they failed to make proper allowance for a wife-guy’s wife. And there’s the massive twist at the end. Seattle ends a bit grimly — tho I wouldn’t say surprisingly, given what we know abt the tree-house mastermind.

ps the twist at the end of the argentinian doc is not massive the way the twist at the end of the antwerp doc was: it's more ironic than massive in fact

Discovered the podcast Park Predators last week and I have been bingeing it relentlessly. Brief, but well-researched, tales of murders/accidents/missing persons that take place in the great outdoors (podcast description says national parks, but some of them are state parks, municipal parks, etc.). The host's voice is really soothing, and so is the theme song.

ooh that sounds good

Wild Crime on Hulu is a pretty good true crime show about missing and murdered in national parks too