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.

yep

there’s still another unsolved death from 2015 that has rumored link to the older son Buster Maurdaugh - investigation recently reopened after originally being closed in 2016

That Murdaugh case is strange as fuck.

I’ve been looking for a new investigative journalism pod so that French one sounds good.

I’ve been enjoying Wicked Words, where the host interviews writers about a case they covered. I like the conversational style.

Oh duh - it’s a doc not a pod.

I read 'We Keep The Dead Close: A Murder at Harvard and a Half century of silence" by Becky Cooper, about the Jane Britton cold case from 1969

It's really good, and exhaustive in its search for details and connections. Cooper is a good writer, and puts an impressive amount of shoe leather into her own investigation.
The world of late 60's Harvard and the niche world of archaeology/anthropology becomes incredibly vivid and at times I found myself picturing Britton as an endearing real-life Franny Sinclair
But it also got me thinking about the effect that blogs and livejournal have had on true crime reporting, that is:
the trend of amateur investigations that ultimately intertwines with the inner life of the investigator, ruminations on where their own lives have ended up, diversions into real life relationships, breakups, etc.
On the one hand I like the personal angle when it's done well ... but as someone who still favors old-fashioned journalism over navel-gazing, I'm not sure how well the trend really serves true crime.
I'm not sure that it does.

Also there's some super snarky reviews on Goodreads that got my hackles up -- the case was solved with DNA in 2018. And quite a few reviewers they did not finish the book because "what's the point of even publishing the book if the case was solved in 2018". Which really annoyed me. The author didn't know when she started poking around in 2010 that it would be solved. The end result didn't negate any of her work. I don't believe it did, anyway. Because it was such a thorough excavation of Jane's world and the people she knew, and it shows the ways that a mysterious/unsolved death creates its own narrative. And if anything, the 'solution' raises more questions than it answered! Anyway.

Big recommendation for the Firebug podcast here. You may already know the story about the Glendale, CA FD arson investigator who was convicted of setting thousands of fires around California in the 80s and 90s (Joseph Wambaugh wrote a book about it. Ray Liotta played him in a HBO movie). It's an interesting and disturbing story and the podcast

Interview with Firebug's host here, but if you're unfamiliar with the story just dive into the podcast.
https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/greater-la/street-serial-arson-oc/firebug-points-of-origin-podcast

i havent started this yet but the Wambaugh book is excellent & v disturbing

I lived just up the street from that Ole's, but moved about a year before the fire.

oh wow :(

I think the fire hit the paint section and then really exploded, and the people killed were blocked by the flames from getting to the exit. I also think one or both of the employees that died were trying to save the grandmother and child.

when i lived in australia i worked w a guy at a commercial laundry who i swear to this day was an arsonist

he was a volunteer firefighter with an uncontrollable temper & zero social skills
he was never, ever on shift when there were fires even when he wasn’t on call (we had a lot of bushfires in our region, much like california). ppl who knew him said he was at at least two huge local fires *before* the crews had even arrived, and he lived the complete opposite direction. i personally saw him leave work a full hour before his shift was over & there was a fire that afternoon. unsurprsingly he got fired for fucking off early, but still… i always wondered

there was more to it than that

arsonists are so heinous to me & .. baffling in upsetting ways. the most awful combination of cowardice & malice

I'm sure this one will be coming to Dateline, 20/20, 48 Hours or a crime podcast soon, if not already being talked about.

This is a very 2022 crime. You got right wing paranoia with guns and the end of the world. A rich politician who has built a prepper doomsday bunker only leading it to be advertised in selling this crazy 6.5 million dollar house and end up getting his daughter killed in a shootout. World is a f'n weird place.

https://foxlexington.com/news/local/jordan-morgan-case-what-we-know-so-far/

not exactly true crime, but still

Molly Lambert (Night Call) has a new podcast that went up today - Heidi World: The Heidi Fleiss Story - also doubles as a history of Los Angeles during that time ie LA’s symbiotic relationship btw underworld + “over world” etc

it’s done in the style of some of the You Must Remember This episodes, with actors/podcasters/friends etc doing the voices of the people involved in the story - it’s pulling mainly from primary source material at the time so lots of direct quotes from all the main players.

Annie Hamilton does the voice of Fleiss - perfectly cast, gives a v good Heidi vibe

first ep’s a little clunky in its structure but i dont care, love that this story is being told

should be a good (cough) deep dive

Am two episodes into Mind Over Murder on HBOMax and it is really unique & well done

Examines a 1985 murder in a tiny town in Nebraska where 6 people were somehow charged & later exonerated … while the director also stages a community theater “documentary play” in the town, with the townfolk, based on the trial & interview transcripts etc

dunno where the heck its going but i like it

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