s&d: True Crime! books

good to know it's fairly minor inter-professional bickering?

i really don't know - ShariVari seems more informed than me

finally got a hold of Raven: The Untold Story of Rev Jim Jones & His People by Tim Reiterman

It should surprise zero ppl to learn that he was a weird, creepy dude even as a teenager.

oh and I got McGuinn's recent Manson bio too, yknow for laughs :/

i had to return that to the library, didn't finish. not because it was bad but because i read too many books at once and finish none. but i am bad at returning books to the library on time and i'm afraid to even look at my fines.

can i just quit my job, get a dog, and read true crime books all day

god yes. i wish it was an employable skill

half the time i borrow three books, read half of one & quietly return them all in shame

but true crime like this i usually gobble up, feel confident that these will get finished

i need to add that i live 2 blocks from the library and i used cold weather as an excuse to not return books. the first day it was warm i did it but it was like 6 weeks late!

bought a bow saw to remove one of those awful "trees of heaven" growing unwelcomely from the side of my planter box and was thinking of THE JINX and his bow saw. as i stood in line forever at the hardware store i imagined an awkward conversation with the cashier about whether she had seen the jinx. i did not mention it.

the adversary is amazing btw. very novel-like in the best way.

Cashier: "Don't throw the body parts in the lake, remember they'll float!" (laughs)

Harbl: (laughs) "I won't! Whaddya think this is for?!" (points to bag of quicklime) (shared laughter)

jfc this Jim Jones story

like i am barely an eighth of the way through this tome & he's already convinced a guy (who is an irl lawyer) to sign over parental rights to Jones for his newborn baby

high-up members of the temple routinely, like ALL the time, would go out at night & dig through other members' trash looking for dirt on them, or enter into their houses specifically for spying

and this is in the v early 70's!

a lot of it reminds me of scientology, but even crueller & machiavellian & much more isolating if that is even possible

it's crazy how many people gave *everything* they had to the Temple, with like, of months of joining.

66% (lol Kindle) through People Who Eat Darkness. That's a great book to read if you want to be furious at patriarchy and sexism and inept police.

otm

Just got this, a freebie at the library shop---has blurbs from Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia, which I'm told is good re the problems & dangers of female adolescence, also Harold Kushner, who wrote When Bad Things Happen To Good People, and many others (incl somebody in O Magazine)
(if the image is gone, it's The Sociopath Next Doorby Martha Stout, Ph.D)
http://taboojive.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/sociopath-next-door.png

I have that one but only made it a short way in before getting distracted by something else. Let us know your thoughts when you are done.

watched the staircase over the past week, and it blew me away. so well-made and (spoiler alert) cannot believe the jury vote at the end. i'm guessing a lot was missed out, and this semi-hysterical website seems to say as much: http://www.peterson-staircase.com/ my opinion on guilty/not guilty changed about a dozen times throughout it all. are there any more legit details about this to explain one way or the other? confidence of head defence guy at the end seemed so certain.

Where did you watch it?
A few things:
I LOVED The Jinx! I watched dr drew's HLN show the Monday after he was busted in New Orleans. In his medical opinion Durst clearly has a brain surgery scar and the gait of someone with Parkinson's . He also thinks he is schizophrenic and that the muttering in the bathroom may not have been a confession but rather him answering to a persecutory auditory hallucination. I don't know. I mean was that the case when he offed those people and hacked up the Galveston neighbor?

Secondly, a big THANK YOU to Carl for the rec list. Exactly what I needed,

Thirdly, have any of you listened to Dan Zupansky's True Murder podcast? He interviews a true crime author every week and gets into the details of the murders actions and psyche. It's pretty great. I used to listen all the time but then I was unemployed for 6 months a dropped out. Checking it again tonight I found an episode with Charles Graeber discussing 'The good nurse'. Can't wait to listen to it in my commute tomorrow. Here is the link if you're interested:
https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/true-murder-most-shocking/id393525078?mt=2&i=336202069

ooh cool thx sunny

Yeah, I've been looking for a new podcast and that sounds great, Sunny. Thanks! (Also: you're welcome!)

xps yeah his defence lawyer even offered to work his appeal for free, that's how confident he was in his innocence. also, the courtroom scene, when lawyer is rehearsing the night before and the old tech guy is totally ballsing everything up - cracked me up so much.

has anyone watched all the west memphis 3 docs?

ha yeah, that tech guy scene was hilarious. jaw dropping to see this multi-million dollar trial turn into farce, hours before the opening day. it was a slow starter, the first episode we were all shrug, so what. but the way new details opened out throughout the series, so great. ss, i downloaded a great quality torrent from KAT. i'd downloaded all the files from youtube before they were taken down but that torrent is your best bet

justin3 (and anyone else who's seen it), did you finish the series thinking he was guilty or not? i changed opinion so many times it became a whirlwind but by the end i was on the side that he was innocent, but reading through that exposé site im guessin there was a lot of stuff left out

That about not really a confession because schizo w voices is fairly consistent with defense re cutting up neighbor, so might work again, esp if he makes plea deal, agrees to extended confinement x treatment, tho obv his theme song is "Don't Fence Me In."

Xp I still don't have a solid feeling either way!

justin3 (and anyone else who's seen it), did you finish the series thinking he was guilty or not? i changed opinion so many times it became a whirlwind but by the end i was on the side that he was innocent, but reading through that exposé site im guessin there was a lot of stuff left out

― NI, Friday, April 24, 2015 11:02 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I went back and forth 1,000,000 times, too, which is part of what I loved about the doc and why I always tell people to avoid reading anything about it before watching if at all possible.

As I told just1n3 over email, I've read enough true crime to know that if two of a man's wives die in the same way, he probably did it. But there's also enough there for reasonable doubt. I don't know. My favorite alternate theory out there is the one that says owls killed her. So I think it was probably owls.

The owls are not what they seem, etc.

I was going through the public library's available true crime ebooks and downloaded People Wasn't Made to Burn: A True Story of Housing, Race, and Murder in Chicago by Joe Allen. I'm only a few chapters in but so far so good (although the precipitating tragedy is very difficult to read about). It's a good book for people who want something more along the lines of The Skies Belong to Us, with lots of historical perspective leading up to a watershed moment. Also good for people interested in Chicago history, Black American history, the Great Migration, and housing justice.

i think i read that but i'm not sure. i know i read a book that dealt with a fire in a slum in chicago.

This was creepy.
https://medium.com/matter/have-you-ever-thought-about-killing-someone-9abedcc531ad

Got through about half of that, just seemed like tedious horde of details, for a gross-out tale told by the ol' yarn-spinnin' cowpoke, that kind of half-jokey tone.

hoard, that is.

Many xposts

I used to listen to that Dan Zupansky podcast---it has such creepy production values, like listening to Late night AM radio back in the 90s. And the guests are such grizzled oddballs with obsessive minds.

A 1997 Texas Monthly bank robbery story turned up on my feed and it's a good one:
http://www.texasmonthly.com/content/last-ride-polo-shirt-bandit

Bloodletters and Badmen!

Just finished watching the Staircase this weekend - and yeah like most people on this thread, I changed opinions a dozen time before starting to cheer for Peterson (loved the defense lawyer) by the end of the series. A lot of people online argue that a lot of stuff was left out and that things are not as ambiguous as the documentary make them out to be. Seen a lot of recommendations for "Written in Blood" by Diane Fanning for a more complete account of the case, so I might check that out.

I'm still dying for a definitive answer on this - I know it's wildly unlikely unless he decides to confess on his deathbed or whatever but nggggh

me too!!!

Owls did it.

Decided to work my way through the St. Martin's True Crime Classics, since the writing and research are better than in the average true crime book.

Am on Adrian Havill's "The Mother, the Son and the Socialite", was up late reading this, it's about the Kimes, whom I've always wanted to read about.

Not a book, but exorcised some demons listening to this:

itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/you-must-remember-this

Part of the "You Must Remember This" podcast.
Many hours of detailed Manson tales.

i like that podcast, her monty clift ep is pretty good

Thought this revive might have been for RIP Ann Rule.

almost done w/ http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61EaSiSMyvL._SL500_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-big,TopRight,35,-73_OU01_AA130_.jpg

is nicely structured & detailed esp considering dudes guilt is such a foregone conclusion

I flagged those multi-posts, god damn.

xp fyi this guy was writing to himself in an alien star wars language during his murder trial

yeah i was v bummed about her passing

she was my first entry into true crime: a paperback copy of small sacrifices when I was 12 or 13

i said on fb her best quality was her ability to tell the victim's story, make them the focus & bring them to life. especially the Green Rivers Running Red book - she changed the tone of the story & gave the girls a voice

her book about knowing ted bundy, ''the stranger beside me', is really excellent

yeah, really good

Yeah, I read her Bundy book too, a true crime classic.

I really liked the "You Must Remember This" podcast too! A friend recommended it to me because we had read Helter Skelter concurrently in middle school. I had to have a parent/teacher conference because I brought some other Manson-related book to class and left it in the cubby by accident.

Anyway, being that I read it in middle school, it completely washed over me that a couple of the victims were high on MDA on the night of the Tate murders. I thought about bringing that factoid up when ecstasy was revived last week, but thought better of it.