s&d: True Crime! books

Finished this a couple months ago: http://www.amazon.com/Darker-than-Night-Homicide-18-Year/dp/0312936761

Any good? Looks interesting

VG, I hadn't read much at all about Jonestown and figured it would be a relatively safe ep to listen to...no 911 tapes etc. WRONG.

;_; (hug)

I recently watched The Sacrement, which is a horror movie in which three Vice reporters (LOL) get involved in a People's Temple-style cult, with a People's Temple style resolution and I thought it would be fiiiiinnnneee because I'm so familiar with the story and I was not particularly attached to the Vice reporters as characters but it was really tough to watch.

I can't remember which documentary about Jim Jones it was but there was one where they interviewed one of the survivors and it was basically impossible to get through without stopping to go get some fresh air. It's such a brutal, brutal story. Also: children.

Jesus Christ Sword and Scale is incredible and hard

Carl, yes, the children dying in those tapes is what got me. Note to self: never listen to audio of children dying ever again.

People's Temple is just bad bad bad ... In the book there's detail of the last hours of Jones' right hand Sharon Amos who upon hearing that shit was going down murdered two of her 3 kids. Then her oldest daughter helped Amos take her own life, & then the daughter killed herself ---all while the ex husband was waiting at the airport hoping to get the kids to safety

the levels of fuckedupness are endless

my husband's uncle & his family were good friends with Leo Ryan :/

ugh....so bad

Quite interesting to hear how fucked up Jones sounded at the end and how rational his internal critics were in comparison. Nothing like the persuasive charmer / passive followers story that usually gets told.

Yeah he was Elvis-levels of messed up at the end

I mean, more than normal. :/

The notion that the followers lined up & happily took the kool aid is the worst myth, aides were holding people down & syringing the kool aid into people's mouths (and children). It was much more murder than passive suicide, moreso than popular history assumes

i stopped listening at the part where the woman is rationally arguing for her right to ~live~... and all these voices are yelling at her.

Recentish podcast interview with a Jonestown survivor who was with the People's Temple early on: http://www.binnallofamerica.com/boaa052015.html - the host isn't great, but her story is intense. Ended up at the Jonestown Studies site at SDSU: http://jonestown.sdsu.edu

(always freaked out by the woman who jumps in saying that they all should be rejoicing and not crying)

Yeah. That got me too. Some of the members and Jones act downright annoyed when the parents couldn't keep their children, who were in the midst of being painfully and fatally poisoned, quiet or couldn't keep themselves from being upset. The tone is like 'Ugh! Must you ruin everything??'.

Yeah it's like Jones & the hardcore followers pushed past the wall of human responses into this weird bubble world of... I don't even know what that is

I am beyond sad at all of it & I choose to hold Jones responsible for it, but it is so hard to hear some of these people & feel forgiveness, to not just hate them

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/books/review/a-mothers-reckoning-by-sue-klebold.html?smid=tw-nytbooks&smtyp=cur&_r=0

just started reading this. pretty crazy!

I've been reading Dennis L. Breo's The Crime of the Century, about the Richard Speck murders. Would love to see a first-rate documentary that understands the murders as some kind of unimaginable leap into the future.

whoa harbl, that looks scary/good

added to my list

i think you'll like it. i got it from the library before but on the outside of the book it looks kind of boring (lol) but it's an easy read. also i'm from upstate ny and know some of the names/places in it so it's weird.

Yall know about Thomas McDade? published his key to all murderologies in 1961, under the title “The Annals of Murder: A Bibliography of Books and Pamphlets on American Murders from Colonial Times to 1900.” Amazing decription:
http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-indispensable-guide-to-early-american-murder Good slide show too, of illustrations from these pamphlets etc. he tracked down.

NY Mag on the Slender Man stabbing: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/08/slender-man-stabbing.html

― Elvis Telecom, Friday, 4 September 2015 07:33 (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Both girls being tried as adults.

http://nymag.com/thecut/2016/07/slender-man-stabbing-wisconsin-girls-to-be-tried-as-adults-appeals-court.html

I've been enjoying the Casefile podcast at work this week - similar to Sword And Scale but with a focus of Australian crimes for the most part. I may only have been half paying attention but it sounded like the alibi one of the suspects had for the 1986 Russell Street police station bombing was that he was at home making a fake bomb to threaten the same police station with, which was O_o.

I'm just finishing a long book about Jimmy Savile (In Plain Sight). I read it mainly because as an American I was v sketchy on who the fuck he even was, and pretty sketchy on the details of his enormities. Now I want to barf. Great book.

xpost ooh that podcast sounds interesting

stumbled on this at the library yesterday looks pretty fascinating
(i will admit that the Ann Rule blurb on the back cover helped seal the deal, I am easily swayed)

Mississippi Mud: Southern Justice and the Dixie Mafia https://www.amazon.com/dp/1439186650/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_9hOMxbYBJWA55

Would like to read last one covered here, The Wicked Boy, and the PD James True Crime collab mentioned as another in this vein:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/books/review/true-crime-addict-james-renner-and-more.html?em_pos=large&emc=edit_bk_20160729&nl=bookreview&nlid=65074007&_r=0

this is def worth checking, also incl. updates, like re the Chauncy's Chance saga:
http://gofraudme.com/

not a book, but a great piece of true crime reporting:

http://www.gq.com/story/the-uber-killer

Just finished David Kushner's "Alligator Candy" memoirs about his 11yo brother's murder

Heartbreaking, tragic & awful but strangely beautiful

A+

sorry for NY Post link - it was the one the publisher tweeted - but there's a new thing coming from Knopf about a quadruple murder at a yogurt shop in '91 and it sounsd pretty amazing

http://nypost.com/2016/10/07/25-years-later-killer-behind-gruesome-yogurt-shop-murders-is-still-out-there/

you had me at yogurt shop in '91

Is it the one in Texas? Ah yes it is.

There was a podcast about this recently but idk if it shed much light:

http://www.stitcher.com/podcast/unblocked/in-sight/e/013-austin-yogurt-shop-murders-46389779

Remember this when it happened. Getting the book...

i think i heard about the 'In the dark' podcast, about the jacob wetterling case, through VG on facebook, and i just finished it today - HOLY SHIT what a total balls-up of an investigation. really thorough investigative reporting.

wait - to clarify, i meant a balls-up of a ~police~ investigation, not the reporter's investigation

yeah it's pretty jawdropping

i had no idea that sheriff departments have virtually no oversight, and that there isn't really any kind of proper/official liason between all law enforcement departments. and the clearance rates of so many counties!! 6% clearance of violent crimes?? that kind of blew my mind as well.

Holy shit I just listened to the MFM episode about Mary Vincent - what a hardcore hero! One of the craziest and worst stories I've ever heard.

yeah it's an incredible survival story

i am finally reading Ghettoside by Jill Leovy - i heard it was great but am now blown away by *how* great

I read Who Killed These Girls? finally a couple of weeks ago. So depressing. So similar to the West Memphis Three case, too, and with (predictably) the same results.

i haven't heard of that one
well-written?

Yeah -- it's the recent one about the yogurt shop murders mentioned above by JCLC. It's exceedingly well-written. The author herself is from Texas and was the mother of a son killed by a drunk driver who was never apprehended. She also wrote a book about Karla Faye Tucker I haven't read, but based on this one I'll probably pick it up.

She doesn't stick to a strict chronology or a deep dive into forensic evidence like a lot of true crime writers. It's a more novelistic approach that really works well.

cool! i'll add it to my list

MFM episodes are getting me through my work day. i'm glad i heard about it through vegemitegirl bc i don't think i would have stuck it out past the first episode - which seemed kind of annoying and boring and had shitty sound quality.

Yeah mad props to veg for hooking us up with MFM. Those ladies make me feel like my brain isn't so broken after all.

i've been listening the jacob wetterling podcast, it's really good. has anyone tried the boston strangler podcast they advertise ad nauseum on there?