s&d: True Crime! books

gahhhhh only episode 1 of Staircase is online

fuckers

I'll have to investigate getting the rest of the episodes when I get home tonight. Jerks

You can get the DVDs through Netflix. Add them. Move them to number one in your queue. And then ilx mail me as you watch it because hearing people's theories and opinions about the case develop as the documentary progresses is one of my favorite things ever.

re: OJ, the paralegal students I'm teaching this term were asking me a heap of questions about the OJ trial and I had to admit that I didn't know too much about it. Perhaps I shall read that book.

i have no netflixes ;_;

but I have ways & means. this will happen imo

So there are like three books on the Snowtown/Bodies In Barrels murders. Can anyone recommend any of them?

carl agatha - bk is told very much from the defense team POV, if that helps or hinders, tho Simpson later tried to sue Schiller:

http://www.gba-law.com/press/oj-brills-content/

Happy Like Murderers, about Fred and Rose West, are v good, intensely miserable.
― woof, Tuesday, October 23, 2012 2:45 PM (3 months ago)

u were not kidding abt 'intensely miserable'. guh. brb, need 2 look @ some kitten blogs or w/e

Homicide by David Simon (I know, kind of obvious)
Bad: The Autobiography of James Carr
Marching Powder: A True Story of Friendship, Cocaine, and South America's Strangest Jail by Thomas McFadden
Gomorrah by Roberto Saviano
The Hot House: Life Inside Leavenworth Prison by Pete Earley
Now the Hell Will Start: One Soldier's Flight from the Greatest Manhunt of World War II by Brendan Koerner

i'm reading "wilderness of error" by errol morris. it's a weird book - obsessively detailed to the point of being boring sometimes, really short chapters with little cute illustrations at the start of each - but, without knowing too much else about the jeffery macdonald case, i think it makes a very strong case for macdonald's innocence or at least that he shouldn't have been convicted based on the evidence

Patton Oswalt was tweeting about this a few months ago - his wife is a True Crime writer who has taken exception to the book (I haven't read this, because I still want to read the book): http://www.truecrimediary.com/index.cfm?page=cases&id=186

I don't know why I capitalized "True Crime"

otm, her blog is fascinating.

that's interesting but she hadn't read morris' book at the time of writing that post - in the book, he addresses some of the "telling details" she thinks point the finger at macdonald's guilt

I am never going to be able to remember what it was I read/saw/heard... oh god, was it maybe on Radiolab??? (to quote n/a: ugh radiolab ugh) but whatever it was, it really laid into Errol Morris's logic re: that book.

God, nominate that for the least useful comment ever.

but, without knowing too much else about the jeffery macdonald case, i think it makes a very strong case for macdonald's innocence or at least that he shouldn't have been convicted based on the evidence

HE TOTALLY DID IT. I'm sorry, but I get a little crazy about this case.

This is a great article that discusses the case in depth and also goes into the Morris book: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/since-1979-brian-murtagh-has-fought-to-keep-convicted-murderer-jeffrey-macdonald-in-prison/2012/12/05/3c8bc1c6-2da8-11e2-89d4-040c9330702a_story.html

yeah i know its been criticized and i don't know a ton about the case but he did interview a lot of people involved in the case who had serious questions/issues with how things were done. also it's just weird that errol morris wrote a true crime book.

I need to read the Morris book to see how he addresses these things, but my understanding was always that the blood/hair evidence (with every family member having a different blood type), the perfectly circular puncture wounds in MacDonald's pajama top, and his lack of serious injury were kinda evidential slam dunks.

It bothered me that Morris admitted in the article that he left out facts that didn't support his idea that MacDonald was innocent.

These paragraphs indicate to me that Morris is trying to get away with an awful lot of handwaving and speculation, far beyond the idea of "reasonable doubt":

“A Wilderness of Error” doesn’t dwell long on the blood evidence. Citing shoddy detective work — much of the initial police work was, indeed, sloppy — Errol Morris basically dismisses all of it as tainted. Outside the courthouse in Wilmington, he tells a camera crew that he doesn’t see “a shred of evidence” suggesting MacDonald’s guilt.

It was an odd choice of language, considering. Shreds of MacDonald’s torn pajama top were central to the case against him: Broken pajama threads were not found in places they should have been if his story were true — near the sofa on which he was allegedly attacked, for example — but were found in places they should not have been, such as beneath Colette’s body.

And then there was Murtagh’s smoking gun — his big triumph at trial.

McDonald had told police that after he woke up, he put his pajama top on Colette’s chest. Forensics showed that 21 ice pick holes in Colette’s body lined up perfectly with 48 holes in Jeffrey MacDonald’s pajama top, when the pajama top was folded a certain way so that some punctures went through more than one layer of fabric. Murtagh argued that the only explanation for this was that MacDonald had delivered those blows himself to a dead or dying Colette. The jury bought it. But “A Wilderness of Error” finds this preposterous — the prosecution never established that this was the only way the pajama could have been folded to get that pattern of holes, Morris argues; conceivably, you could manipulate any piece of cloth into innumerable shapes that would produce the same pattern.

I caught up with Morris during a break in the hearing, and told him that I thought he was wrong: I described an experiment I had done, in which I used two sheets of paper and a dart. I folded the upper sheet on itself, irregularly, like the pajama top, and then stabbed through it, counting carefully so as to make exactly 21 holes in the lower sheet but 48 in the upper.

Then I tried to fold the upper piece of paper in a different way, so that all the holes still lined up. It becomes obvious almost immediately that you just can’t do it. Each change you make radically alters the relationship of one puncture hole to all the others.

Morris listened, nodded.

“That remains on my mind,” he said.

Morris said he’d suspected that might be true and worried about it a little, but then decided it didn’t matter, because even if it seems “nonsensical” that the holes in Jeffrey’s pajama top align with the holes in Colette’s body through mere coincidence, the alternative is equally nonsensical: That Jeffrey MacDonald, while trying to get away with a murder, would be stupid enough to stab his wife through his own garment. Think about that, he urged me.

good article, Nicole, thanks

morris mainly focuses on the crime scene/evidence being poorly processed/tampered with and unfair practices by the prosecution and the judge in the trial as the main reasons why macdonald was falsely convicted. he also goes after the in-laws (who originally supported macdonald and then turned against him) pretty hardcore, especially the father-in-law, implying he was drunk and henpecked and obsessive.

It bothered me that Morris admitted in the article that he left out facts that didn't support his idea that MacDonald was innocent.

― Ulna (Nicole), Wednesday, February 20, 2013 12:48 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ironically (or not?) this fits in with his overall theme in the book about narratives - he thinks it was not the evidence that convicted macdonald but that the narrative that he was guilty was easier for people to process

again, not supporting morris' theories here - i don't know much about it. i was thinking about also reading fatal vision and the journalist and the murderer.

xxp I mean, if you're seriously arguing, "What's more likely, that this man put his pajama top on top of his wife and stabbed her repeatedly through it; or that an effectively impossible miracle of topography took place? I'd say the latter!" you may not be making the best case in the world.

gahhhhh only episode 1 of Staircase is online

fuckers

I'll have to investigate getting the rest of the episodes when I get home tonight. Jerks

fwiw there's a good torrent out there, I just downloaded all eight parts and a load of dvd extras in less than 2 hours

ooh thanx!

I watched that first to on youtube and initially thought it was a reenactment - that dude is the fakiest-faker, so insincere - really interested to see the rest of it now.

Malcolm Gladwell takes down FBI profiling: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/11/12/071112fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

man, i really hate that smartypants dude >:(
(for no rational reason, surprise surprise)

fiiiiiiiiiiiine

I'll read it

He's a smug fuck and I think that article is too short to authoritatively reach his conclusion BUT he's making some interesting points & I would like to read something more in depth that takes the same critical approach to profiling.

a friend put me onto a 2011 Australian mini series 'Killing Time' starring David Wenham - it's on Hulu Plus. Omg highly recommend. am kind of obsessed with Aussie underworld crime, so this is totally my ballpark.

It's based on the true story of 80's Melbourne underworld lawyer Andrew Fraser (mad murdering bastard Dennis Allen was one of his most famous clients, as well as the Morans, even Alan Bond) - he's still alive today, served time for cocaine smuggling and ended up informing on a notorious murderer to get his sentence reduced. Shaaaady character if there ever was one.

less soapy than Underbelly, well worth a look. Oh and script was edited by Ian David, who did my other favorite 'Blue Murder'. You want an eyebrow raiser of a true story, check that one out too.

VG can u recommend me the best book on the Snowtown murders?

that's a black spot in my aussie true crime ocd --- I haven't read a thing. Sorry, i've failed u :(

I just noticed the convo about MacDonald from a couple months ago. So here's a weird thing, my dad's best friend went to HS with MacDonald and they were best friends. At one point he dated Collette (iirc that was MacDonald's wife's name) and JM dated the girl my dad's best friend would later marry. Anyway, this man still to this day raises money for JM defense funds and swears up and down he's innocent.

xpost there are 3 books about it and all three of them look like they could be either great or garbage. The movie kicked my fucking ass a couple of months ago so I wanted to do some follow-up...

i read a shitty book about columbine and it made me feel awful especially as i was reading it during the boston marathon bombing stuff. now i'm reading "in cold blood" which is way better obv.

I just finished (like, yesterday) Dave Cullen's book on Columbine which I thought was excellent: patient, lucid, cutting, and non-hysterical. Was that the one you hated?

yeah. i thought it did a good job of analyzing dylan and eric but (gonna sound like a creep here) thought he went a little overboard on the emotional wreckage. i shouldn't have called it a shitty book, it just made me feel shitty.

oh it made me feel shitty too!

Miami New Times is re-featuring their original three part story that became the basis of the Pain & Gain movie. Bonkers story worth reading even if you're not interested in the movie.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/specialReports/pain-and-gain-from-new-times-story-to-michael-bay-film-1890864/

!! ooh yay I can't wait to read this.

Dateline is doing an update on the Michael Peterson case. Let me take this time to once again plug The Staircase and encourage those of you who might want to watch it to avoid this Dateline because The Staircase is as amazing as a mystery as it is as a true crime documentary. But if you've already seen The Staircase, Dateline!

Man, Dateline is hilarious for the cuts to the overly made-up interviewers nodding sagely.

I always think of Bill Hader's Keith Morrison impression.

going through a withdrawal of new 48 Hours Mystery episodes.

This is the second time this week we have watched Dateline.

Anybody read "The Monster of Florence" by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi? I thought it was amazing

this is not a book obv but the recent "this american life" episode "dr. gilmer and mr. hyde" is relevant to the interests of the people in this thread

ooh thx!

Oh yeah, that was a good one.

listening now!

god bless north carolina for their richness of local accents and expressions <3

:(