s&d: True Crime! books

it was really not similar, i just get a feeling from it that reminds me of the previous case. it was an estraged bf situation; he broke into his ex-gf's house and killed her parents and tried to kill her brother, she escaped. it just seems like a similar situation where she was the reason for the murders, which in this event gives cause for hope that she'd still be alive and being held.

it also gives me a slight vibe of that terrible case in Texas a few years ago where a 15 yr old girl recruited her bf and his friend to kill her family after her folks told her she had to stop seeing him. BUT it seems to be nothing like that, she's been ruled out as a suspect iirc. but this case does not seem random.

there's one a few people elsewhere online have referenced -- Jennifer Short in Virginia in 2002 https://www.virginiafirst.com/news/local-news/investigators-release-new-plea-for-help-in-short-family-murders/1489863006
Parents were shot, 9 year old Jennifer was kidnapped, and sadly her body was found a month later in North Carolina. They never caught the guy but the motive for the murders seemed purely as a means to kidnap the girl.

Podcast, not a book, but the BBC has a big new 8-part podcast about Waco/Koresh: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p06qc33m/episodes/player

ooh thx!

here's a surprise larceny crime ending to a viral crowdfunding story

https://gizmodo.com/couple-and-homeless-man-said-to-have-made-up-story-behi-1830460690

I was thinking the other day that there ought to be more True Fraud content. Fraud gets a lot of play in drama/adaptations like Can You Ever Forgive Me? or The Informant! but there's nobody starting a podcast empire based on random fraud casefiles

That would be cool. I'm interesting in learning more about, like, the proliferation of MLM schemes in 90s Russia.

see I didn't even know that was a thing, I'd eat it up

read that as "ILM schemes in 90s Russia" at first.

some good True Fraud episodes of The Dollop I guess

timely thread revive: i just finished To The Bridge by Nancy Rommelmann

I just started this today!

it seems a lot of the time that true crime only focuses on fraud if it results in a murder or two, like the fraud is merely the setup for the real juicy stuff.

and largely i think catfishing deceptions have replaced true fraud stories and maybe are what pull people in more, since those involve something that people consider a bit more insidious and cruel: not merely conning people out of money, but pretending to be someone else entirely and leaving your victim grasping for air at the end when they try to meet the real person.

im reading that 1 abt the austin yogurt shop murders "who killed these girls?"

its ok, i don't love the writing

just learned from it though that will sheff of okkervil river was inspired to write 'westfall', 1 of my fav songs tho i kindof forgot abt, when the 4 boys were arrested in 1999

the yogurt shop case reminds me a lot of this one, which occurred not far from where i lived and fucking terrified everyone. it was one of the more despicable crimes i'm familiar with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown's_Chicken_massacre

yeah they are both really terrifying

i think abt the Yogurt Shop case a lot, it really got to me having worked late night fast food shifts as a teen.

the Brown's Chicken case put me off working late nights during the summers while i was off at school, i was spooked. the sheer horror of the crime coupled with the terror of the unknown, just a crime like this occurring and the perpetrators evaporating into the night like that, and the presumption based on the location that they lived in the immediate area. which was in fact the case.

*while i was off school

well they did find Jayme Closs obviously!

haven't seen the details but it was apparently a carefully planned murder and kidnapping, and i'm sure some details will be kept on lockdown for the time being.

it seems like there has been a decent number of cases in recent years where women or children have been kidnapped and located alive months or even years later. it seems to be more cases than i remember occurring in previous decades. maybe it's just recency bias, idk.

So I just finished reading "Monster City: Murder, Music, and Mayhem in Nashville’s Dark Age" (which is really good) and seeing those two posts above about the Brown's Chicken massacre, apparently for quite a while investigators were sure it was committed by Paul Dennis Reid, who killed seven people in three similar robberies in Nashville.

never heard about Reid! guys like that are terrifying.

there's a certain vulnerability to being a late-night worker at a slightly remote location of a fast food joint or convenience store. the Brown's Chicken location was on a stretch of road going through Palatine, which late at night was not very busy. It was a standalone building sitting in the parking lot of a strip mall. All off by itself, everything else was closed.

And it was particularly singular because as far as anyone knows, the killers simply committed that one massacre just for the thrills and never did anything remotely similar again. They went on to live their lives are seemingly normal family men. Til one of their exes finally confessed to her spouse what she knew about that night, then the cops took some DNA from some half-eaten chicken left at the scene, and which they had very smartly preserved just in case, and they tied it to one of the guys.

Speaking of True Fraud, the saga of Miranda, among other names, went on for years, through the shadows of backstories of prominent men---this is quite a scroll-a-thon, but worth the effort: https://www.vanityfair.com/culture/1999/12/miranda-catfish-movie-199912

so my wife is toying with the idea of doing some research and writing a true-crime book about her dad, the J***** P3t3r referenced in this article: https://www.dropbox.com/s/bzn2gnnasoeuy8q/The_Gazette_Tue__Nov_11__1975_.jpg?dl=0

his life story (what we have been able to piece together anyway) is pretty insane. have to wait til the shutdown ends to see if she can get his FBI file.

that is nuts

I’m very interested in how the Closs story develops. I’m wondering if this is a case of this guy grooming a child, maybe online, and then brainwashing her to believe they’re meant to be together and it’s her parents keeping them apart etc etc.

I heard on the news that he worked with her parents for one day three years ago, then quit. Also that the police think he was hunting, trying to retrieve her, when they apprehended him.

The blandest-looking murderer-kidnapper yet, in his early 20s.

The fact that she escaped at all is huge. Brave girl.

Also thx for posting about Monster City, Eliza!
I have put it on my “read next” list.

Vaguely related, I had an Uber driver a couple of years back in Nashville, ex-cop who worked the downtown beat in the 80’s. He was very tight lipped for most of the ride but eventually hinted at some pretty dark stories while we talked & i started asking the right questions to show I was genuinely i interested. but I didn’t get to press him for details bc we were riding with a bunch of my idiotic coworkers who kept butting in to ask him for bullshit tourist suggestions. They all left the car saying “ugh that driver was a buzzkill” and i was like “you guys go and i’ll ride around in the car with Sgt Buzzkill til you’re done.”

Οὖτις, it took me longer than it should have to realise the photo of the screaming suspended child was nothing to do with the article you referenced on the same page. Fascinating stuff, though.

Haha I know, right? Just a human interest blurb/photo of a screaming kid lol

I wasn’t sure where to put this. Yesterday was the anniversary of this horrorshow - I had never heard of it & the local news report made me cry. seeing the file footage of those little kids is so heart-wrenching.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Elementary_School_shooting_(Stockton)

I remember when it happened. There was some hand-wringing about California leading in mass shootings and then then nothing was done as usual.

VG, after you read it, Google some of the cases because there were developments even after the book went to publication!

Can anyone recommend any books on street gangs / drug activity, especially ones written by people who got out of the business? I only have My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, which I haven't started yet. I always avoided this type of literature, because there have always been gangs where I've lived, and it hits too close to home, but lately I've become friendly with a couple of people who spent their youth selling drugs and so I'm more interested in "the life".

Thanks ahead of time.

I finally got around to reading Prophet’s Prey about Warren Jeffs. it was one of the rare times where I had to quit for mental health reasons. It’s thorough & well written but it’s SO heavy subject-matter wise & he is so thoroughly awful. Which I expected but I guess I wasn’t ready for the onslaught.
I mean, I was halfway through & there was even wholesale dog massacre to go along with all of the other horrors.

;_;

D:

you guys
Robert Kolker's Lost Girls
cannot recommend it enough. you gots to read this srsly
― difficult-difficult lemon-difficult (VegemiteGrrl)

About 50 pages in--still backstory, but building well.

a lot of it IS backstory, but to me that is the power of the narrative he built.

Very well written--sad. I just hope I can keep the five women differentiated; by the time the story returned to Melissa around page 60, I had to go back and skim the first chapter.

True crime-adjacent, but I just started last night reading Serial Killer's Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming by Kerri Rawson, daughter of BTK Killer Dennis Rader.

oh wow, let me know how it is!
i saw the 20/20 interview with her on tv a while back

I'm only about 60 pages in but really enjoying “The Trial of Lizzie Borden,” by Cara Robertson. It doesn't try to solve the crime, but it places the murder in the context of the social issues during the Gilded Age and includes lots of interesting stuff about the family and friends, much of which I don't remember reading about before. I've always been fascinated with LB because my grandmother lived just two streets up from the Borden house at the time of the murders (August 1892), when she was 2. She said her family used to visit the home before the crime.

Anyone read Claudia Rowe's The Spider and the Fly? A little overwritten at times, but the story--very much a Silence of the Lambs relationship between the writer and the killer--is compelling and sordid.

"the last stone" is good if you can handle detailed descriptions of sexual abuse/violence towards kids. it's very deeply researched.

The Kerri Rader Rawson book was . . . OK? A lot of it is religious testimony, which I expected given the title. But it also deals a lot of trauma, mourning, PTSD and other things in a way you don't normally get to read. And there are parts that are tough to read where she talks about her father being made to discuss his crimes in detail in court, and her putting together facts about their lives with where her father was and what he was doing at the time.

i am finally reading fatal vision. what an insane story! trying not to read anything else about it until i finish

Yeah, I never finished it. Can only take so much stabbing and mayhem.

They convicted the guy in the McStay murder case last week, announcing the penalty shortly. Either life w/o parole or death row. ultimately what probably nailed him was they pinged his phone to the location of the gravesite. whoops.

I just recently finished Norco '80, about the 1980 Norco, CA bank robbery/shootout that involved a 25-mile chase through Riverside and San Bernardino countries, 35 wrecked law enforcement vehicles and a dead state trooper. A fascinating read if for no other reason than a) the four perpetrators were dumb as hell, and b) their defense attorneys had pure brass balls.

Oh wow! Had no idea there wa a book about that