rwgrab

I was on to Sean from the KL mission at the gala on, because he hid the photo of one of the people they were looking for. There's no reason for anybody to hide any of the pictures unless that person has inside information about who they're after. Otherwise, why do it? So for me (and apparently the final six), there was no real mystery in the finale. But hats off to the editors for making it seem like folks were suspecting other people!

Oof, this was like watching a whole hour of AITA on Reddit where the answer is "Yes!" for both of the people interviewed. So many things didn't ring true from either side. Mark's saying he "just happened to remember" the GPS trackers he'd put on the cars - oh you mean those ones you have to constantly charge to keep the battery from dying? That just happened to be recording his "wife's" location one day he thought to check? Gotcha. Charity having her ex-husband move into her old house instead of getting rid of the lease and also stealing a bunch of stuff from Mark's house after getting him out of town? Makes perfect sense. I don't think I need to watch a show that basically presents two unlikeable people who, even at their ages, aren't mature enough to have an adult relationship trying to hash out which one is more aggrieved. At least it made me appreciate my own marriage a little bit more 😁 I have to hand it to Charity, though. Getting alimony out of somebody after an annulment for a marriage that wasn't even legal to begin with? She's got her con down pretty well...

Heh, well ideally there'd be a more official label, but I think the priority is to make sure the CD gets marked if it ever held anything that was considered Secret. Folks on-base usually err on the side of caution with removeable media, so Sharpie is better than nothing!

Yeah, a few things about this story as presented didn't add up to a guilty verdict against Kit for me. I've done a fair amount of contract work for the military, and I've taken the IT training every year about various classified materials. So yes, it would be very serious to have taken something marked "Secret" (just a classification label, doesn't actually mean it contains "secrets") off-base. But I don't think that alone would be enough to bring about a court martial. I could definitely be wrong there, but just saying I'm not sure that Cal's testimony about finding the laptop, the CDs, and a photo he would have no full knowledge of would be damaging enough for Kit to kill over. I also agree with the poster that said that the son and aunt may have had a hand in some of the "evidence" that was recovered. Even Joan would have known that Kit's dog tags would have his full name on them, so I don't think she would have made such a mistake if she were trying to frame him. And oh, what a coincidence that as soon as they put up those security cameras at the old junk-filled home that nobody would bother robbing, it happens to capture the discovery of the shell casing on the porch that everybody missed!

Yes! Especially when the caramel macchiato had absolutely nothing to do with the actual murder itself. These shows always have to come up with visuals out of very limited material, but the re-enactment of the Starbucks drive-through and then transporting the delicious coffee beverage that most certainly didn't kill anybody had me wondering if Starbucks had paid for product placement 🙂

I understand that, but I think your DNA is part of your personal information, and for me there's no compelling reason to turn that over to law enforcement unless there's a good reason. If somebody has voluntarily shared their genetic material knowing the risks associated, then I understand that it's publicly available and can be used by the police. I just worry that people don't understand those risks when they submit their DNA online. And we can't really know what will happen with our DNA in this emerging field as of today. For me, this case isn't really a tale of when familial DNA searches saved the day. Yes, the outcome is extremely positive: the right guy was captured and the wrong guy was vindicated. That part I'm OK with, but this is really a failure of law enforcement for many years until Parabon got involved. So a young woman is murdered. They pick up this guy Chris because he happens to be a local friend of somebody who's committed a violent crime in Nevada. Think about how tenuous that connection is for a second. Then they bring that guy in who changes in story 7 times until finally confessing to avoid the gas chamber they illegally told him he'd receive if he didn't. And even through all the false stories he's fed them, the one thing that he said is the real guy who did it (because they already KNOW Chris's DNA doesn't match) is named "Mike something." And, while they're at it, they'll add a rape charge for Chris even though, again, his DNA was not found on the victim. Fast-forward years later to their decision to access the DNA of some guy who gave it to another company that was bought by Ancestry.com. That gives them a familial match, and what luck! He has a son named Mike (what are the chances???). Never mind that he's only been to Idaho like one time in his life and spends most of his time in Louisiana. They must be on to something! They spend all this time and resources accusing that guy who thank goodness is cleared. But they tell him it's definitely somebody in his family, so he can be super-suspicious of these fundamental relationships going forward. Finally Parabon comes in and gets to work. They work up a family tree, then the cops find the obscure obituary that leads them to an as-yet unknown family member who turns out to be a match. AND HE LIVED ACROSS THE STREET FROM THE VICTIM AT THE TIME IT HAPPENED! They couldn't have found this guy at the time? So I'm not really OK with the take-away of this episode being that cops used this amazing tool to solve a cold case. The DNA match to somebody else just took away all of their excuses for putting the wrong person behind bars 20 years ago.

My favorite part of the episode was Vicki in the Suburban sheepishly saying through tears "Kelly isn't welcome at my funeral!" Oh, Vicki, Kelly wasn't suggesting she wanted to or would bother to attend your funeral, but it's adorable that you think she cares that much.

Yeah, I have to say, I was a little surprised by that revelation at the end that the son is his mom's attorney of record and that he's fighting for her release. Maybe it's too damaging to shatter your family any further by turning your back on your mother after something like that. Like he has to convince himself that it just can't possibly be true. Because I think in this case anybody who looks at what's available has to at the very least conclude that his mother's story doesn't make any sense. If she didn't kill the father the night before pre-digestion, then the other options are: he wakes up to eat literally the same meal for breakfast, then crawls back into bed, then either shoots himself (and somebody else happens upon the scene and hides the gun in the garage??) or a unknown intruder comes in to shoot him in his sleep. What are the chances that any of those things happened? Pretty remote, I'd say. What's not in dispute is that Anne perpetrated this elaborate scheme to humiliate her husband with this affair madness (complete with other characters like Barb's daughter, fake "together again BBQ Barb and Bill 4Ever" invitations, and letters postmarked from AR). And I would think somebody who would do that has some sort of pathology that would have been present in other facets of her life. So who knows what her sons were subjected to growing up in that environment? Maybe Anne always has some explanation for how things aren't her fault, and that she's told that to Noah about this case as well. I wonder what Noah's motivation for participating in the show was. Surely he can't think that laying all the facts from the papers in THE BOX is going to convince anybody that this is some miscarriage of justice, can he?

Right, yeah. That was my takeaway: that had the original detective not just tried to pin it on the nearest minority figure he could find, then we could have gotten to the killer a lot sooner. I think this case was on Dateline or some other show at some point which had a bunch more information. Like that Keyona's apartment was right next to where the car was parked with Heather's body in the trunk, and then there was a picture on Keyona's Facebook of her wearing some Mickey Mouse gear. So from that and the fact that Heather was found in a Mickey Mouse t-shirt, that crappy detective just decided he was on to something there. When he could have, oh, I don't know...checked the location data available from Heather's phone to see that it pretty much drew a bulls-eye right on the trailer of her sketchy co-worker!! Then maybe they could have found the mattress he discarded at the end of that month or the floorboards he just so happened to replace right after Heather disappeared. It's a bummer that the story was told almost at Heather's expense rather than centering on her. But really I'm OK with that if it shows how terrible the detective and the sheriff were at their jobs. And I'm glad we got that other law enforcement officer there to tell us exactly what mistakes were made. Then still at the end we see that same awful detective polishing his Corvette and not at all understanding why he might apologize to Keyona. Contrast that with Keyona talking about losing her job when the police force came and cuffed her at work just to get her DNA (which didn't match the sample from under Heather's cuticles). That guy just doesn't get it and probably never will.

Yeah, seriously, so many holes! My favorite was when she said she didn't actually poison the coffee, but then she...delivered the coffee to her anyway? Just couldn't bear to see that grande caramel macchiato go to waste, but has no trouble cleaning up a bloody crime scene later on. Right!

I could believe that the baby was stillborn. If she had such a severe eating disorder, then I can't imagine the baby was getting all the nutrition it would need. But I think the bottom line is we just don't know one way or the other, so I think finding her not guilty was probably the right decision. I would have liked to have known more about the medical examiner's testimony. If she could not determine if the baby was ever alive outside of Skylar, why did she conclude that the baby died due to homicidal violence?

Hey, Laurel, you probably shouldn't give a talking head where you say "I came here to COMPETE!" on the same episode where you actively threw a challenge to make your team lose. Not a great look. I guess she didn't have much of a choice since she won't be on any more episodes this season! 🙂 Also, you may not want to try to excuse your bad sportsmanship by saying that somebody else started it. Laurel, you're in your 30s; it's time to learn how to be both a gracious winner and a gracious loser if you're going to seek out competitive situations. It looked to me like the confusion was that they had hung a GoPro on that post in the tree they both missed, so it wasn't immediately apparent that it was also supposed to hold a branch. Definitely an easy mistake to make, but while Ninja took the time to figure that out, Laurel starts screeching "NO!" when it's pointed out to her and insisting that she somehow deserves the win. Yeah, let's see how that works out for you.

Got some pretty interesting characters in "The Creek" from last Saturday. We've got: -The police officer who was shot exclusively in sherbet colored shirts (one lime, one orange) who described Je'Michael as "cool as a pickle". Um, almost there, buddy! -Bryce, the red herring suspect who tells cops how he "does a lot of illegal stuff" and "basically founded the creek" where people skipped school. I'm going to guess he smoked weed one time and considers himself a dangerous guy. -A sheriff's department that will spend what must be a good chunk of taxpayer money to LAND A HELICOPTER at the school of the main suspect (not the same high school the victim attended, mind you) on the suspect's lunch break just to try and rattle him in to confessing. No other reason, apparently. What a great use of resources that wound up doing exactly nothing. -A killer who is savvy enough to schedule text messages to give himself an alibi who then goes and dumps the body like 5 minutes from his house. Here's proof that some killers are smart and stupid at the same time -The murderer's mother who gets up in court and has the nerve to ask the victim's family for mercy right after her son has been convicted. Asking for forgiveness and healing I thought was very nice, but mercy might be a tall order at that particular moment.

Yeah, very strange. They did just seem to gloss over the fact that she lied to him on Valentine's Day after allowing him to plan a nice date for them. This season there's been a lot of rubbing the catfish's nose in his/her misdeeds, but I guess because she was at least who she said she was that was less important somehow. And it was great that we got footage of Trystyn driving without his seat belt on there at the end. At least he put it on eventually. Guess he really learned his lesson about safe driving!

Just watched the rerun of the Valerie McDaniel case (the veterinarian who, along with her boyfriend, conspired to have her ex-husband killed and then later committed suicide). I do appreciate 48 Hours interviewing friends of Valerie as a reminder that we shouldn't all be judged by our worst decisions. But I'm still not going to cut Valerie any slack for her part in what happened. The interviewees say there's no way she would have done this, it was all Leon's influence, etc. I'm not buying that. In the tapes with the supposed hitman, she says "he's trying to take away my daughter, what choice do I have?". Later during Leon's trial, we find out that what really happened was that her ex-husband had requested that their daughter not spend time with pending-charges-for-stalking Leon, and Valerie was violating that request for her own convenience. The solution to that is to discuss the request of your co-parent; not to have him killed so you can do whatever you want. Her ex-husband was no saint either, but I don't think it was unreasonable for him to be wary of his daughter's spending time with a person who had proven himself to be dangerous in domestic situations in the past. It's a shame that she chose to take her own life to spare herself from facing up to what she had done.

I had the exact same thought! The only eyewitness you have is one that says the car was parked there and somebody started walking north. So from that you go to the nearest apartment and just bother whoever you find in there instead? I know people who are smoking pot don't always make the best decisions, but parking the dead body out in front of your house would be fairly unlikely. And then that security footage from the vicinity of where the car was left shows a white SUV. And then this Omar guy has a picture on social media in a white SUV from 3 years ago. Seems like a pretty tenuous connection...and that's the BEST evidence you have to suggest that Omar was involved? Watching a jury evaluating that would have been pretty funny had there not been a woman's murder involved. Usually with Dateline's lionization of law enforcement, I thought it was going to turn out O'Connell was right despite the family's objections, but I'm glad they followed through and showed he was completely wrong. I would have applauded O'Connell's showing up on Dateline knowing he was in the wrong had his apology in court not so missed the mark in identifying where he went wrong in the investigation. No, you didn't try too hard, you didn't try hard enough, buddy!

Yeah, that was a tough one for me to swallow as well. So the younger daughter wakes up because her mom is upstairs screaming. Kerrie tells her "hey, let's go hang out in my car with the tailgate open". Then there's a thunk as the father climbs in to the back, they close the tailgate, and they're off. If my parent was screaming in my house, I'd want to know what was going on; I wouldn't just accept it and go for a 100 mile ride with my sister on an unplanned vay-cay. I can buy that the father hid in the trunk, but no way the younger daughter wouldn't have wanted an explanation as to what was going on and why her dad was there.

Ugh, just watched the Devil's Bathtub rerun. I do think all four of the defendants were in on the plot, but I can see how there would only be enough evidence against Laura and Colin for a murder conviction. Every time they showed Colin striding around like he owned the place, I was kind of hoping he'd trip and fall or something. He just seemed so smug for somebody who had participated in the murder of his own father. And sorry, fiance Chelsea, I'm not feeling any sympathy for you. So you saw the security footage of Colin buying a shovel, gloves, drain cleaner, and a tarp, and you THEN agree to marry this guy? It's time to pursue relationships with another person. You know, somebody who didn't just buy a whole bunch of items used in the murder of his own father. I sincerely hope she has moved on from this guy

Yes! This was my exact thought. Maybe the service isn't ready to roll out yet, but their big plan was to have it coincide with this episode. The branded boxes? The little Top Chef stationary for the recipe? It has to be a meal kit thing.

Yeah, I wish they'd gone into more detail here. It seems to me like they originally offered Jessie a deal because they needed one of them to testify against the other. I have to think that the potential fallout from that earlier decision by the court to throw out the military PD's questioning of Jessie made them think the trial against the boyfriend was going to be tough. I know it was reversed on appeal, but maybe the new prosecutor thought it might come up and weaken his case to the jury. It seemed like without that interview, they wouldn't have known to question the boyfriend in Colorado so quickly. Speaking of which...hey neighbor couple, next time you go to the police to tell them about some crazy drug scheme? Maybe mention that the widow has been living with another man the last few months while her husband has been away! Just a thought... Ha! That was my favorite part. "Oh, we're just friends. Sometimes he sleeps on the couch." But you bought a car together?? Yeah, I do that with my casual friends all the time!

Oh, totally agree with you! That black car thing was so silly for two reasons: 1) a car you don't recognize in the neighborhood could be there for approximately 5,000 different reasons and 2) they said the Rowlett PD "didn't follow up on it", as far as they could tell. Were they supposed to investigate every dark-colored car in the state of Texas or something? With a name like "The Last Defense", it doesn't surprise me that they're trying to cast doubt on the conviction, but you raise a good point that they're ignoring (or at least not highlighting) all the other evidence presented at trial that they couldn't find a way to refute.

I thought this was a pretty good "TV show investigates a cold case" kind of thing, but I do think it falls into some of the pitfalls that come with Monday morning quarterbacking an old trial like this. Presenting all theories with the same weight is what really got me in the last Darlie episode. When you don't have the firsthand account of the investigators to balance out all these other tangential sources (some who may have been at the trial, but others who just happen to be psychologists with zero connection to Darlie), it starts to feel skewed towards a skeptical perspective. That's easy to do in this case because we just don't have a ton of information to go off of. Did somebody chloroform Darlie while he killed her sons? Sure, it's possible in that the laws of physics allow for it...but realistically what are the chances that that happened with zero evidence to suggest it? Did some random attacker break in to the Routier home with no weapons even though he intended to kill whomever he found there? It's possible, but that's so exceedingly rare that you have to ask yourself if it's likely. Did some cross-contamination deposit the screen material on the knife in the kitchen, or did one of the parents do it? If this were a standardized test, I'd take choice D -- not enough information to solve. There are always going to be pieces that don't quite fit in any crime investigation. If you think she's guilty, the the sock is that thing you have to throw out. If you think she's innocent, then most of the evidence presented at trial has to be explained by investigator error. Neither way of looking at it is "wrong"; just different ways of interpreting what's being presented. By the same token, saying that there are pieces that don't fit on its own isn't really enough to say that anything went wrong here. The jury heard these forensic experts at trial, and they heard about the sock, and for them it was enough to convict. Sure, you can say they were totally against her for whatever reason, but I'm not willing to condemn them and say they didn't set that aside when coming up with a verdict. I really do think she deserves a new trial, only because the birthday party video strikes me as completely immaterial to whether she was guilty of a crime that happened 8 days prior. Good, solid show, though. I'm looking forward to the next case they tackle.

Yeah, I agree that the state made some missteps, but I could also see how the decision not to DNA test could have been made. Without any sign of an intruder or anything missing from the house, why would they have thought somebody else's DNA would be present? And would 2001 DNA testing have been sensitive enough to pick up anything other than blood the attacker would have had to have shed? Yes, it's too bad we don't have those results now and that the evidence wasn't well-preserved enough to test it now. I'm just saying I think the decision could have been made out of something other than incompetence or malice. But even with DNA results, I don't think we're ever going to know any more than we already do about what happened that night. My personal theory is that Kathleen confronted narcissist Michael Peterson about something (could have been something on his computer, could have been any number of things with this guy), he decides he'll "show her" and does something to precipitate her injuries and eventual death. But of course I can't prove any of that, aside from my observance that everything Michael Peterson seems to do/say is glib and insincere from the 911 call on through 13 hours of documentary footage. I agree with the general discussion on the podcast: The Staircase didn't need 3 more episodes of this except, I guess, to come full circle and complete the story. I just really didn't need to see any more of Michael Peterson's "woe is me" interviews, or really to hear any more of anybody from that family talking about how gosh-darn unfair the justice system is to them as affluent white folks.

Oof, that was a tough watch, but I'm so glad they both got clean and were building new, healthy patterns of supporting each other in sobriety. There's a lot of family baggage there for both of them, and I was so glad the family members listened to Jeff Double-V when he told them to take off so they could let cooler heads prevail. I can't even imagine how Brad must have felt to have his family fall apart in his teens. I hope he's been able to start working through that and come up with some good strategies for dealing with those emotions. I was really touched by his interaction with his sister, both when she confided in him about her health and then with his going to visit her in the hospital after her procedure. Sometimes in the edited down shows we miss out on the bits of humanity that find their way through the addiction. Kind of a good reminder that there really is a good person underneath all the chemical dependency/lying/stealing, etc. that Intervention shows.

Yeah, I can understand that point of view, but I don't think they just stopped there and didn't move the ball forward after that. I don't have firsthand knowledge, but I'm going to guess they continue to research and refine their findings to the present day. This is an area of expertise that has had many contributors over the years beyond those two guys. And believe me, if I never hear any more from John Douglas the rest of my life, I would be perfectly happy :) But it's not just a theory that you can look at somebody's behavior and make some other determinations about them. Take websites that collect personal data to target advertisements. Companies spend a bunch of money on this data because they can build a profile of a person's interest and buying habits based on what that person clicks on. Sure, those ads don't always appeal to that user, but sometimes they get pretty close. Not perfect, but still worth the money to the company who's trying to get you to buy whatever they're selling. I'm certainly not trying to argue that they're always dead-on or that they never need refinement midstream (I'm pretty sure somebody runs out of a room saying "the profile wasn't quite right!!" at about minute 47 of many episodes of Criminal Minds!). But I also do think they have the potential to provide some value to a criminal investigation, which is why dismissing them altogether as an investigative tool isn't something I'm willing to do.