S28.E01: Paradise Lost

[photo fox]

The 27th season begins with an investigation into the 2010 shooting death of Wall Street millionaire John Bender, who was killed in his exotic home in Costa Rica. His wife, Ann, is charged with the crime, but she claims she is innocent.

[applecrisp]

Thanks Photo fox for putting this in a thread, will comment later.

[applecrisp]

I really think 48 Hours is the gold standard in the crime shows.  My two complaints are too many repeats that contain little new info and they tend to focus on more well-off people.  Dateline does a wider variety of stories.

 

I just did not like Anne Bender.  She had no redeeming qualities.  She and her husband's house did not seem like paradise at all to me.  I really do not think they had anything to do with the locals except as worker or bodyguards.  Depression is an awful illness that I have suffered from for years. I don't however think I can cure it on my own. 

 

In the end I thought it really was most likely an accident. 

 

Just wonder what others think?

[Diana Berry]

This was the first time I've ever fallen asleep during an episode. Need to google for the verdict.

[UsernameFatigue]

What annoys me about these shows (and Dateline does the same thing) is that they go over and over the same things while ignoring possible other clues to the mystery. When they showed the email from John to Ann about half way through the hour, they just showed a couple of sentences where he wrote that he wanted to die. However if you freeze the email and read its entirely, it brings up many questions.

 

The email says that someone named Milton will not contact them, also mentions Juan. John goes on to talk about having no way to pay someone named Jo, and also mentions a couple of other people. I sounds like they are having great financial difficulties, and John states that he had found a way to be happy until this happened, and that he regretted getting involved with scums.

 

I also thought it was odd that in the pics of the crime scene where John is laying in bed it does not look like there had been anyone laying beside him. There are no indentations on the mattress or the pillow, which you would expect if Ann had been sleeping beside him as she claimed.

 

I would lean more towards murder, but to me the show raised more questions than it answered. Where the heck did his quarter of a billion dollar fortune go if he was so upset about money and not being able to pay people,  in the email to Ann?

[zxy556575]

Anne wasn't very sympathetic to me but I felt there were enough discrepancies and questions in the case that she shouldn't have been convicted.

[ByaNose]

I think Anne did it. John really did look like he had been sleeping. Granted, the pictures are of a dead man but he was on his left side perfectly as he had been sleeping. Since, they weren't divorcing and were both jointly comfortable with the money & jewels I think she was "sick" enough to kill him. Whether she did it on purpose or was in some mental state may be debated but I ultimately think she did shoot him. As for, for the house it did look amazing. I looked like a (very expensive) tree house. I found Anne oddly annoying and I think Marcia Gay Harden should play her in the Lifetime movie.

[ChristmasJones]

This episode felt unsubstantial to me for some reason. I felt like we were only given a few details about the entire case, so I did not find myself feeling very engaged with the story. I agree with others about too many repeated clips.

 

I find it ironic in this day of everyone having DVRs (or watching on-line) that most shows are filled with so much repeated footage. There are previews before the commercials and then reviews after the commercials. We can all rewind, pause, and fast-forward anytime we want, so all of this is pointless. It would have been more helpful back in the days when you just had to wait for the commercial to play. I find myself feeling somewhat surprised when I watch a show now and there are no "coming up next" clips before the commercials. Of course this is not exclusive to 48 Hours, but I find myself thinking- how much MORE interesting footage could be in this show if they cut all of that repeated stuff out. I am sure there could be easily 7-10 more minutes of material.

 

Anyway, getting back to this show. I am glad new episodes are on, but this one was not a very compelling episode for me.

[jenkait]

I'm with most of you above-this case left me unsure.  It would seem that Ann did it, and it looked like on purpose...but it might have been an accident.  Her husband had also talked about wanting to kill himself, so that is a possibility, too.  The bullet placement makes me uneasy, but I think I would've found it hard to convict her because I didn't see her having a motive to kill him at all.  Maybe it was the "folie a deux" stuff?  She seemed extremely unwell at the time, with all that weight loss and agreeing to be injected with spring water or whatever.  I did find it odd how she kept insisting "He wanted to die!" but maybe if I was an innocent person accused of murder I'd also want to keep reinforcing that, I don't know.

 

As for the gems-it was odd they were thrown in there, and I didn't see what they had to do with his death.  The couple was clearly extremely wealthy so maybe having 20 million dollars worth of gems really was just a hobby.  The authorities claimed she "smuggled" them into the country...but smuggled doesn't mean stolen, right?  They didn't really say enough about that.  In regards to money, why was Ann, after the first trial, living in an apartment and her friends and family were helping pay her bills?  Why wouldn't she have money from her husband?  I don't get it.  It so often seems in these cases that people who are that wealthy seem to also have financial problems as well.  As a middle-class person I find that hard to wrap my brain around, but I suppose it's just on a larger scale of middle-class financial problems (ie when you have huge mortgage payments, the bank owns your SUV, whatever).

 

Also, this is random (and judgemental): as I was watching it I kept thinking that there was all this talk about building their "nature preserve".  Calling it a "sanctuary for wildlife"...what?  Not that there's anything wrong with them purchasing the land and building their dream home because that's what people do, and if they want to live with parrots visiting their deck, etc. that's fine, but calling it a "nature preserve" seemed a little disingenuous.  Maybe I'm missing something.

[sara]

from what i understood, it wasn't that they were having money problems, it was the way the estate was handled after the death. the executor of the state was the one who wasn't paying any of her bills anymore.