General True Crime Shows

[Annber03]

1 hour ago, geekgirl921 said:

I was amazed at the guy on American Monster last night. He left so many clues, it's like he was asking to be caught. You know they won't let you drink beer and play video games in prison??

I was struck by his 911 call. I know, and agree, that you can't always determine one's guilt or innocence based off of those, but holy shit, this guy barely even tried to sound grief-stricken at discovering his wife and baby dead. 

But yeah, that story was horrifying. Killing a three-month old baby because he wanted a life of freedom. Well, clearly that backfired spectacularly on you, didn't it, you psycho dumbass. 

To say nothing of how he apparently genuinely thought the woman he was texting was going to get back with him after all this. Just...some people...

[kathyk24]

The latest episode of People Magazine Investigates was heartbreaking. I can't understand why his body hasn't been found yet. I doubt he's alive.

[Annber03]

His poor mom. I can't imagine going thirty years without answers. 

[LuvMyShows]

On 7/22/2023 at 10:50 PM, Vermicious Knid said:

Forensic scientist Henry Lee, who became famous testifying in the OJ trial, and who has gone on to appear on many tv shows and as a expert in many trials, found liable for fabricating evidence that sent two teens to prison for murder.

And this begs the question...will the eventual scenario occur where all past convictions that featured his work, will need to be reviewed?  That would be sheer hell for the people with loved ones' cases that were solved, but they now need to revisit and relive the nightmare, and possibly have to undergo a new trial, or worse, see the perp released (at least temporarily) even if they really are guilty.

[Grumpbump]

23 hours ago, Annber03 said:

I was struck by his 911 call. I know, and agree, that you can't always determine one's guilt or innocence based off of those, but holy shit, this guy barely even tried to sound grief-stricken at discovering his wife and baby dead. 

But yeah, that story was horrifying. Killing a three-month old baby because he wanted a life of freedom. Well, clearly that backfired spectacularly on you, didn't it, you psycho dumbass. 

To say nothing of how he apparently genuinely thought the woman he was texting was going to get back with him after all this. Just...some people...

The baby?  I yelled at the TV.  And then he sat there, in the interview room....answering questions, sleeping soundly?  Knowing that your baby is dead.  I was yelling the whole time.  More than a monster.....I can't even.

[Annber03]

36 minutes ago, Grumpbump said:

And then he sat there, in the interview room....answering questions, sleeping soundly?  Knowing that your baby is dead.  I was yelling the whole time.  More than a monster.....I can't even.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeah, that was...wow. When even detectives, who've done this job for years, and interviewed a lot of scuzzballs, and seen a lot of disturbing behavior on display, are shocked by a suspect something like that, you know you're in a special class of evil. 

[nokat]

When they say people handle grief differently, I think okay, but no emotion at all is suspect. We see people doing the fake grief.

[LuvMyShows]

There is a very good show on TV One (app only) called Justice By Any Means.  It features the loved ones who stopped at nothing to bring justice for the deceased. Some of the stories are sort of a stretch to feature what is really a bit player in the scheme of things, but sometimes the loved one is so powerfully responsible for finally bringing justice. 

A different slant was in the episode featuring Thomas Haynesworth, wrongly convicted of multiple rapes and murder and sent to prison.  The story of how he never stopped fighting to prove his innocence, including after he was released, is really amazing.  Then I found that his case was one of the ones featured in Netflix's The Innocence Files, which I had never heard of before, and which documents cases of wrongful conviction that the Innocence Project and organizations within the Innocence Network have worked to highlight and overturn. I will definitely check that out.

[Annber03]

8 hours ago, nokat said:

When they say people handle grief differently, I think okay, but no emotion at all is suspect. We see people doing the fake grief.

Exactly. I would imagine most people would scream or cry or things of that sort upon seeing their spouse and child killed, yes, but hell, okay, I could also certainly understand one being in shock in a moment like that, too. I could understand struggling to comprehend what you're seeing, or kind of going into a catatonic state. Stuff like that. The body and mind can do some weird things to try and shield someone from having to process seeing something so horrible, after all. 

But even if one exhibits those responses, odd as they would probably seem to some people, at least all of those would still be SOME kind of reaction. 

[nokat]

5 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

Exactly. I would imagine most people would scream or cry or things of that sort upon seeing their spouse and child killed

I did sit there for a bit in disbelief. You don't want it to be true. But then it hits.

That some people can fake the tears after killing someone is scary.

Edited July 26, 2023 by nokat

[kathyk24]

12 hours ago, nokat said:

When they say people handle grief differently, I think okay, but no emotion at all is suspect. We see people doing the fake grief.

Some people may not feel comfortable breaking down in front of a stranger. We've seen too many upset people who actually were the killers.  Have any of the true crime shows covered the Gilgo Beach murders? His name isn't familiar to me.

[LexieLily]

The commercials for the new season of FFII that has footage of a woman saying cell phone records are the new DNA drives me up the wall. Cell phone records are a good geographical reference and/or proof that a perpetrator was or wasn't at a crime scene but all that proves was that the phone in question was or wasn't there, not the person. Prosecutors can (theoretically) fight it in court. It's a hell of a lot harder to argue when they find fingerprints at a crime scene or male DNA inside a female victim. 

[kathyk24]

The latest episode of Evil Lives Here was chilling. I'm surprised the killer hadn't been featured on Snapped or Deadly Women. I wish the authorities had paid attention to the dad when the police were called to the house.

[Annber03]

Speaking of chilling, what the FUCK was with the guy on "Signs of a Psychopath" tonight? Good lord, what a creep. 

[LuvMyShows]

Way to go, Investigation Discovery (/sf/). I watch on replay, and as usual, the little picture icon for the episodes of the new show "A Body in the Basement" show a scene from the episode. But unlike ALL the other ID shows with the whodunit format, this stupid show has the picture icon showing the guilty perp!  So as soon as we encounter that person/people during the show, we already know who's guilty. Thanks for ruining the suspense, ID.

[LuvMyShows]

On 1/7/2022 at 5:21 PM, LuvMyShows said:

A true crime first!  I was watching one of the new Buried in the Backyard episodes, and a guy saw something in the water and thought at first it was a mannequin...because...he had actually found mannequins before in that waterway!

Quoting myself from last year because for the second time that I've seen, someone saw something and it actually was a mannequin!  It was on the show Finally Caught on True Crime network, in the "Gouldin" episode.  Someone had been leaving mutilated mannequins in the woods monthly for a year, and there were also some murders.  The murders became linked with the mannequins, being called The Mannequin Murders, because they were around the same time and in the same greater geographic area, even though there was nothing to say they were related.  Eventually, they solved the murders, but nothing ever was solved about who had done the mannequins thing. 

[LuvMyShows]

I just watched ID's A Body in the Basement, episode "Missing Means Murder". It was a case I'd seen before, but there's two things that didn't make sense:

• According to the episode, the only way they found out about a connection between the suspect (Darryl Kuehl) and the victim (Paul Gruber), is that Paul had showed a friend a video he had taken of his property, which included a quick focus on someone and Paul said "that's my caretaker", which turned out to be Darryl.  Yet Paul was apparently very close to his adult daughter Shellie, and I find it inconceivable that she would not have known that her father had a caretaker and who it was.
• At the end, in the explanation about how the murder occurred, they said that Darryl had taken advantage of Paul because Paul travelled a lot and he'd be gone for weeks at a time. Yet the way they said the murder occurred, is that Darryl was doing something he shouldn't have in Paul's house, and Paul walked in on him, so Darryl killed him. This makes no sense because if Paul was gone as often as they said, then Darryl could have waited to do whatever he wanted when Paul wasn't there. They made it seem like a crime of opportunity, but I don't buy that.

[LuvMyShows]

From watching True Crime Network's "Finally Caught", and seeing lots of the 'classic' murders we've seen on countless other franchises, I was moved to compile a list of the most commonly-portrayed murders.  There's a few at the bottom that I can't recall details about, so I hope you all can help fill in what I'm missing...and of course, feel free to add any that I've left off!

• Narcy Novack killing her hotel-heir son Ben Novack and later found to have also killed her mother-in-law Bernice
• Generosa Ammon and her handyman lover Daniel Pelosi killed her husband Ted
• Pam Hupp...where would I even begin to describe her?
• Nanette Packard with ex-NFL player Eric Naposki killied Bill McLaughlin
• Dalia Dippolito's failed murder of her husband Mike
• Murder of saintly-oh-wait-not-so-saintly Paige Birgfeld
• Celeste Beard and lesbian-maybe-lover Tracey Tarlton murder of Celeste's husband Steve
• Police officer Steve Rios killing gay college student Jesse Valencia
• Vince and Margaret Sherry killed by his law partner Pete Halat (and all about the Dixie Mafia, with the gay Lonely Hearts scam from prison)
• Eddie Makdessi killed navy man Quincy Brown then double-crosses and killed his navy wife Elise after their staged killing of Quincy as part of sexual assault scam
• Murder of Reyna Marroquin, better known as the long-dead pregnant woman in the barrel. 
• Anne Stout (Freak of Ark email), who killed her husband and tried to frame the woman (Barbara Miller) he re-connected with at a class reunion and had a brief affair with 
• Martha Freeman had her lover Raphael Rocha-Perez living in a closet of her house, and he killed her husband when he's discovered snoring
• Brenda Andrew had her lover James Pavatt kill her husband Rob, then Pavatt hid out living in the attic of the Andrew's next-door neighbors for awhile 
• Mark Unger killed Florence Unger at the lakeside cabin resort they went to every year, by pushing her off a deck and making it look like the rotted railing had given way and she accidentally fell
• Rebecca Sears had her son murder the next-door neighbor Laverne Kay Parsons, so Rebecca could be with Laverne's husband (and they had staged a burglary at Rebecca's house along with a staged shooting of Rebecca at work)
• Stacy Castor killed her husband David with "anti-free"
• Angelina Rodriguez killed her husband Frank with oleander and anti-freeze
• George Trepal killed neighbor Peggy Carr with thallium in Coke bottles, and as part of solving the crime, Special Agent Susan Goreck went undercover to a “Mensa Murder Weekend” hosted by Trepal and his wife
• a mother is found hanging off the staircase in the foyer of the house and the father had gotten the teen-age kids to help?
• takes place at Ft. Bragg, and a woman has her military husband killed when they stop at her office for her to pick something up on their way home from dinner?
• a woman (middle-aged mother?) makes up a person named Chris who is supposedly (ex)military and is advising them to do certain things
• a very pretty young woman with dark hair (and an exotic first name) is seen on multiple videos coming home drunk, and her father talks to the potential perp in a van? 
• a creepy looking husband (pale, longish nose) with a german name (?) and maybe he's a professor, keeps saying he's innocent of his wife's murder but finally confesses and takes police to where the body is?

[kathyk24]

I just finished watching the Disappeared episode about the Bradley sisters. I think the mother and her boyfriend killed them. I thought it was just the boyfriend because he didn't want to pay child support but that twist at the end makes me think the mom was involved.

[SoMuchTV]

There's a new series on Hulu called Cold Case Files: DNA Speaks narrated by Bill Kurtis.  Now, I'm not sure how much overlap there is between true-crime-show watchers and NPR listeners (I'm definitely more of the latter), but it was quite jarring to me to hear Wait Wait Don't Tell Me's fake-serious announcer telling me about these truly serious cases!

[Minivanessa]

On 8/18/2023 at 12:32 PM, LuvMyShows said:

From watching True Crime Network's "Finally Caught", and seeing lots of the 'classic' murders we've seen on countless other franchises, I was moved to compile a list of the most commonly-portrayed murders.  There's a few at the bottom that I can't recall details about, so I hope you all can help fill in what I'm missing...and of course, feel free to add any that I've left off!

That's an excellent list! Here's info on two of the final cases on the list:

On 8/18/2023 at 12:32 PM, LuvMyShows said:

• takes place at Ft. Bragg, and a woman has her military husband killed when they stop at her office for her to pick something up on their way home from dinner?

That was the 2000 murder of Air Force Capt. Marty Theer. His wife Michelle's lover, Army Sgt. John Diamond, shot and killed Capt. Theer. It was planned by Michelle and Diamond.  Diamond was caught/convicted, and Michelle went on the run in 2002, using false IDs, dyed hair, and plastic surgery to evade capture, but was caught in 2004. She was convicted and is serving a life sentence.

On 8/18/2023 at 12:32 PM, LuvMyShows said:

• a very pretty young woman with dark hair (and an exotic first name) is seen on multiple videos coming home drunk, and her father talks to the potential perp in a van? 

That was Kenia Monge, who was killed by Travis Forbes in Denver. She was caught on CCTV at a couple of places downtown during that evening when she was out clubbing with friends, got drunk and separated from her friends. Travis claimed he'd offered her a ride home in his van - but she never got home. He said he'd stopped to get gas and she'd gotten out of the van there and gone off with some other people. But he'd killed her.  He stored her body in a freezer before transporting it in his van to bury it out in the country. He also sexually assaulted and almost killed Lydia Tillman in Fort Collins, CO, shortly after killing Kenia. 

[Minivanessa]

@LuvMyShows - Here are a few more cases that I've seen on two or more TV shows over the years:

• Barbara Stager, in North Carolina, was convicted in 1989 of the 1988 murder of her second husband, Russ. He was shot in the head while he slept; she claimed she shot him by accident. Less than a decade earlier her first husband had died in what was ruled an accidental self-inflicted shooting, with a handgun, as he lay in bed. Stager was not charged in connection with the first husband's death but is widely suspected of murdering him. She is now, at age 74, still serving a life term. Eligible for parole but not yet granted it. 
• In Georgia, Lynn Turner poisoned her police officer husband Glenn Turner with antifreeze in 1995. His death was attributed to heart disease, so I suppose she felt invincible, so she did it again in 2000 to her firefighter common-law husband Randy Thompson. Her magic invincibility powers failed and she was convicted of both murders (Turner in 2004, Thompson in 2007). She died in prison in 2010, a suicide by overdose.
• Jill Coit was convicted of killing Gerald Boggs, her eighth husband, a Steamboat Springs, CO, hardware store owner, in 1993 and is also suspected of killing her third husband in 1972. She's doing life without parole in Colorado. She's a con artist and serial bigamist who has been married 11 times to nine different men since 1961.
• Sante Kimes was convicted of two murders, as well as robbery, forgery, violation of anti-slavery laws and numerous other crimes. Many of these crimes were committed with the assistance of her son, Kenneth Kimes. They were tried and convicted together for the murder of their elderly NYC landlord Irene Silverman, along with 117 other charges. She died in prison in 2014. Her older son Kent Walker - who was not her accomplice in crime - has appeared in documentaries discussing the evil things she did. 

I've sometimes thought about the women who got away with killing one husband, but were busted when they pushed their luck and killed a second one: Stacey Castor, Barbara Stager, and Lynn Turner are the ones that I remember most easily. As I learned as a teenager reading all those Agatha Christies, the best way to get away with murder is to have the death not recognized as such. Not that I admire anyone for getting away with murder. I do wonder (a) how many murders are classified as accidental or natural deaths, and (b) why someone who got away with it would jeopardize their freedom by doing the same damn thing again. My level of knowledge of psychology is such, that I ruminate about it and settle back down with the conclusion that "something ain't right" in their heads, whatever the details of that are.

Edited August 29, 2023 by Jeeves
Added someone to the list

[Minivanessa]

We've discussed this case upthread. Here's an update from today's news. Colorado dentist will plead not guilty to murdering his wife: https://www.denverpost.com/2023/08/29/james-craig-aurora-dentist-plea-wife-poisoned/

Also, the woman he had been dating* for three weeks before his wife died, was interviewed last month on ABC: https://www.goodmorningamerica.com/news/video/woman-dating-dentist-accused-killing-wife-speaks-101151149.  I'm glad she was interviewed, because it changed my ideas about her. She's an orthodontist in Texas, who was going through a divorce when she met the doofus dentist at a convention in February 2023. He told her big lies. He said that he was deep in the process of divorcing his wife, convinced her that he valued the things that she did (her kids, etc.), said he was living in an apartment, and seems to have done a true narcissist love-bomb job on her. Lots of calls and texts, she was going to visit him in CO and had to reschedule the trip so she actually arrived while his wife was hospitalized in grave condition. But he seemed just fine, not stressed, etc. While his wife was about to die. The "other woman" seemed genuine and I believe her version of events. She was vulnerable and got worked over by a love-bombing narcissist. She has also cooperated with law enforcement throughout the case, from the day the guy's wife died.

I wonder if any documentaries will cover this case. It was solved quickly, so it's not like there's a lengthy investigation to be drah-mah-tized for TV. OTOH there seems to be a sh*t ton of forensic evidence that locked it down.  

*ETA: "Dating" may not be the right word. They were actually in each others' company for maybe 48 hours at the convention, then communicated by text and calls for the next two or three weeks, until she finally visited him in CO just as his wife was dying. She said the affair wasn't consummated. Further edit: Now I remember that their texts were described in the early news stories as sexually explicit. So things were probably heading that way but didn't get there.

Edited August 30, 2023 by Jeeves
"Not" is a BIG word to omit. Oops!

[LuvMyShows]

On 8/29/2023 at 10:47 AM, Jeeves said:

I've sometimes thought about the women who got away with killing one husband, but were busted when they pushed their luck and killed a second one

And on the flip side...I've been watching the new Cold Case Files: DNA Speaks (thanks to SoMuchTV for mentioning it!), and a recent episode said that with the advent of genetic genealogy, they are finding more and more people who committed a horrible crime once, and then never did anything again, or before.  They said it has really turned investigating on its head because the standard police assumption is that someone who did something that horrible must have done smaller criminal activity before.

[LuvMyShows]

The recent People Magazine Investigates episode "Held Captive" was quite a story. I'm glad the victim has managed to get married and hopefully have a reasonably normal life, given the ordeal she went through. And good for her for cutting off her father given his attitude about her captivity. I can understand him finding it hard to believe that she didn't leave her captor for all those years, when it seemed like she had the opportunity. But she was 14 when she ran off, and her captor completely brainwashed her. That is obvious, given that she finally came clean to the owner of that diner where she worked...if she was just staying with the captor purely because she wanted to, then she never would have had anything to come clean about. And it was only over that series of years when she got close to the diner owner and his family, that she began to feel safe enough to start confiding in him. And good for him for going to the police.

It's too bad the father couldn't find a way to say something to her like, "I struggle with understanding it, and I may never understand it, but that is my limitation, and is not a reflection of you or my love and support of you." Instead, he actually said to the camera something mocking how his daughter blames everyone else. Yes, she ran off voluntarily, but again, she was 14. And given the attitude of his that came through in his interviews, I can imagine it was hellish living with him and her step-mother, especially given that he uprooted her from a nice, comfortable situation, to go live in much more of a sh*t hole, after knowing the woman for only 6 months.

And sorry, but I hope the police are permanently scarred from not having gone back to that perp's house at the start, when they came at night and he said he didn't want them to search the house because his elderly parents were asleep...so they simply never came back!

 

[LuvMyShows]

On 8/26/2023 at 2:26 PM, Jeeves said:

That's an excellent list! Here's info on two of the final cases on the list:

Thanks, Jeeves! 

I wanted to go update my original post with the new info, but for some reason I'm not getting the edit button. Does anyone know if it goes away after a post has been live for a certain amount of time?

[Minivanessa]

3 hours ago, LuvMyShows said:

Thanks, Jeeves! 

I wanted to go update my original post with the new info, but for some reason I'm not getting the edit button. Does anyone know if it goes away after a post has been live for a certain amount of time?

You're welcome. Thank you for starting the list!

I think the edit option does go away. I can see the "edit" option for my post from 5 days ago upthread, but not for the older one (8/28).

Edited September 3, 2023 by Jeeves

[LexieLily]

I've gotten back into True Crime Network in the recent weeks and I'm sure Killer Kids is an interesting show but I only got through ten minutes of one episode - the narrator has SUCH a baby voice that I cannot deal with her at all.

[kathyk24]

On 9/10/2023 at 12:09 AM, LexieLily said:

I've gotten back into True Crime Network in the recent weeks and I'm sure Killer Kids is an interesting show but I only got through ten minutes of one episode - the narrator has SUCH a baby voice that I cannot deal with her at all.

I think the narrator might be very young so her voice is natural. If you are looking for a new true crime show I like New York Homicide on Oxygen.

[LuvMyShows]

On 9/11/2023 at 1:01 AM, kathyk24 said:

If you are looking for a new true crime show I like New York Homicide on Oxygen.

I just discovered that there are lot of series on Hulu that I had never heard of before. I just finished Death in the Dorms, and will eventually check out The Lesson is Murder, Killing Country, Web of Death, How I Caught My Killer, Real Life Nightmares, Charmed to Death, and Deadly Affairs: Betrayed By Love. 

On 9/11/2023 at 1:01 AM, kathyk24 said:

I think the narrator might be very young so her voice is natural. 

According to IMDB her name is Erika Fong, and she is 37!

[LuvMyShows]

On 9/3/2023 at 1:55 PM, LuvMyShows said:

I wanted to go update my original post with the new info, but for some reason I'm not getting the edit button. 

So I have to update it this way.  I can't believe I left off the story that I have by far seen on the most franchises...Abraham Shakespeare winning $30 million in the lottery and being murdered by his "financial advisor".

[LuvMyShows]

On 9/12/2023 at 3:23 PM, LuvMyShows said:

I just discovered that there are lot of series on Hulu that I had never heard of before. I just finished Death in the Dorms, and will eventually check out The Lesson is Murder, Killing Country, Web of Death, How I Caught My Killer, Real Life Nightmares, Charmed to Death, and Deadly Affairs: Betrayed By Love. 

Quoting myself to specifically mention Web of Death. It's about the "citizen sleuths" who help solve crime through podcasts and various websites, and it's really, really interesting. There is a whole subculture of folks who are extremely dedicated to solving crimes and missing persons cases, and helping to right wrongs.

[Vermicious Knid]

Buried in the Backyard should really change their name to just Buried, since half the shows are actually Buried in the Sand, Buried in the Woods, Buried in the Snow, etc. For the most part I find the series well done but there's been a disturbing trend in their use of police photos lately. All the true crime series use 'actual police photo' evidence but it's heavily blurred, I assume both for viewer sensitivities and to be respectful of the families. Last weeks episode featured a full picture of the naked victim, no blurring or obscuring at all which surprised me. It was sort of mummified and from the back but not necessary that we had to see it. They showed it from another angle and put a tiny blurry bar over the eyes but nothing else. This week's body was encased in chicken wire and cement and they decided to show a picture where you get a clear view of the foot sticking out. I'm not one to clutch pearls but why? The public doesn't have to see explicit pictures of dead bodies to get the point across. 

[Annber03]

Yeah, I've seen that in a few other series as well sometimes, and it's very unsettling. Even when they do try and blur things, sometimes it's not blurred enough, and you can still make out some of what's in the photos.

Just. Yeah. I get it, show, the crime scene was bad, I can understand that just from the descriptions of those who were investigating the scene, I don't need to see THAT much detail to get the point. 

[badhaggis]

46 minutes ago, Annber03 said:

Yeah, I've seen that in a few other series as well sometimes, and it's very unsettling. Even when they do try and blur things, sometimes it's not blurred enough, and you can still make out some of what's in the photos.

Just. Yeah. I get it, show, the crime scene was bad, I can understand that just from the descriptions of those who were investigating the scene, I don't need to see THAT much detail to get the point. 

It feels disrespectful to the victim and their families to me. 

[kathyk2]

Evil Lives Here is chilling. I'm watching the episode about Freddie who beat his children. It's horrible to use religion as an excuse to abuse your family.

[LuvMyShows]

I watched the latest episode of People Magazine Investigates "The Times Square Killer". And compared to their usual episodes, this was just an overly long waste of time. It was all about this one prolific serial killer, and because of the way they did it, all the murders blurred together and I couldn't keep any of them straight, which also doesn't give proper respect to the victims. It's not like there was a lot of very interesting sleuthing to show of how they started linking seemingly unrelated murders to him. It sort of just devolved into "and he also killed this person, and this person." I don't even recall much delving into the psychology of such a sadistic horrible psychopath. The episode was very long, and may have read better on paper than what ended up coming out on screen.

 

[LuvMyShows]

I have found a great "new" show on TV One.  Not sure when they added it for replay, but the show itself is apparently from 2018. It is a limited 4-episode series called Evidence of Innocence, and each episode is about someone falsely convicted of a crime and how they cleared their name.  Amazing perseverance. I also hadn't remembered that the Innocence Project only accepts wrongful conviction cases where it can be overturned on DNA, so this Centurion Ministries that was active in the episodes, is an alternative for people whose cases don't have DNA. 

[kathyk2]

Disappeared is heartbreaking and infuriating at the same time. Tonight's episode featured a woman named Sheena who went missing in Chicago, The police didn't get involved until they were pressured by the community to do something. I don't understand why police don't check bank accounts when someone goes missing. You need money to survive if there is no activity that person is probably dead.

[LuvMyShows]

Something from the recent Buried in the Backyard episode, "Death in Christmas Town", brought up something I have wondered about. They mentioned having gone to Quantico for an FBI profile on the potential killer, and the FBI got it completely wrong -- saying the guy was single, with no attachments, no job, etc. From a cursory Google check, profiling is wrong almost as much as it is right. I seem to vaguely remember a case where profiling was essential, but it just doesn't seem like it usually provides much more than something interesting after the person is caught, to see if it matched or not.

[Annber03]

Yeah, people have talked about how profiling is a pretty hit or miss thing. It's more luck and assumptions than anything concrete. 

[oliviabenson]

I’d make a great criminal profiler I got 20+ years of true crime show’s watching and 2 college degrees. 

Every time I watch 20/20 I fall asleep because the shows are too long! Make them 1 hour long or 2 cases/1 hour each!

[oliviabenson]

Gypsy Rose is being released this December. 

[kathyk2]

7 hours ago, oliviabenson said:

Gypsy Rose is being released this December. 

I'm sure this is an unpopular opinion but I've always felt sorry for Gypsy. Her mother deliberately made her sick and nobody did anything to help her. The ID network had a special about Gypsy and they interviewed doctor who doubted her medical history but nobody confronted her mother not even her father.

[Vermicious Knid]

Oxygen did a theme tonight. First on Buried in the Backyard (which had the body in an actual backyard for once!) there was a Russian immigrant boxer who was killed by the Russian Mafia in Brighton Beach. Then following on New York Homicide the victim was a Russian immigrant businessman who disappeared and his abandoned car was discovered in Brighton Beach. His body was stuffed into a barrel that fetched up in Jamaica Bay but was put into the water in Brighton Beach. But he was killed by the wife not the Mob.

Seems to be the last episode of NYH, which is not on the schedule for next week. 

[LuvMyShows]

Lots of thoughts about the recent People Magazine Investigates episode, "Manhunt":

• Usually it's parents blindly sticking by their little snookums who I just know couldn't have done it. This time we get the adult son blindly believing his super daddy couldn't have committed the credit union robbery and murder, even though the father had apparently robbed a bank before!  The son insisted that dad is the greatest man I know, and I'm proud to be his son...but, oh yeah, he killed a guy and left many others traumatized.  Try as he did, that umbrella with dad's fingerprints can't be just wished away.
• Also, the son seemed to have willful ignorance about the true nature behind those trips to Japan, and I do believe the friend about the trips being to sell marijuana. IIRC, the father's job at Xerox was fairly mundane and blue collar, and he didn't have a lot of seniority or experience or anything. So, son, how do you think dad could afford to go repeatedly to Japan?  And why did dad go 7 times to apparently the same place?  And why did he bring along his random male friend (who wasn't a "special friend")? And what do you think all that interacting with the local people was about, rather than doing sight-seeing stuff across the country? 
• And in the son's own words, there was "never a shortage of money". Plus the dad found a way to pay the $9K parental share for the private school tuition. Yet the dad couldn't hire a teenager to watch the son after school in 5th and 6th grade, so he could stay at work for his full shifts?
• But the son isn't the only one who deserves scorn in this episode. WTAF was wrong with the people who did the initial investigating?  They mentioned having compiled a list of 600 suspicious (that wasn't their word, but I can't remember what they said) Xerox Black employees ('cause they knew the perp was Black).  But apparently they did not do anything AT ALL to narrow down this huge list, like, oh, filter it on people with a prior conviction, or maybe people with multiple prior convictions, or maybe even people with multiple prior convictions that include BANK ROBBERY!  Oh, here's maybe possibly another silly idea for that filter...PEOPLE WHO HAVE SUED XEROX!!! I"m guessing that the people who appear on both lists might be a good place to start!  SMH
• The dad was clearly not a rocket scientist. Having an open umbrella on a day with no rain is not a good way to go unnoticed by potential witnesses!  One of the talking heads speculated that he did it to avoid the external cameras, but, uh, there were going to be internal cameras inside the credit union that would get a far better pic of his face, even with the weird disguise.
• The dad also had some nerve, or idiocy, to try to claim racial discrimination for habitually coming in late and leaving early (supposedly due to the child care issue, which I think they only mentioned being a problem after school). The son said something about how, yeah, my dad will choose his kid every time. Seems like the only way it would be racial discrimination (since time cards will prove that the absenteeism did occur), is if a White co-worker was allowed to have chronic absenteeism over a period of 1-2 years, while he wasn't, and it doesn't sound like that was the case. But we already know the dad had balls, because 3 weeks after going into the credit union with the FBI jacket and pretending to the manager that he was there on FBI business, and then committing the credit union robbery and murder, he calls the FBI hotline about the fraud he was experiencing in another area of his life! 
• Finally, the idea to give him potato chips in the interrogation room to get him thirsty enough to drink the water from the bottle to leave fingerprints, was brilliant...but too bad he had the baby with him who also got thirsty and needed to drink from the bottle.

 

[kathyk2]

Evil Lives Here was so good last night. Kudos to the casting agents that little girl looked like Michelle. I don't know how her father claimed he loved her but he murdered her mom.

[kathyk2]

The special about Matthew Shepard was so sad I'm surprised there wasn't criticism of the ID network for airing it. New episodes of Homicide for the Holidays start on Friday and Fear thy Neighbor on Monday.

[Annber03]

It was very heartbreaking. I remember this story being in the news when I was a teenager. Matthew's parents reflecting on his death as they did really got o me, especially their memories of seeing him in the hospital and his dad's guilt over feeling like he didn't do more to protect his son. They are an inspiration and have so much compassion and grace, I really admire them.

It was heartwarming to hear about all the people who came together to rally on behalf of Matthew, though, and I liked them highlighting all the progress that had been made since then...and all the dangers out there now in terms of the threats being posed to all that progress. Here's to hoping the anti-LGBTQ+ crowd continues to get the message loud and clear that their hatred and bigotry will not, cannot, should not ever be tolerated here, or anywhere else. I have a lot of choice thoughts about Phelps and the various anti-LGBTQ+ politicians highlighted in this documentary, none of which are likely repeatable on this forum. 

Thanks for the heads up on the "Homicide for the Holidays" episodes, did not know that. Will be interesting to see what stories they cover in that show and in "Fear Thy Neighbor" this time around. 

[Vermicious Knid]

Oxygen has started a new series, The Real Murders of Los Angeles. I watched this week's episode which was about the murder of Linda Sobek. At first I thought it was the same murder that was featured on Forensic Files where a photographer killed a model on a photoshoot and buried her in the Angeles National Forest and  was caught because of double exposed film. But no, this was a different photographer who killed a model on a photoshoot and buried her in the Angeles National Forest. 

Many years ago I worked for the USFS and heard that the crews on the Angeles regularly carried body bags because they were always running across them. Never found out if that was true or not. But there are a lot of murder victims who get dumped in the Angeles National Forest.