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29 September 2023
[truecrime] A Postmodern Murder Mystery … A great true-crime story from Poland with a useful rule-of-thumb: If you commit murder don’t write a book about it. ‘He made note of the fact that the narrator murders a female lover for no reason (“What had come over me? What the hell did I do?”) and conceals the act so well that he is never caught. Wroblewski was struck, in particular, by the killer’s method: “I tightened the noose around her neck.” Wroblewski then noticed something else: the killer’s name is Chris, the English version of the author’s first name. It was also the name that Krystian Bala had posted on the Internet auction site. Wroblewski began to read the book more closely—a hardened cop turned literary detective.’
28 June 2023
[crime] ‘Why I might have done what I did’: conversations with Ireland’s most notorious murderer… Fascinating article on Malcolm MacArthur, Ireland’s GUBU double-murderer.

‘“Well,” he said, wasting no time, “the first thing to be said is that I lived a blameless life until 1982. Entirely blameless. If you were to plot my life along a graph, morally speaking, you would see a very flat line for the first 37 years, then one very sharp spike in the middle, followed by another completely flat line right up until the present day.”

“Given,” I said, “that that seems to be the case – ”

“Oh, it is the case,” he said.

“Well, I thought we might try to talk about why it happened.”

“Fine,” he said. “But you must remember that this was a financial situation. It wasn’t what you might call irrationality, or lack of control. There was a problem to be solved. And you might well ask, well, why solve it using this particular technique? And that’s a legitimate question. But it wasn’t an act of madness.”

After the call ended, I sat on the bench, staring at the words I had scribbled in my notebook as we spoke. I circled the word “problem”, and then the word “technique”.’

22 May 2023
[truecrime] 50 True Crime Docs Guaranteed to Keep You Guessing … Fifty of the best true crime documentaries available to stream. ‘The Staircase (2004) – My God, if you were around when the 2004 French-produced docuseries first made a stir in the US, leading to endless coverage since, you know this is some piping-hot content. Given unguarded access to novelist Michael Peterson as he faces trial on charges of murdering his wife, the filmmaking team wisely lets Peterson’s all-around shadiness and the endless legal angling do the talking. Come away convinced one way or another, or at least transfixed by the “owl theory.”‘
11 May 2023
[crime] ‘Doppelganger murder’: German prosecutors claim woman killed lookalike to fake death … A crazy true crime story from Germany – Dopplegangers, beauty blogging and murder. ‘When the blood-covered body of a young woman was found last August in a parked Mercedes in Ingolstadt, southern Germany, reports initially identified the victim as Sharaban K, a Munich-based 23-year-old beautician with Iraqi roots. Even though some members of Sharaban K’s family had identified the body, an autopsy report the next day raised questions over its identity. The victim was eventually named as Khadidja O, an Algerian beauty blogger from Heilbronn in the neighbouring state of Baden-Württemberg, also 23.’
2 March 2023
[truecrime] The Notorious Mrs. Mossler … A true crime story from the 1960s about a love affair that led to murder and a highly publicized trial. ‘It was, in short, the O. J. Simpson trial of its era. Rarely had circumstances converged to produce such a sensational story, one that, as the Houston Chronicle put it, was teeming with “love, heat, greed, savage passion, intrigue, incest and perversion.”’
3 February 2023
[truecrime] A Crime Beyond Belief …A bizarre true crime story about a string of connected home invasions, kidnappings and rapes in California. ‘Not sleeping much, Muller obsessively watched Batman movies and became entranced by the Dark Knight, who uses his intellect and high-tech gizmos to impose nocturnal vigilante justice. “He began to think of himself as a Batman type of person who was fighting evil, which to Mr. Muller was the 1%’ers,” Nelson wrote. Wearing a wetsuit to resemble the character, Muller said he had plotted a kidnapping for ransom to procure money from those he perceived as “evil wealthy people” in order to give it to the poor, an act he believed was “morally justified.”’
31 October 2022
[truecrime] Bible John: Creation of a Serial Killer … An engrossing BBC podcast looking at the Scottish serial killer Bible John.
23 September 2022
[truecrime] What Serial Gets Wrong … After Adnan Syed’s recent release, an examination (from 2014) of what the Serial podcast got wrong. ‘I have no idea who lied fifteen years ago, and I doubt we’ll ever find out. Lies have a way of burrowing into the brain and reshaping and reforming into truth after awhile. Whatever Adnan and Jay believed then could have changed by now. What does seem clear to me, though, is that there was rampant and serious misconduct by Baltimore law enforcement. It seems impossible that, as a defendant, Adnan got within the realm of a fair shake here. And even if law enforcement’s shady behavior didn’t rise to illegal misconduct, there’s a reasonable possibility that it could have had a tangible effect on the outcome.’
16 August 2022
[games] Jason Brassard Spent His Lifetime Collecting the Rarest Video Games. Until the Heist … A true-crime story about the robbery of a pristine collection of video games and the emotional cost of losing it. ‘Generations of games had been lost to attics, yard sales, and garbage bins, and enthusiasts like Brassard had become sentimental about finding and possessing them. A culture, and then a market, had bloomed around such wistful longings. It’s fair to assume most humans have played a video game—the emotional capital of playing and loving a game 30 years ago is one of the reasons games that old have become desirable. In the summer of 2021, a sealed copy of the first print of Super Mario Bros. for the NES sold for $2 million at auction. A copy of The Legend of Zelda went for nearly $900,000. A pristine, never-opened copy of Super Mario 64 sold for $1.56 million.’
9 June 2022
[truecrime] I Think I’m Done with True Crime For Now … Moving On from the True Crime Genre. ‘I remember YouTube’s parodically evil algorithm recommending me far too many ‘body language expert’ reaction videos of Carole Baskin, all of which seemed keen to write her off as a true sociopath. The same thing happened with lawyers (or a bunch of people in suits claiming to have law degrees) offering their own advice on the crimes of the day. TikTok, of course, joined in. This was all familiar stuff when Amber Heard was put on trial for defaming her ex-husband who she accused of domestic abuse. Soon, it was truly impossible to avoid the splurge of ‘true crime’ smearing Heard in the name of justice and journalism. Suddenly, everyone was a body language expert, a psychiatrist, a cop, a lawyer, a domestic abuse expert.’
8 April 2022
[books] He Was an Ex-FBI Serial Killer Profiler. Then His Lies Caught Up With Him. … Another story (Previously) of a fraudulent serial killer expert this time based in the UK. ‘The relationship between Harrison’s falsehoods and the apparent obliviousness of his audiences and publishers raised a number of still unanswered questions. Why had no one before Robin Perrie bothered to check the claims in such a colourful CV? And what does this web of strange deceit say about the nature of true crime fandom and the cottage industry surrounding it?’
30 March 2022
[crime] Charles Graeber’s top 10 true crime books‘Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders, by Vincent Bugliosi with Curt Gentry — You can’t deny the all-time bestseller of the genre, or the detail-driven dive into the world of Charles Manson and his addled cult known as “the family”, written by a prosecutor of the Tate-LaBianca murders with access to all the grim details, partnered with a solid historical writer in Gentry.’
12 January 2022
[podcasts] Two podcasts series I’ve listened to recently…

  • Hunting Ghislaine … John Sweeney examines how Ghislaine Maxwell became a convicted sex trafficker.

  • The Coming Storm … An attempt to understand QAnon and it’s history.

19 November 2021
[people] What lies beneath: the secrets of France’s top serial killer expert … The fascinating story of a fraudulent French expert on serial killers. ‘Bourgoin’s friends withdrew from him, and began to await, with a fair amount of dread, his unmasking. But his star continued to rise. “What astounded me was not so much that he told tall tales, because I knew he was that way, but rather that everyone swallowed them whole,” the other friend said. “It was the unseriousness, not to say the sheer idiocy, of the media.” The indulgence of the publishers, the newspapers, the television stations and even the police might have been more forgivable if Bourgoin’s work had been more insightful, offered more than morbid titillation, the first friend said. “But there was never, ever, ever the slightest beginning of a hint of a shadow of analysis, of reflection,” he said.’
14 February 2021
[truecrime] “Lovers make the easiest marks”: Profile of a romance scammer … An engrossing true crime story for Valentines Day. ‘In 2006, Rootenberg found his next victim, an executive from Montreal. (She requested anonymity so her name wouldn’t be linked to Rootenberg’s online.) After dating for a while, and after she’d loaned him more than $200,000, they bought a home next door to where his brother Jonathan and sister-in-law Karyn lived, a five-bedroom house in Lawrence Park. She thought she’d met the father of her future children. He thought he’d discovered a gold mine.’
5 October 2020
[truecrime] Since 1979, Brian Murtagh has fought to keep convicted murderer Jeffrey MacDonald in prison… A powerful 2012 update on the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case from Gene Weingarten.

‘A major problem for Jeffrey MacDonald, Thornhill said, was Jeffrey MacDonald:

“He was a very egotistical person, and it absolutely came through. When he took the stand and started that phony crying, we were astonished. It was like bad acting. When we got to the jury room, we weren’t allowed to discuss it, and we didn’t, but we’re looking at each other, and it was like, ‘What just happened out there?’

“You know, there was testimony that a month after [the murders], MacDonald had sex with a nurse. The defense objected, and it was stricken from the testimony, but how do you strike that from your mind?”

That was the thing, Thornhill said. The jurors felt it: There was something fundamentally wrong with Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald.

1 October 2020
[truecrime] The Rise of the True-Crime Podcast … A look at how True Crime podcasts got mainstreamed. ‘She taught herself production by googling “How do I use GarageBand to edit.” She dropped three episodes at once, and within two weeks, she had 4,000 downloads. “I chalked it up to being in the right place at the right time. Then Justin [Evans] from Generation Why mentioned me and my show. That put me on the map. By the end of the week, I had 75,000 downloads.” That was in 2016, which true-crime producers described as still the Wild West of indie podcasting. Everyone learned by trial and error. They knew one another and shared tips in private Facebook groups; they attended conferences like CrimeCon to drum up publicity. They learned about filing Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain coroner reports and the pitfalls of using copyrighted music. They compared notes on how much to charge advertisers poking around this new medium and what hosting platforms cost. They set up Patreons, sold merch, plugged one another’s shows, and guest-hosted tirelessly. Ludlow also belongs to an informal FB group of female podcasters who support and encourage one another.’
3 June 2020
[truecrime] Murder in the Aquarian Age … Engrossing, early true crime story from tech reporter Steven Levy. ‘Chitwood put on the clear rubber gloves and went back to the open trunk. On top were some newspapers, dated in the late summer of 1977. Underneath was a layer of packing material and compressed plastic bags from Sears. Chitwood began scooping the Styrofoam aside. After three scoops, he saw something. At first he could not make out what it was, because it was so wrinkled and tough. But then he saw the shape of it—wrist, palm, and five fingers, curled and frozen. It was a human hand, and now there was no doubt in Chitwood’s mind about the contents of this trunk. He dug just a little deeper, following the shriveled, rawhidelike hand down the wrist. He saw an arm, still clothed in a plaid flannel shirt. He had seen enough. He turned to Einhorn, who was maintaining his studied nonchalance. “We found the body. It looks like Holly’s body,” he said. “You found what you found,” said the Unicorn.’
10 March 2020
[crime] A Brutal Murder, a Wearable Witness, and an Unlikely Suspect … Fascinating true-crime story about using a heartbeat tracking smartwatch as evidence in a murder case. ‘As Karen’s body was unzipped from the body bag and laid out at the morgue, the coroner took note of a black band still encircling her left wrist: a Fitbit Alta HR—a smartwatch that tracks heartbeat and movement. A judge signed a warrant to extract its data, which seemed to tell the story Karen couldn’t: On Saturday, September 8, five days before she was found, Karen’s heart rate had spiked and then plummeted. By 3:28 in the afternoon, the Fitbit wasn’t registering a heartbeat.’
31 January 2020
[truecrime] The girl in the box: the mysterious crime that shocked Germany … Go read this truly bizarre German True Crime story. ‘It appeared that the kidnappers had planned to keep Ursula alive. The box, 1.40m deep, was fitted with a shelf and a seat that doubled as a toilet. It was stocked with three bottles of water, 12 cans of Fanta, six large chocolate bars, four packets of biscuits and two packs of chewing gum. It also contained a small, bizarre library of 21 books, from Donald Duck comics to westerns, romance novels and thrillers with titles such as The Horror Lurks Everywhere. There was a light and a portable radio tuned to Bayern 3, the same station that broadcast the traffic jingle. To enable Ursula to breathe, the box had a ventilation system made from plastic plumbing pipes, which extended to ground level. But whoever designed it had failed to realise that without a machine to circulate the air, the oxygen would quickly run out. The police believed they were hunting more than one kidnapper, because of the size and weight of the box. At 60kg, it would probably have needed at least two people to carry it into the woods…’
8 January 2020
[crime] Who Really Killed Jimmy Hoffa? … Errol Morris examines who really killed Jimmy Hoffa. ‘What happens next is a matter of conjecture, of inference—a collision between unimpeachable data such as phone calls, the unreliability of witness testimony, and fish-delivery times. We do know several things for certain: there’s a real world out there, a real asphalt parking lot, a real phone booth, and a real Machus Red Fox (now called Andiamo). And Jimmy Hoffa was there, left, and never came back.’
13 September 2019
[podcasts] Go read and then listen… What are the best in-depth investigative podcasts?‘On the podcast “You Must Remember This”, I completely enjoyed the series they did on the Manson Family.’ [Related: You Must Remember This – Charles Manson’s Hollywood]
28 August 2019
[truecrime] The Killing of Julia Wallace: An Impossible Murder … Go read this real-life locked room-style true crime story. ‘The Wallace case is like a jigsaw puzzle where the last piece never fits. No matter how many times we reassemble it, it stubbornly refuses to form a complete image. At the centre of that fragmented picture remains the unknowable figure of William Herbert Wallace; flustered insurance salesman or criminal genius?’
13 June 2019
[truecrime] The Queasy Verdict of ‘The Staircase’ … A spoiler filled analysis of the true-crime series The Staircase. ‘The series is clear about how much of a problem the eccentric, bisexual, erudite Peterson is for the jurors. The Staircase isn’t interested in theorizing who actually killed Kathleen (and includes only one offhand reference to the actually quite credible theory that an owl did) because its focus isn’t solving a mystery. It’s illuminating how flawed and naïve the concept of blind justice is. The jurors in Peterson’s case can no more put away their own preconceptions than they can realistically isolate themselves from TV news and the firestorm surrounding the case.’
11 June 2019
[crime] The bizarre world of the true crime YouTube influencers‘It’s hard to explain the current trend towards lifestyle/true crime crossovers without acknowledging a disconcerting fact; that what seems at surface level to be a wild mismatch, has a perfectly sound internal logic lurking under the surface. Both rely on the marketing of a product in a wildly oversaturated marketplace. The required skills are readily interchangeable: a ‘relatable’ manner, the ability to spin a compelling yarn and an on-the-nose sincerity. And, most importantly, the savviness to seize an opportunity. And while the traditional avenues of online lifestyle revenue begin to shift and change, crime remains conventionally big traffic business. ‘
21 May 2019
[truecrime] Who killed the prime minister? The unsolved murder that still haunts Sweden … Fascinating long-read about the murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme in 1986 and the botched investigation and conspiracy theories that followed. ‘By the start of the 1990s, so much time and money had been spent fruitlessly pursuing Pettersson and the PKK that basic questions about the night of the murder remained unanswered. Where was the murder weapon, which was believed to be a Smith & Wesson .357 magnum revolver? Why were witness reports of men with walkie talkies near the site of the killing not taken seriously? Was the police incompetence too extreme to be accidental?’
16 May 2019
[truecrime] The real story behind Harper Lee’s lost true crime book … An interesting look at one of Harper Lee’s unfinished books. ‘“He might not have believed in what he preached, he might not have believed in voodoo,” she once wrote, “but he had a profound and abiding belief in insurance.” In the course of her reporting, she turned up dozens upon dozens of insurance policies, all taken out by Maxwell, seemingly without the knowledge of the insured, with his home address as the correspondence address and naming himself as the beneficiary. The more she learned about the earlier deaths, the more convinced she became that at least five of them were murders, even though he had never been convicted of any of them.’
31 January 2019
[true crime] The Haunting of 657 Boulevard in Westfield, New Jersey … This creepy, true-crime story will put you off ever buying a house.

‘Two weeks after the letter arrived, Maria stopped by the house to look at some paint samples and check the mail. She recognized the thick black lettering on a card-shaped envelope and called the police. “Welcome again to your new home at 657 Boulevard,” The Watcher wrote. “The workers have been busy and I have been watching you unload carfuls of your personal belongings. The dumpster is a nice touch. Have they found what is in the walls yet? In time they will.”

This time, The Watcher had addressed Derek and Maria directly, misspelling their names as “Mr. and Mrs. Braddus.” Had The Watcher been close enough to hear one of the Broadduses’ contractors addressing them? The Watcher boasted of having learned a lot about the family in the preceding weeks, especially about their children. The letter identified the Broadduses’ three kids by birth order and by their nicknames — the ones Maria had been yelling. “I am pleased to know your names now and the name of the young blood you have brought to me,” it said.

28 January 2019
[truecrime] Netflix’s Ted Bundy documentary and the problem with peak true crime … Some criticisms of True Crime documentaries. ‘The portrait painted is of the David Brent serial killers – obviously evil and deranged but also obsessed with the limelight and entirely unaware of the ludicrous figure he cuts as he insists on defending himself at trial. Yet it’s unclear whether Berlinger understands how much of a black hole his protagonist is. The makers of Conversations with a Killer seem almost hypnotised by Bundy. That’s another flaw with “Peak True Crime”: the insistence that we, too, are bedazzled by their subjects (see also Michael Peterson in The Staircase, Marjorie Diehl in Evil Genius etc).’
14 January 2019
[crime] What’s the single, best piece of true crime writing you’ve read? … Great list of must-read True Crime stories from Reddit.
13 December 2018
[tv] The Assassination of Gianni Versace review – a grim portrait of gay life‘In following Cunanan’s deadly joyride, the show also takes us from Miami to Minneapolis to Chicago to La Jolla. One moment, we’re at the Versace mansion, as chiseled butlers serve orange juice on silver trays, and the next we’re in seedy motels and lakeside cottages as characters snort heroin and hunt quail. The contrast says as much about class as it does the geographical scope of the murders; Cunanan is both killer and liar, but more than anything he’s a striver, with Versace advertisements thumb-tacked to his wall and an expensive wardrobe mostly gifted to him by the older, rich men whom he dates and, in some cases, slays.’
29 November 2018
[crime] How a Salvador Dalí Painting Was Stolen From Rikers Island Prison … A remarkable true crime story involving a stolen painting and a gang of corrupt prison guards on Rikers Island. ‘At 1 a.m. on March 1, 2003, the squawk of a radio announced a fire drill inside the Eric M. Taylor Center. Two thousand inmates were immediately locked down. Guards rushed from their posts and convened in a remote wing, as they had been trained to do during a drill. After the drill began and the jail’s lobby was deserted, the thieves got to work. One stood watch. Another slipped off the painting case’s locks. The third kept tabs on the fire drill’s progress. Within a few minutes, a replica of the Dalí hung in its place. The substitute was far from a perfect match, and the thief standing guard wasn’t convinced. “That looks ridiculous,” he said.’
8 November 2018
[truecrime] Is Our Love of True Crime Shows Really About Social Justice? … more analysis of the True Crime documentary genre. ‘While audiences were divided over Steven Avery’s guilt following the first season of Making a Murderer, most agreed that the evidence presented in the documentary and at his trial—at least what they saw—made a strong argument for it to be reexamined. Making is less about a case being closed and more about how Avery was prosecuted, which is why series co-directors Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos prefer to call it a “social justice” series, rather than a true crime one. “I think what scares me about [the true crime label] is often people think it’s fetishizing death or somehow exploiting someone’s tragedy, and that’s certainly not at all what we were about,” Ricciardi told Deadline.’
31 October 2018
[true crime] Out Came the Girls… a creepy, true crime story – Adolescent girl BFF murderers obsessed with Slender Man.

After their arrests, over the course of nearly nine combined hours of interviews, they claim that they were compelled to kill her by a monster they had encountered online. When discovered, the girls were making their way to him, heading to Wisconsin’s Nicolet National Forest on foot, nearly 200 miles north. They were convinced that, once there, if they pushed farther and farther into the nearly 700,000-acre forest, they would find the mansion in which their monster dwells and he would welcome them.

Morgan and Anissa packed for the trip—granola bars, water bottles, photos by which to remember their families. (As Anissa tells a detective, “We were probably going to be spending the rest of our lives there.”) Though they were both a very young, Midwestern twelve, they had been chosen for a dark and unique destiny which none of their junior-high classmates could possibly understand, drawn into the forest in the service of a force much greater and more mysterious than anything in their suburban-American lives. What drew them out there has a name: Slender Man, faceless and pale and impossibly tall. His symbol is the letter X.

18 September 2018
[podcasts] 52 of the Best True-Crime Podcasts … exhaustive looking list focusing on American true-crime. Accused: ‘Reporter Amber Hunt digs into the murder of 23-year-old Elizabeth Andes, who was found dead in her Ohio apartment in December 1978. Incredibly well produced and researched, it’s Cincinnati’s Serial.’
9 July 2018
[true crime] The Queasy Verdict of ‘The Staircase’ … A spoiler filled examination of the true-crime documentary “The Staircase”. ‘It’s tempting to call the story of Michael Peterson a tragedy. Not just because his protestations of innocence and grief are pitiable (although they are), or because he summarizes his life with a quote from Romeo and Juliet, “All are punished” (although he does). It’s tempting because, in The Staircase, it’s Peterson—as opposed to his dead wife—who’s unfailingly presented as the victim. After a short news brief detailing how Kathleen Peterson’s body has been found in the couple’s mansion in Durham, North Carolina, the series begins in earnest with Peterson walking the camera crew around the home, describing the events on the evening of Kathleen’s death. He’s calm and detailed in his account of how the couple watched a movie, talked about their kids, and drank a first bottle of wine, followed by a second. Then, he explains, the couple went down to the pool on their property. In Peterson’s telling, Kathleen went upstairs to bed while he stayed by the pool with his wine. It was the last time he saw her alive. What happened next was so bizarre, so unpredictable, that it made the Peterson murder investigation a national story…’
29 May 2018
[books] 25 Best True Crime Books of All Time … Strong list of True Crime books. ‘Skip Fatal Vision, the true crime book written by a journalist who was embedded with a man who was ultimately convicted for killing his pregnant wife and their two other children. Instead, get more meta and read ace cultural critic Janet Malcolm’s study of the relationship between the two men in The Journalist and the Murderer. It’s more thrilling than any book about ethics in crime journalism has any right to be.’
23 May 2018
[docu] From ‘Making a Murderer to ‘Evil Genius’: Netflix’s Golden Age of True-Crime … Examining Netflix’s successful approach to True-Crime documentaries. ‘They invite speculation and discussion by pulling at the threads of a mystery rather than defining and/or vilifying its subjects. They benefit from the Netflix model, which has allowed viewers to chart a case in either parceled-out chapters or, thanks to the service’s tendency to dump full seasons in a single bound, to inhale it as one continuous stem-to-stern investigation. They have a tendency to treat the sensationalistic material with a narrative seriousness that’s often missing from the tabloid-style shows. “There’s a lot of true crime content out there, right?” Nishimura told Business Insider. “What made [Making a Murderer] compelling and interesting and for me … was that commitment to the level of storytelling.” And they allow for viewers to get to know the players in these complex stories, and gives them the chance to understand their motivations rather than simply condemn their actions.’
18 April 2018
[crime] A Guy Walks Into a Bar — and Is Never Seen Again … An overview of the disappearance of Brian Shaffer. ‘Law enforcement seized a videotape from the surveillance camera that scanned the bar’s entrance area. It tracked Brian, Clint and Meredith riding the escalator to the upstairs bar at 1:15 a.m. An hour later, Clint and Meredith left in the opposite sequence: bar, escalator, street level. Brian should have come back down, too. He didn’t. Detectives gazed at the recording, rewinding and fast-forwarding it over and over again. A second camera was positioned outside an emergency exit, and they examined that footage too. Everyone who entered the bar that night was accounted for. Everyone except Brian. When the police reported his disappearance to the FBI, it sounded like an April Fools prank, a guy-walks-into-a-bar joke without a punchline. “Med student seems to disappear into thin air,” reported the media. The footage stymied detectives for the next decade.’
5 December 2017
[truecrime] The Bloody History of the True Crime Genre … Examining the origins of True Crime … ‘Reputable authors became increasingly interested in crime as a site of social, aesthetic, and scientific inquiry. Reform-minded writers like Charles Dickens (“A Visit to Newgate,” 1836) and William Thackeray (“Going to See a Man Hanged,” 1840) decried the institutional punishments of the era. Perhaps the most notorious essay was the satirically titled “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,” first published in Blackwood’s Magazine in 1827 by the self-confessed opium-eater Thomas De Quincey. The essay was so well received it inspired a “Second Paper” in 1839 and a collected edition including a “Postscript” in 1854. Adopting the absurd persona of a member of the “Society of Connoisseurs in Murder,” De Quincey articulates his aesthetics of murder. He does not condone violence or make moral claims, but instead compares the effect of murder to Kant’s theory of the sublime…’
10 November 2017
[truecrime] Outside the Manson Pinkberry … a long, thoughful dive into the world of Manson Family bloggers‘I found the Manson Bloggers so intent on each other that my arrival barely registered. They were talking shop with the eagerness of model-train enthusiasts. I grabbed a beer and tried to follow the rapid-fire discussion about unsolved Northern California murders and Roman Polanski’s sexual preferences. It was tricky—like all subcultures, when the Manson Bloggers feel safe, they speak in a kind of in-group argot, full of nicknames, acronyms, and arcane references. There were hardly any mentions of husbands, wives, children, jobs, any of the infrastructure of daily life. Instead, they gossiped about minor Manson Family characters as if they were mutual friends.’
25 October 2017
[true-crime] ‘We found who killed your sister.’ 48 years later, a cold case is solved … a true crime story from Los Angeles … ‘The investigators frequently flipped through those files, looking for the clues that could lead them to Halison’s killer. Last summer, they asked Klann to run the DNA again, hoping improved technology would finally help them identify enough markers to upload the sample in the state’s system. When Klann got the results, he said, he immediately sent Bengtson a text message. “Are you sitting down?” he wrote…’
14 August 2017
[true-crime] How “Making a Murderer” Went Wrong… a sobering critique of True Crime Documentaries … ‘Yet the most obvious thing to say about true-crime documentaries is something that, surprisingly often, goes unsaid: they turn people’s private tragedies into public entertainment. If you have lost someone to violent crime, you know that, other than the loss itself, few things are as painful and galling as the daily media coverage, and the license it gives to strangers to weigh in on what happened. That experience is difficult enough when the coverage is local, and unimaginable when a major media production turns your story into a national pastime. “Sorry, I won’t be answering any questions because . . . TO ME ITS REAL LIFE,” the younger brother of Hae Min Lee, the murder victim in “Serial,” wrote on Reddit in 2014.’
17 July 2017
[docu] The Keepers: ‘I’ve dealt with survivors and they’re sickened by the church’s response’ … Another look at Netflix’s True Crime documentary ‘The Keepers’… ‘The response of the archdiocese of Baltimore has been surprising, to say the least. “People in churches and schools in Baltimore started sending us literature that the archdiocese was sending out, on how to tell people what we got wrong. The documentary wasn’t even out. I just found it incredibly disappointing.” The @archbalt account retweeted a message that called the series “fiction”, a spokesperson subsequently admitting that this was “bad judgment”. “They’re trying to re-message. They’ve lost. It’s too late now,” says White.’
21 June 2017
[docu] Errol Morris on Interviewing Trump: ‘It’s Obvious: This Person Is Insane’… Errol Morris on his new film, true crime and Donald Trump … ‘I am utterly appalled by it all. I can’t even stand people trying to make sense out of it. There’s no point in trying. There’s a scene I’ve always loved in Dr. Strangelove, where General Turgidson (George C. Scott) is reading his letter from Brigadier General Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in the Pentagon war room, and Ripper is going on and on about precious bodily fluids. Peter Sellers’ president says “Give me that,” looks at the letter, and suddenly says, “It’s obvious: this person is insane!” Well, it’s obvious! It’s so obvious, it’s overt! I mean, every day you pick up the paper and it’s appalling.’
7 June 2017
[truecrime] A Loaded Gun … a look at the violent past of a non-standard mass shooter … ‘For fifty minutes, Bishop said nothing. Then, just as the meeting was concluding, she stood up, pulled out the gun, a 9-mm. Ruger semiautomatic, and shot Podila in the head. The blast was deafening. She fired again, hitting a department assistant, Stephanie Monticciolo. Next, Bishop turned and shot Adriel Johnson, a cell biologist. People screamed and ducked for cover, but Bishop was blocking the only door. Moriarity did not fully register what was happening until she saw Bishop—her jaw set, her brow furrowed—train the gun on a fourth colleague, Maria Ragland Davis, and shoot her. Moriarity dived under the table. With gunshots ringing out above her, she flung her arms around Bishop’s legs, looked up, and screamed, “Amy, don’t do this! Think of my daughter! Think of my grandson!” Bishop looked down—then turned the gun on Moriarity. Click. Moriarity, in terror, stared at the gun. Click.’
1 June 2017
[truecrime] Isdal Woman: The mystery death haunting Norway for 46 years … a fascinating unsolved true crime story … ‘On the morning of 29 November 1970, a man and his two young daughters see a body in Isdalen Valley. The corpse is sprawled across some rocks – with its arms extended in a “boxer” position, typical of bodies that have been burnt. Isdalen is known to some locals as “Death Valley” – it was a site where people committed suicide in medieval times, and, in the 1960s, some hikers had fallen to their deaths while trekking in the fog. But the woman does not appear to be a normal hiker…’
23 May 2017
[tv] The Keepers review – a breathtakingly brave true-crime documentary … reviewing a new true-crime documentary from Netflix… ‘In November 1969, a young nun, Sister Cathy Cesnik, went missing from her Baltimore apartment. The following year she was discovered, lying on her back on a frozen hillside, far from home, her skull broken in. From that day to this, no one has been able to conclusively say what happened to her. In this meticulous, skilfully edited series, White sets about interviewing key witnesses, police, former pupils from the school where Cesnik worked, local journalists and conspicuously few members of the church, painstakingly unearthing the complex story like a palaeontologist with a fine paintbrush. And his way in is a group of dedicated sixtysomething former pupils of Sister Cathy, who band together to find out what happened, despite the passing of years and the repeated denial of any justice. It is their story, and rightly so.’
18 January 2017
[murder] Solving the crime that changed my life: the murder of British backpacker Peter Falconio … some true-crime from the Outback of Australia… ‘Then a detective – the one Gwynne had chosen for her acute attention to detail and who had sifted through thousands of Murdoch’s belongings – discovered a small, round, Mary Jane hair tie. “It was the hair tie that was taken from Joanne Lees when she struggled to survive and keep her life. [Murdoch] had it wrapped around his shoulder holster, inside his belongings. I think it was a trophy but no one will ever know.” Months later, when the hair tie was presented as evidence in the trial, it clearly made an impression on Murdoch. “He recoiled and he wouldn’t touch it,” recalls Gwynne. “You could see that he knew that was it. That was the nail in his coffin.”’
23 February 2016
[murder] The murderers next door … Engrossing true-crime story about a couple who murdered the wife’s parents for money to buy celebrity memorabilia …

The couple admitted manslaughter, but not double murder. They said 63-year-old Patricia had shot William, 85, during a late-night row. In their version of events, Patricia had then turned on Susan, saying she was having an affair with Christopher, taunting and provoking her into turning the gun on her mother. Susan told the police she’d been sexually abused by her father until she was 11, and that her mother had been complicit. The couple said it was a crime of passion and claimed that Susan had acted alone. She told Christopher only a week after the shooting, they said, when they returned to Mansfield from their home in Dagenham, ate fish and chips, watched the Eurovision song contest, and got up at 2am to bury the decomposing bodies.

“They’d had 15 years to prepare a story that would bring them the least amount of time in prison,” DCI Rob Griffin, who led the case against the couple, tells me. It was his job to prove this was a calculated double murder, motivated by greed and deserving a long stretch in jail. But proving anything in a case this historic is a challenge: there were no phone records, no CCTV, no emails for him to trawl through (“The footprints people tend to leave behind nowadays weren’t there for us”). So Griffin turned to what he calls “old-fashioned detective work”: tracing relatives and neighbours from 1998 to try to piece together what had happened.