Please don’t lump me in among the religious. Far from it. I only go to church to attend weddings and funerals. I would like to believe that bad people are punished and good people are rewarded in the afterlife. I know, it’s probably not really that way. But we are getting away from the real issue of this thread: Are we all sick puppies for liking true crime stories? Of course we are, but it sure doesn’t stop me from wanting to know more about what motivates a person to go out and chop up their neighbors and serve them up to their dinner guests. :eek:
Looks like she was probably guilty, no matter how sympathetically Susan Hayward played her. Two independent, though second-hand, reports of an informal confession. What looks like a confession to the priest at her execution. While the law that considers you guilty of a murder if it happens while you are committing a different felony, even if you were not the person who committed the murder, was not in place at the time, by today’s standards she would be guilty.
But damn, that woman had no taste in men!
Yeah, I hear you…I watched Heavenly Creatures repeatedly a few years back and my mother was quite disturbed after she watched it with me! (probably not a good movie to watch just after you’ve come out of the closet!)
Hey Eve, would you mind sharing your theory about what happened to JonBenet with me? The who-did-it part? Are you an “intruder” or “parents” did it theorist?
And please let me apologize, I don’t mean to hijack.
To respond to your original post, I’m also a huge TC buff - it probably started when I was young.
If only because the last night Dianne Masters was alive and ate at The Village Courtyard (the very first restaurant I ever tasted a “Kiddie Cocktail” at), my Mother was part of the group of people she had dinner with. And I’ve met Michael Corbitt. And grew up in Palos Park. And my Dad had a part in Corbitt’s being busted.
And people thought the suburbs were boring…
“Hey Eve, would you mind sharing your theory about what happened to JonBenet with me?”
—I honestly have no idea. The Ramseys LOOK guilty (the note; the creepiness of the whole baby-pageant deal). But it seems equally likely that someone from outside did it. I just don’t know. For some reason, the Ramseys don’t piss me off as much as O.J. anmd Gary Condit do, so maybe I am more willing to cut them a break. I do remember my mother calling me after it hit the news, saying, “I just read that someone murdered Joan Bennett—I thought she was already dead!”
What do YOU think?
Drop—Thanks for the info on the glam Barbara Graham (“the American Ruth Ellis!”). I got most of my dope on her from Susan Hayward, so I am hardly an expert on that case.
What do I think? I believe it was an intruder. But then again I consider Lou Smit one of the greatest, ever.
"I believe it was an intruder. But then again I consider Lou Smit one of the greatest, ever. "
—Lou Smit is one of the greatest intruders? Hmmm . . . Maybe he made off with the Lindbergh baby and Little Charley Ross, too, then . . .
My True-Crime Obsession has a large subsection entitled “They Wuz Framed!” or at least railroaded (AKA innocent victims of either Blind Justice or the Rabid Media).
Two cases in point:
[list=1]
[li]Laurencia “Bambi” Bambenek – the so-called Playboy Bunny murderer. Accused of killing her husband’s ex-wife, she’s sent to jail. There are numerous holes in the prosecution’s case, including probably evidence tampering, which the judge virtually ignores and attempts at appeal are blown off. After eight years in prison, she escapes with the help of a boyfriend, flees to Canada, gets captured by the local cops, attempts to prevent extradition but fails, but does manage to get enough media attention to her case to cause the prosecution and the court to let her plea “no contest” to the charges and reduce her sentence to time served.[/li][li]McMartin Preschool - If you haven’t heard of this one, you are either a non-U.S. resident or living in the backwoods thereof. These people, accused of molesting the children attending their preschool, were practically indicted, convicted and executed in the media before they ever saw the inside of a courtroom. Charges were dropped on all but two of the original defendents; those two endured years of incarceration while the case dragged on. Children were virtually coerced into giving testimony that was damaging but not credible. Not one photograph of the supposedly hundreds taken during “naked games” time was ever found. It turned out that the original complaintant, the mother of one of the kids, was a severe alchoholic and borderline schizophrenic who later died choking on her own vomit. Millions of dollars were wasted on this case, but the lead prosecutor, a woman who was sure this case would make her famous, refused to drop it. One of her assistant D.A.'s quit in disgust and spilled the whole thing to the papers. The first trial ended with one of the defendants acquitted and a hung jury on the other; they retried him, and finally he was acquitted.[/li][/list=1]
I’ve been looking for good books about these. Any suggestions?
I don’t know of a specific book about the McMartin/Buckey case, but it may be mentioned or at least discussed in general in Elaine Showalter’s Hystories, which contains a chapter on the mass/media hysteria regarding “satanic ritual abuse,” among other things.
My mom sent me a link to this today. If anyone’s looking for a gift for one of the true crime fans in this thread, look no farther than this eBay auction.
And no, I don’t know how she found it.
At last! A thread I can contribute to:
I reviewed “Final Truth” for a South Carolina newspaper when it was published. This is one of the few books that creeped me out. Gaskins was a total pervert who was abused as a child and spent the rest of his life giving it back with interest.
Another book that made an impression is “Evidence of Love,” which was about a love triangle in Texas that led to one of the women killing the other woman with an axe or a knife. I’m a bit fuzzy on the details because I used the case for my first (unpublished) mystery novel. What I do remember is that the husband turned out to be a guy who wasn’t worth killing over.
The stories that grab my attention are the ones that reveal something about the lives of ordinary people. Reading about Jack the Ripper, I’m interested in watching the men and women of that era scratching for a living, drinking their wages, fighting for a place to stay for the night, and feeling enormously grateful that I don’t have to do that.
Same with Lizzie Bordon, living in that two-story house in which rooms open only onto other rooms, the hazy heat in a time when air conditioning meant opening a window, or fleeing to the hills for a month.
The Jon Benet case leads into a hall of mirrors. I read up on the case for a few months and visited some Web sites (one of the Colorado newspapers has an excellent site with photos of the house and the rooms and some of the “intruder” evidence listed). At one point, I figured the ransom note was a key piece of evidence because it’s about the only thing that the police hadn’t f**ked up. Figure out why the note was written, and by who, and you’d have your solution. But that turned out to be another hall of mirrors, with its long length and weird syntaxes. What creditable case can be made from it? And what’s even weirder is reading some of the bulletin boards set up by people who never knew JonBenet, yet feel some bond with her, as if she was their child. Very creepy.
“Fatal Vision” is another excellent book, whatever one may think of its author (who wrote an atrocious Ted Kennedy biography that was so full of errors and bullshit that it bombed). Jeffrey Macdonald’s few remaining defenders tend to forget that it was a jury who convicted him and not McGinness’ book.
Drat! Next time I kill somebody I was going to blame the gang from Scooby Doo, too!
The true-crime book that creeped me out the most is “Paris Crime Stories,” which included grisly crime-scene photos if the late 19th century, and tales woven by the author from the actual facts of the cases. I have it buried in the bottom of my closet, and whenever I take it out to peruse it, I get major-league heebie-jeebies. Makes Luc Sante’s “Evidence” look like “The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.”
Read it and Creep: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3908247187/qid=1018880140/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0550899-0890555
Oh yeah, I’m a fan. Just finished reading Mindhunter, actually, although I was not a huge fan. I thought that the author was a little too descriptive about his personal life. I picked up the book to read about the serial killer mentality, not how many women said FBI agent has slept with-don’t really care.
I also have all the websites about serial killers marked (Bundy, Williams, Wournos, etc.) as well as a few Black Dahlia sites.
Currently reading Underboss, which I think would qualify as true crime. Recently finished one about Paul Castellano. The Godfather, Goodfellas, etc. --if it’s about La Cosa Nostra, I will be thoroughly entertained!
What about Death Scenes: A Homicide Detective’s Scrapbook? Gak. You can bury my copy at the bottom of your closet, as long as I can have visitation rights. I got some strange looks when I bought that one, more than when I bought Jack Kevorkian’s Prescription Medicine. We’re all probably on some list or other.
Oh God…I have a pretty strong stomach and that book totally grossed me out…glad it’s not color photography. Amazing that we think of them as being the “good old days”—they were every bit as gory as today.
Out of curiosity, I did a Google search on “Barbara Graham”, as I didn’t know anything about her case. In the process, I discovered a great “True Crime” web site that I thought you all might be interested in.
Here’s the link on the Barbara Graham case, by the way.
Read David Simon’s Homicide: A Year On The Killing Streets. It’s the basis for the H:LOTS tv show and it’s excellent.
I cant believe I’m not the only one. What a relief.
*returns to her stack of Ann Rule books