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The Blotter Presents

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The true crime worth YOUR time, reviewed weekly. Sarah D. Bunting, desk sergeant.

  • 3 minutes 2 seconds
    Closing Statements
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    bestevidence.fyi
    26 August 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 9 minutes
    155: Most Wanted and While The City Sleeps
    Nope, that's not a typo: Best Evidence publisher Eve Batey joins me to talk about a movie that's still in "theaters," Most Wanted. Featuring Josh Hartnett's foxy 'stache and a breakout ugly performance from Jim Gaffigan, Most Wanted interrogates the role of budgetary concerns in law-enforcement corruption and/or incompetence...and we interrogate the crusading-reporter subgenre and whether it's true to life.

    We do it twice, as a matter of fact, as our Cold Case topic is While The City Sleeps, a movie that references the William Heirens case but is actually about whether media's attempts to "make" a story is itself the story...or criminal. The 1956 thriller stars Vincent Price, Drew Barrymore's dad, and a realistically sodden Dana Stevens in a tale about a callow press scion using a string of murders to pit his top men (...uch) against each other for a plum job. We recommend it, and not just because it kiiiind of makes John Douglas look like an ass for claiming nobody knew how to profile properly before 1974, so hike your pants up to your pits and have a listen to The Blotter Presents, Episode 155.

    SHOW NOTES
    19 August 2020, 1:30 pm
  • 1 hour 6 minutes
    154: Surviving Jeffrey Epstein and The Con
    [CW: The episode reviews series that discuss sexual assault, harm to children, and suicide. Please listen with care.]

    Omar Gallaga returns to discuss two very grim and infuriating properties, starting with Lifetime's Surviving Jeffrey Epstein, which centers the survivors of Epstein's monstrousness while also indicting a society that let him manipulate it with shocking impunity. It's a good docuseries that's also a difficult sit, and the rare discussion of the case of late that had the capacity to tell us something new.

    The Con also told us something new, about a different kind of predatory behavior -- the outright frauds that led to the financial crisis of 2008. It's a straightforward narrative without a lot of production bells and whistles, but it's also a very careful accounting (so to speak) of all the different bad actors in the world of mortgage fraud, from inexperienced brokers to rapacious CEOs to the Wall Street traders who created the demand. The podcast may not be fast, but you'll be furious by the end of The Blotter Presents, Episode 154.

    SHOW NOTES

    12 August 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 7 minutes 27 seconds
    Wondery Presents Even The Rich: The House of Versace
    Wondery’s Even the Rich gives you a behind-the-scenes look at the stories of some of the greatest family dynasties in history. This season, three siblings — Gianni, Donatella, and Santo Versace — built one of the greatest fashion labels the world has ever seen. But when Gianni is murdered on the front steps of his Miami Beach mansion, the label loses its visionary. Can the House of Versace survive? On this four-episode series, we’ll dive into the origins of the Versace label and we’ll meet a few celebrities along the way, like Elton John, Princess Diana, and Madonna.

    Listen to the full episode: http://wondery.fm/ETR_BlotterPresents
    11 August 2020, 10:00 am
  • 1 hour 24 minutes
    153: Ann Rule's Sleeping With Danger and The Last Narc
    Two guests, no waiting this week, as ...These Are Their Stories co-host Kevin Flynn joins me to talk about Ann Rule's Sleeping With Danger, starring Elisabeth "Serena Southerlyn" Röhm and Leslie "ME Rodgers" Hendrix. It's a thumbs-sideways from both of us on the movie, which is not quite good, but not all that bad, and has some anachronism issues and PSA pacing that undercut surprisingly decent acting. Grab a Smoothie Of Doom to fortify yourself for...

    ...the second Most Wanted topic, Amazon's The Last Narc, a series Jessica Liese and I meant to talk about months ago, before Amazon yanked it unceremoniously. The case of what really happened to murdered DEA agent Kiki Camarena premiered last week, with nearly as little fanfare, and while we're still not clear on why it got disappeared, it's a compelling and confidently shot four-parter featuring clear explainers and flavorful anecdotes. But that doesn't mean we wouldn't have changed anything...or that we weren't happy to hear Robert Stack in a voice-over. Brace yourself for more government malfeasance: it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 153.

    SHOW NOTES
    5 August 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 51 minutes 45 seconds
    152: Fear City: New York vs. The Mafia and The Perfect Murder S05E09
    Is this the widest gulf in quality between the two shows under discussion in Blotter history? Maybe! But Netflix's new three-part series on the "Commission Case" that brought down the New York Mob is disciplined, compelling, and reminds me and guest Jeb Lund that Rudy Giuliani didn't always completely suck at everything...and that barbers really have a challenging job sometimes.

    The Perfect Murder, meanwhile, is also compelling, but risibly acted, weirdly production-designed, and hilarious in a way that brings to mind a certain [ploop!]. It's so memorably bizarre that at least it "honors" Gavin Smith by stamping his case indelibly into our memories, but we really shouldn't be giggling at a true-crime story. Wear a crop top to the cop shop for The Blotter Presents, Episode 152.

    SHOW NOTES

    29 July 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 15 minutes
    151: The Business Of Drugs and Summer Of Sam
    Filmmaker and baseball-Twitter-improver Randy Wilkins joins me to talk about Netflix's The Business Of Drugs, a six-part series hosted by Amaryllis Fox that tries to take a value-neutral look at the economics of black-market substances. But is it TOO neutral? Does it try to do too much in each episode? Might it have been better off only following a single figure through each drug's "story"? And what do coverage of cocaine cartels and MLB have in common?

    Later, we dig into Spike Lee's Summer Of Sam: why it was rejected by critics, how Lee uses local detail to get at universal truths, and whether Lee would come back to the chaotic summer of 1977 and David Berkowitz in a documentary format. All the nefariously used stuffed animals and Reggie Jackson crackpot theories you could ask for: it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 151.

    SHOW NOTES
    SPONSORS
    22 July 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 55 minutes 14 seconds
    150: Athlete A and American Greed S13.E06
    [content warning for discussions of child sexual abuse, suicide]

    Stephanie Green ventures back into the grim case against Larry Nassar with me this week, this time with Netflix's Athlete A, which sets itself apart from other properties by also making a case against USA Gymnastics, the Karolyi Ranch, and the messed-up ways we think about child athletes. If you watched At The Heart Of Gold, do you "need" to watch this one? And will you want a follow-up in a year's time?

    Later, we delved into the case of Scott Menaged as told by S13.E06 of American Greed. Despite Stacy Keach's gusto-rrific voice-over and a pretty decent explainer on recession-market house-flipping, Stephanie and I still had questions about Menaged's credit-card scam...and his terrible jeans. Come for the indictment of abusive coaches, stay for the elision of scam process: it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 150.

    SHOW NOTES

    15 July 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 1 hour 5 minutes
    149: I'll Be Gone In The Dark and Murder Made Me Famous
    [content warning for sexual assault, neonaticide, truly egregious Foley design]

    When the subject is the Golden State Killer, the guest is Mike Dunn, who's back to talk about the first three episodes of HBO's I'll Be Gone In The Dark. Directed by Oscar-winner Liz Garbus and others, the six-part docuseries seems to struggle to integrate two narrative styles: a straight-ahead true-crime tale, and a "crimoir" about the wearing effects of researching monsters and the abysses they call home. Does Michelle McNamara's untimely death create a halo effect? Are some Capote comparisons more apt than others? And will we keep watching?

    In the Cold Case section, I went looking for a Garden State case to pair with the Golden State Most Wanted section...and what I found was so hilarribly bad, tacky, overacted, and downright bizarre that I fully expected Mike to end our friendship after watching it. Murder Made Me Famous S04.E06 covers the Melissa Drexler/"Prom Mom" case in pitilessly cringey detail, including a splash neither of us will ever forget, and when we go to hell for laughing at this trash-isode, it's this show we'll have to watch for all eternity. Collect all your most irrelevant details for the voice-over: it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 149.

    SHOW NOTES
    1 July 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 51 minutes 55 seconds
    148: Miracle Fishing and Exhibit A
    How to describe Miles Hargrove's documentary about his father's kidnapping by FARC guerrillas in 1994 -- a kidnap memoir? Found footage meets ransom procedural? It's all of that, and it's unique in the genre; my guest Jeb Lund and I don't know when you'll be able to watch it, but if it comes to VOD or Independent Lens, Jeb and I agree that you should check it out.

    We're less of a mind about Netflix's exploration of questionable forensics disciplines from last year, Exhibit A. I liked it for the sugar-free talking-head interviews and the snarky structuring of the episodes; Jeb wished Netflix had a 1.5-speed setting while he was watching it. But we agree on this: 1) Dexter shouldn't be anyone's favorite show, and 2) you should listen to The Blotter Presents, Episode 148. 
    SHOW NOTES
    24 June 2020, 1:00 pm
  • 34 minutes 3 seconds
    147: Belly Of The Beast, Coded Bias, and the Yasmin Neal interview
    [CW for references to domestic violence, racial violence, and medical malpractice.]

    The podcast staycations on the doc-festival circuit this week with a couple of films from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival: Belly Of The Beast, a harrowing account of involuntary sterilization in the California penal system, and the sickening persistence of eugenics in the U.S.; and Coded Bias, which explores the capitalist algorithm and everything artificial "intelligence" gets wrong. (Note: I'd intended also to review Down A Dark Stairwell, but that screener didn't come through; hopefully I'll get to it later in the month.)

    In the Cold Case section, I talked to filmmaker Yasmin Neal about her 2019 short Target Practice, a six-minute short that "has become a viral representation of 'modern-day lynching.'" We covered Holiday vs. Simone, how to direct children in dark material, and American iconography for all. The documentaries of tomorrow and a timeless short of yesteryear, in The Blotter Presents, Episode 147.

    SHOW NOTES
    17 June 2020, 2:00 pm
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