Closing Statements
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Aug 26, 2020•3 min
The Blotter Presents
The true crime worth YOUR time, reviewed weekly. Sarah D. Bunting, desk sergeant.
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Episodes
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 ...
Aug 19, 2020•1 hr 10 min
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 capacit...
Aug 12, 2020•1 hr 6 min
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...
Aug 11, 2020•7 min
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 ...
Aug 05, 2020•1 hr 24 min
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...
Jul 29, 2020•52 min
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 ...
Jul 22, 2020•1 hr 16 min
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 t...
Jul 15, 2020•55 min
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 M...
Jul 01, 2020•1 hr 6 min
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 th...
Jun 24, 2020•52 min
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...
Jun 17, 2020•34 min
146: Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story and Woman On Trial: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story
The Dirty John franchise, clumsily named though it is, is back -- and Marcia Chatelain is back to talk about it. It doesn't feel "necessary," in These Times...and yet we're both planning to keep watching, thanks to Amanda Peet's fearless performance; the comparisons we can make with Mrs. America ; and the fond memories it recalls of Meredith Baxter's definitive version. Later, we're digging into a Lifetime movie about another '80s true-crime icon: Laurie "Bambi" Bembenek, whose quest to unmask c...
Jun 10, 2020•1 hr 36 min
145: Quiz and No Stone Unturned
First-time guest and Best Evidence contributor Margaret Howie joined me to talk about Quiz , the miniseries about the UK Who Wants To Be A Millionaire scandal now airing on AMC. Is it as good for what it leaves out as what it puts in? Are there class issues at work that non-Brits can't get at? And how does Matthew MacFadyen manage to play Charles Ingram so neutrally? Later, we talk about the great Alex Gibney's not AS great No Stone Unturned , a true-crime Troubles explainer that tackles the Lou...
Jun 03, 2020•1 hr 14 min
Blotter Brief 43: Reed Redmond on Mobbed Up
Mobbed Up: The Fight For Las Vegas drops Tuesday, May 26. I interviewed producer and host Reed Redmond about the podcast, interviewing Mob enforcers, mid-century nostalgia, and NOT watching Casino . SHOW NOTES Mobbed Up at the Las Vegas Review-Journal Tour the Mob Museum virtually
May 25, 2020•23 min
144: Fake Heiress and Unsolved Mysteries S03.E10
After our plans to cover Amazon docuseries The Last Narc got disappeared along with the show, Jessica Liese and I pivoted back to familiar ground: Fake Heiress, a late-2019 pod on everyone's favorite art-foundationing NYC scammer, Anna Delvey/Sorokin. The podcast isn't good , and across-the-pond class issues read weirdly to us North Americans...but is it a fast and fun enough listen for us to recommend? Or are you better off rereading the contemporary coverage? We went even further back in time ...
May 20, 2020•1 hr 10 min
143: A Confession and Let Him Have It
Allison Lowe Huff returns for a UK docudrama two-fer, starting with A Confession , ITV's miniseries from last year about the murders of Sian O'Callaghan and Becky Godden, and the confession to them that cracked the cases but ruined a detective's career. Did we need more than six episodes with these people? Did Steve Fulcher's book have more crackpot theories than the TV adaptation allowed for? And is anyone worse than Pete? (Spoiler: no.) [NB: I discovered after recording that Britbox isn't avai...
May 13, 2020•1 hr 10 min
142: Stolen Babies and The Phoebe Judge Interview
Piper Weiss returned for a 1993 Lifetime movie about Tennessee baby broker Georgia Tann, Stolen Babies , that won Mary Tyler Moore an Emmy. Is this a notch above the usual '90s Lifetime fare, or do the accents ruin the relatively snappy pacing and shockingly direct villainy of Tann's actions? We dug into the Tann story thanks to the second part of the podcast: Kevin Smokler's conversation with Criminal and This Is Love host and co-creator Phoebe Judge from April 22, 2020. They talked about every...
May 06, 2020•1 hr 26 min
141: Bad Education and Frontline's "Terror In Little Saigon"
Toby Ball takes a break from refilling the Clorox shot-ski to talk about HBO's ripped-from-the-2004-headlines docudrama, Bad Education, in which Wolverine and CJ Cregg defraud the Roslyn school district -- and Toby and I really liked it, but did it need a stronger or more singular point of view? Should it have embraced its All The President's American Vandals nature more openly? And what is Janney's accent doing? Later, we went back to 2015 for a rather un- Frontline -y Frontline that tried to d...
Apr 29, 2020•1 hr 3 min
140: True History Of The Kelly Gang and Catch & Kill
Australio-Irish icon Ned Kelly got the very first big-screen treatment in 1906, and now the director of Snowtown is back with yet another one. Does Justin Kurzel's time-shifted "punk" take on Peter Carey's novel hold Alex Segura's and my interest? Later, we'll talk about whether The Catch & Kill Podcast With Ronan Farrow needs to exist, what we'd rather have heard instead, and text niftinesses that don't translate. Grab a colander helmet; it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 140. SHOW NOTES Tr...
Apr 22, 2020•56 min
138: A Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy and American Animals
A new hour-long documentary confronts the deaths of Jen and Sarah Hart and their six adopted children in A Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy -- but did this doc need to exist? And does it do anything the Broken Harts podcast didn't? Later, we'll talk about a docu-nactment hybrid, American Animals , from the director of The Imposter , and whether this genre-buster works where the Transy book heist did not. (Uh, spoiler.) No free hugs here, folks; it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 139. SH...
Apr 15, 2020•1 hr 11 min
138: Atlanta's Missing And Murdered and The Robert Kolker Interview
[ CW for violence against children ] Toby Ball returns to discuss -- from a safe distance -- HBO's limited series on the Atlanta child murders of 1979-1981, Atlanta's Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children . Is it too ambitious? Did it set out to be a true-crime docuseries, or a sociological study of the rise of The New South? And what did Wayne Williams actually do? Later, Kevin Smokler talks to Lost Girls author Robert Kolker about how that book became a film; trusting the filmmaking process;...
Apr 07, 2020•1 hr 58 min
137: The Scheme and Finding Steve McQueen
Mike Dunn returns -- from a safe distance -- to talk about HBO's college-hoops bribery-scandal doc The Scheme . Did we like it so much because we really miss sports, or is Christian Dawkins just that charismatic? Actually, it's probably both, and between this and Disgraced , director Pat Kondelis has really found his lane. Later, we manage to avoid getting into (yet) a(nother) Ocean's 11 quote fight while discussing last year's Finding Steve McQueen , a feature based on the United California Ban...
Apr 01, 2020•1 hr 3 min
136: Lost Girls and All Good Things
[ Mgmt. apologizes for various sound issues, incl. 1) construction noise next door; 2) dog being a yappy heller; and 3) Skype throttling Kevin's sound .] Kevin Smokler is back to discuss Liz Garbus's feature on one fragment of the Long Island Serial Killer case -- Lost Girls , based on Robert Kolker's excellent book. We like everyone involved, but aren't sure we can recommend the film, because despite excellent sources and performances (mostly), the film isn't sure who it's for. All Good Things ...
Mar 18, 2020•1 hr 11 min
135: The Most Dangerous Animal Of All and Hustlers
Can FX repeat its American Crime Story success in the unscripted space? The Most Dangerous Animal Of All takes a big swing, but Gary Stewart may get stuck on the bench with me, my guest Eve Batey, and everyone else whose dads aren't the Zodiac. Would this have made a good feature just on the criminal drama that was Stewart's birth parents? What is the series trying to accomplish with the volte face in the fourth episode? And should I rename the podcast "Look, Nobody's Dad Did Anything"? But we'r...
Mar 11, 2020•1 hr 2 min
134: McMillion$ and Rotten
I'm so grateful Dr. Marcia Chatelain made time for even more discussion of fast-food malfeasance; she's my guest again as we take a look at the back half of Monopoly-scam docuseries McMillion$ . The character-based future seasons we wanted, "poor man's Sante Kimes" used as a verb, the ways in which McMillion$ is the most American of stories, and much more. Later, we waded into Netflix's Big Food series, Rotten , which does a lot of things well (good research, excellent vintage footage), but a lo...
Mar 04, 2020•55 min
133: Unabomber: In His Own Words and Strictly Stalking
Jessica Liese joins me to talk about a limited series Netflix picked up from Reelz, Unabomber: In His Own Words , which exceeded our expectations -- and while we'd recommend it as a good case overview with unparalleled access, we both wondered if it wasn't trying to hard to explain (or even rationalize) Ted Kaczynski's motivations for killing three people and injuring dozens more. Our second Most Wanted topic is recent podcast Strictly Stalking, and we agree that it's a great idea with some unfo...
Feb 26, 2020•1 hr 4 min
132: The Pharmacist and Inside Story's "False Witness"
The new four-parter about a grieving father's crusade against Purdue Pharma, The Pharmacist , has a couple of problems -- but, guest Jeb Lund and I agree, the chief issue is that we wanted more : more on the pill-mill ecosystem, more on the race and class issues that permeate awareness of the opioid crisis, and more from this production team. Even when Dan Schneider Sr.'s grief is hard to watch, The Pharmacist is very watchable. Our Cold Case topic, Inside Story 's episode on Jeffrey MacDonald f...
Feb 19, 2020•1 hr 5 min
131: Interrogation and The Power Of Attorney
Toby Ball didn't watch all of Interrogation , CBS All-Access's new choose-your-own-watch-order procedural (based, evidently, on a real case); I did; we both have some of the same issues with the "hook" of shuffled episodes -- and I had MAJOR issues with the ending. Was an all-star cast wasted on a project that doesn't really know what it's trying to do? Later, we talked about an episode of The Power Of Attorney, a podcast from Rutgers Law School, that talks to the guy on whose case Interrogation...
Feb 12, 2020•58 min
130: Ted Bundy: Falling For A Killer and If You Tell
Stephanie Early Green is back to discuss the usual complement of light, fizzy fare! ...Okay, no: our first Most Wanted conversation is about Amazon's new Ted Bundy docuseries, Falling For A Killer . Does it succeed in subtracting Ted Bundy from all the secondary stories of grief and horror he created? Should the filmmaker have spun off another series on women in '70s law enforcement? And what exactly happened between Bundy and Molly Kendall? We KNOW what happened between Shelly Knotek and her ch...
Feb 05, 2020•54 min
129: Killer Inside: The Mind Of Aaron Hernandez and The Tillman Story
First-time guest David J. Roth and I came late to the discussion of Killer Inside: The Mind Of Aaron Hernandez ...only to realize that the discussion we DID have didn't require us to watch KI:TMOAH , which is well made and yet not made the best way for the material. We also talked about responsibility vs. indemnity; Bill Belichick's trademark grey reluctance; and the untitled Mike Massey project we're hoping comes out in 2021. Our Cold Case topic, The Tillman Story , is more successful, even as ...
Jan 29, 2020•1 hr 11 min
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