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The Blotter Presents

The Blotter Presentsaudioboom.com
The true crime worth YOUR time, reviewed weekly. Sarah D. Bunting, desk sergeant.
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Episodes

Brief 29: Untouchable

David Feige's 2016 documentary interrogates sex-offender registry statutes, but may not have questioned its own edit closely enough.

Jan 18, 20198 min

081: The Skies Belong To Us And The New Yorker's "A Cold Case"

First-time guest Alex Segura joints me to talk about The Skies Belong To Us, a page-turner that made a bunch of 2013's best-of lists -- and with good reason, as each of us only needed a day to finish it. But it did leave us wanting more of some subjects, and not necessarily in a pleasing way. Later, we go back even further in time with a New Yorker piece from 2000 on the crimes and disappearance of Frank Koehler, one that satisfies two competing readerly desires: to see someone walk away from a ...

Jan 16, 201956 min

080: Surviving R. Kelly and Behind The Music

Mark Blankenship on Lifetime's wrenching, but imperfect, Surviving R. Kelly : the power of the first four episodes, and the weirdness of the last two; the "tradition" of fetishizing teenage girls in rock music; the voices we heard for the first time, and the ones we still haven't heard; and whose time is up next. Then we move on to a vintage Behind The Music that's both very typical of VH1's legendary pop-gossip video mag, and delightfully off-brand, as it follows narrator Jim Forbes out of the ...

Jan 09, 20191 hr 20 min

Brief 26: Broken Harts

Two moms, six adopted kids, one terrible crash...and a somewhat amateurish podcast that's still compelling.

Jan 04, 201910 min

Brief 25: Murderville

The Intercept's investigation of a wrongful conviction in Georgia is a sadly familiar story -- in more ways than one.

Jan 02, 20199 min

Blotter's 11: The Best Of 2018 True Crime

Three reads, three listens, and five watches that made my best-of list for the last year. SHOW NOTES Bad Blood, Episode 70 Jessica Pressler on Anna Delvey, The Summer Of Scam Kathleen Hale, "Living With Slenderman" Last Seen, Brief 1 Slow Burn, Episode 64 Dr. Death, Episode 74 Making A Murderer Part 2, Episode 73 American Vandal S2, Episode 69 The Sentence, Episode 72 Rest In Power, Episode 66 American Crime Story S2 recaps at Previously.TV...

Dec 26, 201814 min

Brief 23: Magical Unsolved Mysteries Tour

Listener Scott J. tasked me with a line-up of noteworthy Unsolved Mysteries segments; I ranked all five, from ghostly hecklers to NKOTB video mysteries and everything in between. SHOW NOTES Season 1 Episode 22 Season 1 Episode 24 Season 4 Episode 1 GoSanAngelo.com on the McNelly/Stewart case Season 5 Episode 32 Season 8 Episode 12...

Dec 24, 201824 min

079: The Innocent Man And Misfortune, "The Lou Pearlman Story"

Al returns to TBP to talk about Netflix's latest holiday-season bingeable, The Innocent Man , and how very much not...OK (sorry) the state of law enforcement is in Ada, Oklahoma. It's based in part on John Grisham's book about one of the two murder cases centered around false confessions; Al thinks it's one of the best she's seen of this type. *I* think that's in no small part thanks to one "Aint Peppy." Later, the great Bryan Burrough does a lot to rescue the not-great inaugural ep of the Misfo...

Dec 19, 20181 hr 9 min

Brief 21: The Last Resort

...No, not "that boat show." A new documentary about photographer Andy Sweet grieves his loss, and celebrates his reflections on/of Miami.

Dec 17, 20186 min

078: Leah Remini: Scientology And The Aftermath And "The Apostate"

Jeb Lund is back to put the third season of Leah Remini's eponymous confrontation of Scientology "on the cans," and we don't mean to be entheta about it, but why not change the format to include some expert analysis from psychologists, debriefers, or forensic auditors? Why isn't Mike Rinder using his counter-PI-terrorism skills to find Shelly Miscavige? Why is dental floss apparently suppressive? And why doesn't Remini ever drive? Folded into that conversation is a "celebration rundown" of Lawre...

Dec 12, 20181 hr 11 min

077: Believed And 30 For 30's "The Two Escobars"

Stephanie Early Green probably regrets suggesting Believed as a Most Wanted topic, but nicely saw the idea through as she sat down to discuss Michigan Public Radio's difficult but significant new podcast on the predations of Larry Nassar -- what he did, how he got away with it, and how survivors finally brought him down. Later, we thought a vintage 30 For 30 on soccer might lighten the mood...but given how much Pablo Escobar loved the sport, and the lengths he was willing to go to to prevail in ...

Nov 28, 201857 min

Brief 17: No Man's Land

The Wing's new podcast about "women who were too bad for your textbooks." [NB: I biffed the location of the Riverside Terrace Mausoleum; it's in HAMILTON Heights, not Morningside Heights. Mgmt regrets etc.]

Nov 26, 20189 min

076: Dirty John And Stuff You Missed In History Class

[NB: The sound's tinny this week; I'm so sorry.] Bravo has turned the L.A. Times series, then podcast Dirty John into an all-star-cast TV series, and book glutton/attorney Julian Gross is here to discuss it. Did it need to become a TV series? Is Eric Bana the right casting as the titular John? Will we stick with it despite 1) some pacing issues and 2) knowing the outcome, which may affect 1) for us? And could someone please nominate Veronica for president? Later, it's a look at the How Stuff Wor...

Nov 21, 20181 hr

075: Jonestown: Terror In The Jungle And Frontline's Amerithrax Episode

The fortieth anniversary of the mass murder in Jonestown, Guyana is next week, and Sundance's Jonestown: Terror In The Jungle miniseries looks back; Toby Ball joins me once again to talk about when Jim Jones's sincere dreams of utopia curdled, which Jonestown property is the least difficult to get through, and what we hope became of that Willie kid. Later, with both the MAGA bomber and Robert Mueller in the headlines recently, we're also looking back at another series of attacks by mail -- and a...

Nov 14, 20181 hr 7 min

Brief 14: Kingpins

Parcast's latest takes a three-part look at Pablo Acosta Villarreal and the pre-cartel Mexican drug trade.

Nov 12, 20188 min

Brief 13: What Haunts Us

An Emmy-nominated look at a prep-school predator and the wide swath of his crimes, from a first-time documentarian.

Nov 09, 20187 min

074: Dr. Death And Gypsy's Revenge

Stephanie Early Green joined me for Ep 009 on Mommy Dead And Dearest , so it felt only right that she sit with me again for Gypsy's Revenge , a follow-up on the Gypsy Rose/Dee Dee Blanchard case from ID that, to our surprise, was pretty good and not superfluous. (Our conversation about Gypsy's father's sexy audiobook voice? Deeehhhfinitely superfluous.) But before that, we dug into the eminently bingeable, utterly horrifying Dr. Death, Wondery's six-part look at the reign of surgical terror of C...

Nov 07, 201851 min

Brief 9: Bag Man

In her first podcast, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow digs into the very dirty forgotten history of Nixon VP Spiro Agnew.

Oct 31, 20187 min
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