The Blotter Presents - podcast cover

The Blotter Presents

The Blotter Presentsaudioboom.com
The true crime worth YOUR time, reviewed weekly. Sarah D. Bunting, desk sergeant.
Download Metacast podcast app
Podcasts are better in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episodes

098: Two on Rebecca Zahau and Two American Experiences

Recording on Memorial Day, I went guestless to talk about two takes on the contested death of Rebecca Zahau: ID's Murder Mystery version, and a limited series from Oxygen called Death At The Mansion featuring Loni Coombs, Paul Holes, and Billy Jensen. Is either one worth your time? Does the nature of the case mean no TV show about it can maintain any momentum? And what is with the lingering shots of the courtroom death mannequin? Later, I bail out my sinking DVR one teaspoon at a time by reviewi...

May 29, 201927 min

097: Who The Hell Is Hamish? and The Woman Who Wasn't There

It’s taking all my strength to resist making a “throw another con on the barbie” joke, so why fight it: today Eve and I are talking about tragedy vampires on today’s episode, starting with the latest limited series from The Australian : Who The Hell Is Hamish?. How did Hamish Watson con so many people? Where did all that money go? And what makes Greg Bearup and The Australian 's narrative construction so perfect for the story it's telling? Later, we return to 2012, and 9/11, with Angelo Guglielm...

May 22, 20191 hr 10 min

096: Extremely Wicked... and In Cold Blood (1996)

Did Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, And Vile live up to the hype? ...Not quite. Jeb rejoined me to discuss Berlinger's scripted take on Ted Bundy, or more accurately Bundy's corrosive effect on one of his living victims, his longtime girlfriend Liz Kendall. Did the film do what it set out to, or was the dark gravitational pull of the killer himself too strong? Should Terrence Malick have taken a run at the material? And what's with those lazy music cues? But Zac Efron's performance is pretty ...

May 08, 20191 hr 6 min

095: At The Heart Of Gold and Cold

Stephanie Early Green was here to talk about Believed in Episode 077, and somehow made it through Erin Lee Carr's excellent but harrowing At The Heart Of Gold also...though we both wept at various points. The film comes to HBO May 3, but you can listen to our discussion about the importance of testimony, the miasma of guilt and responsibility around Nassar, and our admiration for Judge Aquilina right now. And a podcast with a Cold Case section can't NOT talk about Wondery's very deep dive into t...

May 01, 20191 hr 1 min

094: Kids Behind Bars and A Crime To Remember (the Looking For Mr. Goodbar case)

The name is a little glib, but A&E's Kids Behind Bars: Life Or Parole looks at the Supreme Court decision that forced the resentencing of juveniles given life without parole as teenagers, and Piper is back to look at the eight-episode series: the incarcerated "former kids" it chooses to focus on, the way each story is built, the perspectives of law enforcement and victims' families, and the conversation we need to keep having about the role of racial bias in sentencing practices. Later, we l...

Apr 24, 20191 hr 5 min

093: We Are Columbine and Most Notorious on Adolph Coors III

Director and Columbine High School graduate Laura Farber made a very personal look at living with the 1999 massacre, featuring a handful of her classmates, and Toby is back to talk about the emotional terrain it covers, how it chose its subjects, and the ways survivors live with trauma. In the Cold Case section, my attempt to impose a Colorado theme backfired somewhat with a Most Notorious episode from last year on the kidnapping of Coors heir Adolph "Ad" Coors III, and we tried to diagnose what...

Apr 17, 20191 hr 4 min

092: The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann and Who Took Johnny

Netflix's eight-part review of the Madeleine McCann case, The Disappearance Of Madeleine McCann , is journalistically rigorous -- but is it rigorous to a fault? Eve returns to look at the series, its organizing principles, its indictment of tabloid media's role in the case, and how we think the case would "play" if Madeleine disappeared today. The bleak possible outcomes continue in the Cold Case section; we're looking at Who Took Johnny , a 2014 documentary about the 1982 disappearance of Johnn...

Apr 10, 20191 hr 20 min

091: Screwball and 30 For 30: No Crossover: The Trial Of Allen Iverson

You may not remember much about the Alex Rodriguez/Biogenesis flap from a few years back; you may not care about it now. But Billy Corben's weird, withering Screwball is the best kind of documentary: the kind that works even for people who don't think they care about the topic. Mike Dunn returns to the podcast to discuss the bizarre, yet perfect, re-enactments by Little Leaguers, the snarky sound design, and which bedtime stories we'd read to Manny Ramirez. Later, we head back to 2010 for a firs...

Apr 03, 20191 hr 10 min

090: The Act and History Detectives

Is Hulu trying to make its own American Crime Story with anthology true-crime series The Act ? Maybe; Tara Ariano and I agree they're off to a good start with the eight-part Gypsy Blanchard limited series co-created by Michelle Dean. Good production design, good performances, and a good sense of the claustrophobia in Gypsy and DeeDee's relationship make for a compelling look at a case full of cons. History Detectives isn't as successful; I thought recent Austin transplant Tara might enjoy an inv...

Mar 27, 201958 min

Brief 41: Roll Red Roll

A new documentary revisits the Steubenville rape case. What is it trying to say?

Mar 22, 20199 min

089: The Inventor and Children Of The Snow

It's yet another take on the rise and fall of Theranos and its founder, Elizabeth Holmes, so of course I had to invite Stephanie Early Green back to talk about The Inventor . Neither of us can ever resist variations on this story...but does the Alex Gibney documentary make too many allowances for Holmes's initial good intentions? Should it have been a limited series instead of a two-hour film? And how does Holmes even manage to WALK contrivedly? Later, we look at a miniseries from Investigation ...

Mar 20, 20191 hr

Brief 40: Manhunt

ITV's popular three-parter brings its bracing lack of contrived melodrama to Acorn.

Mar 18, 20196 min

088: The Case Against Adnan Syed and 30 For 30 Bikram

Another look at the case Serial made super-famous, plus a podcast about a predator guru Adnan Syed's case is back in the headlines (if we can say it's ever really left, post-Serial), and back in the true-crime-review discussion with HBO's four-part series The Case Against Adnan Syed. Eve Batey joins me to talk about the Amy Berg-directed docuseries, which, while it's well made, seemed to have a number of loose ends and missed opportunities. And it really isn't about the case against Adnan...but ...

Mar 13, 20191 hr 11 min

087: Leaving Neverland and the Skye Borgman Interview

Leaving Neverland is the HBO doc everyone's talking about, and Piper Weiss is back to discuss it. We had our problems with it (the length, the score) but we had things we admired about it too (the room it left Robson and Safechuck to feel however they needed to about Michael Jackson, even to miss him), even as we wished someone would make MJ: Made In America and take on the larger cultural phenomenon that was the King Of Pop. Later, I interview Skye Borgman about the doc everyone was talking abo...

Mar 06, 20191 hr 18 min

Brief 39: Ministry Of Evil

Sundance's four-part series on Tony and Susan Alamo's Christian-cult empire is solid and familiar...but is it TOO familiar?

Feb 27, 20198 min

Brief 38: It's A Hard Truth Ain't It

Thirteen incarcerated men at Pendleton Correctional Facility collaborate with each other and director Madeleine Sackler on the stories of...well, their stories.

Feb 25, 20198 min

Brief 37: Detainment

The controversial Oscar-nominated short raises questions about an entire genre.

Feb 22, 201911 min

086: The Onion Field

Kevin Smokler returns to discuss Joseph Wambaugh's canonical account(s) of the murder of Ian Campbell On the Rushmore of true-crime classics, there's one face Kevin and I hadn't contemplated yet: Joseph Wambaugh's The Onion Field, which narrates the fateful kidnapping of LAPD officers Ian Campbell and Karl Hettinger, the murder of Campbell, and the precursors and aftermaths of that night in the onion field in 1963. It's a quick read whose influences you can see in Ellroy, Mailer and others, but ...

Feb 20, 20191 hr 15 min

Brief 35: Over My Dead Body

The story of Dan Markel's power-couple marriage, hideous divorce, and death is another Pringles-for-the-ear outing from Wondery.

Feb 15, 20197 min

085: Lorena And Talked To Death: The Dark Side Of TV Talk Shows

Amazon Prime's Jordan Peele-produced Lorena drops Friday, February 15, and Piper Weiss is back to talk about what we missed in the Lorena Bobbitt story the first time around; why the focus seemed to be on the violence done to John Wayne Bobbitt's penis and not to his wife, by him; who crime stories should "belong to"; and the enduring repellence of the word "panties." Next, it's an early HBO doc on the murder of Scott Amedure, and other (cultural) crimes for which the daytime-talk-show craze may...

Feb 13, 20191 hr 14 min

084: A Very English Scandal And The Scandal Story

Mark Blankenship returns to discuss TWO eminently English scandals from the middle of the last century. Mark brought Amazon's three-part take on the Jeremy Thorpe "business," A Very English Scandal , up for discussion, and we contemplated -- as Toby and I did last week -- how outlawing human behavior turns a whole bunch of humans into criminals, and creates more problems than it solves. We also wondered what English class-division issues we might have missed as Yanks, talked about the gorgeously...

Feb 06, 20191 hr 3 min

083: Murder Mountain And The Weather Underground

Toby Ball returns to discuss the clashes between two sets of sixties ideals and one implacable system, capitalism, in the latest podcast. We led off with Netflix's six-part series on the changing times in Humboldt County, CA, Murder Mountain , and its heady blend (so to speak) of true crime and subcultural documentation. How does it stack up with Josh Zeman's other projects? Did it need another couple of episodes to follow the fates of "trimmigrants"? And should the series have arranged a certai...

Jan 30, 20191 hr 19 min

Brief 32: I Am The Night

Another day, another take on the Black Dahlia that tries to do too much and loses me early on.

Jan 28, 20199 min

082: The Ted Bundy Tapes And Cathy Evelyn Smith

Sometimes I feel like I should retitle this podcast The Joe Berlinger Review Hour, because he's back on Netflix with Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes, and first-time guest Piper Weiss joins me to discuss the male gaze of the miniseries; Carol DaRonch's bitchin' Camaro; and the things about Bundy that it's not possible for us to understand. Later, we dug into the death of John Belushi -- specifically, Cathy Evelyn Smith, the woman who allegedly gave him the speedball that killed h...

Jan 23, 20191 hr 17 min

Brief 30: Smiley Face Killers

Oxygen's new series, on hundreds of possibly connected possible drowning deaths, sounds crazy...but it just might work. (My kookballoons idea for a "let happy-hour bar patrons try to crack unsolved cases" podcast, not s'much.)

Jan 19, 201911 min
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android
Open in Metacast