Brief 22: American Dream/American Knightmare
Marion "Suge" Knight Jr. gives director Antoine Fuqua a compelling oral history...of himself.
6m Dec 21, 2018
6m
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 "Ain...
1hr 9m Dec 19, 2018
1hr 9m
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.
6m Dec 17, 2018
6m
Brief 20: The Teacher's Pet
Is The Australian's look at the long-cold Lyn Dawson case the Serial of the antipodes?
10m Dec 14, 2018
10m
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 suppressiv...
1hr 11m Dec 12, 2018
1hr 11m
Brief 19: 48 Hours, "The Mysterious Death Of Casey Kasem"
Was there a crime committed in Kasem's 2014 death? Which one? And by whom? "The Long, Strange Purgatory Of Casey Kasem" (https://www.gq.com/story/last-days-of-casey-kasem) "The Worst Kasem Scenario" (http://previously.tv/law-and-order-svu/the-worst-kasem-scenario/)
8m Dec 10, 2018
8m
Brief 18: Say Her Name: The Life And Death Of Sandra Bland
Kate Davis and David Heilbroner's latest for HBO is a poetically harsh investigation of Sandra Bland's death in 2015.
6m Nov 30, 2018
6m
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...b...
57m Nov 28, 2018
57m
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.]
9m Nov 26, 2018
9m
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) fo...
1hr Nov 21, 2018
1hr
Brief 16: The Truth About True Crime With Amanda Knox
A seemingly reluctant true-crime figure wades into the podcasting fray with a companion podcast to Sundance's Jonestown docuseries.
8m Nov 19, 2018
8m
Brief 15: Reply All Episode 99, "Black Hole, NJ"
Reply All takes a Mystery-Show-ish journey into the dark Russian-online-shopping-hacker heart of...Woodbridge?
9m Nov 16, 2018
9m
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 M...
1hr 7m Nov 14, 2018
1hr 7m
Brief 14: Kingpins
Parcast's latest takes a three-part look at Pablo Acosta Villarreal and the pre-cartel Mexican drug trade.
8m Nov 12, 2018
8m
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.
7m Nov 09, 2018
7m
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 ...
51m Nov 07, 2018
51m
Brief 12: The Disappearance Of Phoenix Coldon
Oxygen's latest special event is infuriating, baffling...and not boring for a second.
13m Nov 05, 2018
13m
Brief 11: Crimetown's Second Season
Crimetown moves from Providence to Detroit; I try to put my finger on something in the age of Peak Podcast.
6m Nov 02, 2018
6m
Brief 10: History's 3-Part Watergate Doc
Oscar-winner Charles Ferguson takes on the fall of the Nixon White House for the History Channel. Set your DVRs; it's good!
8m Nov 01, 2018
8m
Brief 9: Bag Man
In her first podcast, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow digs into the very dirty forgotten history of Nixon VP Spiro Agnew.
7m Oct 31, 2018
7m
Brief 8: The Lost Tapes: Clinton Impeachment
Smithsonian Channel's archival overview of Clinton's high crimes and misdemeanors is solid, but perhaps superfluous.
8m Oct 30, 2018
8m
Brief 7: Carruth
The Charlotte Observer's look at the 1999 hit on Cherica Adams by her child's father, Rae Carruth, makes an NFL-crime-podcast trifecta. Should you listen?
10m Oct 29, 2018
10m
Brief 6: Taberski, Rudolf, And Judge On Making A Murderer
Netflix's You Can't Make This Up podcast on MAM Pt. 2 doesn't quite work.
6m Oct 26, 2018
6m
073: Making A Murderer And Karla
Is MAM still the same marathon-able, frustrating, compelling show in Part 2 as it was in 2015? Should Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi have tried harder to make the second season less "one-sided" as to Steven Avery's guilt -- or not at all? Does the second act suffer from a dearth of Strang and Buting, or of suspense as to Avery and Brendan Dassey's fates? And where does Kathleen Zellner keep al...
58m Oct 24, 2018
58m
Brief 5: POV, "Lindy Lou, Juror No. 2"
From a July POV episode, one woman's emotional battle with her decision to give a man the death penalty.
6m Oct 23, 2018
6m
Blotter Brief 4: Steve McNair: Fall Of A Titan
Sports Illustrated wades into the NFL-adjacent crime-pod fray with Tim Rohan's investigation of a 2009 murder-suicide.
7m Oct 22, 2018
7m
Blotter Brief 3: Someone Knows Something, Season 5
The CBC cold-case podcast returns for a fifth (!) season, this one on the murder of Manitoba teenager Kerrie Ann Brown.
9m Oct 18, 2018
9m
072: The Sentence And This American Life
Toby Ball on Rudy Valdez's personal and affecting The Sentence, and a 19-year-old This American Life that in many ways could have been recorded last week -- plus parallels to the current season of Serial, how many crappy congressfolk keep haunting stories of the war on drugs, and how the tiniest of possession charges can, if you'll forgive the pun, snowball. The personal is political in The Blo...
59m Oct 17, 2018
59m
Blotter Brief 2: Gladiator: Aaron Hernandez And Football Inc.
The Boston Globe's spotlight team turns its attention to the crimes of -- and the crimes that made -- Aaron Hernandez (https://apps.bostonglobe.com/spotlight/gladiator/) .
8m Oct 16, 2018
8m
Blotter Brief 1: Last Seen
Introducing Blotter Briefs (tee hee, "briefs"): capsule reviews of all the stuff I don't get to on the main podcast. Today's topic is art-heist pod Last Seen (http://www.wbur.org/lastseen) from WBUR and the Boston Globe.
7m Oct 15, 2018
7m
071: Lifetime Movies Conrad & Michelle: If Words Could Kill And Believe Me: The Lisa McVey Story
Eve Batey joins me to take on a Lifetime true-story two-fer. We tackled two recent Lifetime films, the first about the notorious and crassly named "texting suicide" case, and the second a 34-year-old kidnapping whose escaped victim helped police catch a serial killer...once someone finally believed her story. Is either movie worth 90 minutes of your time? Is Bella Thorne almost TOO good as Mich...
58m Oct 03, 2018
58m
070: Serial's Third Season And Bad Blood
You probably haven't heard anything about this, but: Serial is back for Season 3. Stephanie Green is also back to discuss the first two episodes; the heralded podcast's less appealing qualities; and versions of S3's stories This American Life may have done better in the Most Wanted section. As our Cold Case, we're looking at the rise and rise and fall of Theranos via John Carreyrou's outstandin...
1hr 10m Sep 26, 2018
1hr 10m
069: American Vandal And The Doodler Murders
American Vandal Season...Number Two (tee hee) dropped (its brown friends by the lake, tee hee) last Friday, and Jeb Lund joins me for an...exposition dump? Tee hee. We're discussion the show's compassion for its characters, what it says about other crimes sand crime properties, and whether we liked S1 better. Later, we'll talk about the Doodler murders, and why it's remained mostly overlooked a...
1hr 1m Sep 19, 2018
1hr 1m
068: Unspeakable Crime: The Killing Of Jessica Chambers And The RFK Tapes
Toby Ball FINALLY returns to his dedicated spot on the Blotter HQ sofa to talk about the latest limited series from Joe Berlinger for Oxygen, Unspeakable Crime: The Killing Of Jessica Chambers. It's better than we expected, but we're still waiting for it to address certain issues teased in the opener -- inconsistent racism; the classism we're not sure we're supposed to note, or object to; the H...
1hr 12m Sep 12, 2018
1hr 12m
067: The Documentary Podcast And Crime In Sports
Did either of the podcasts we considered in this week's tennis-crime-centric podcast ace their topics? Alas, we got bageled, as Week 2 of the U.S. Open finds me and the COURT-eous Dan Patrick Brady considering alleged match-fixing in tennis in a The Documentary Podcast from early '16, plus a seventies star who found himself down a break at being a grown-up on Crime In Sports. Do these puns dese...
46m Sep 05, 2018
46m
066: Crime + Punishment And Rest In Power: The Trayvon Martin Story
Anna Beth Chao returns to look at Hulu's original documentary on quota policing in New York City, Crime + Punishment. It's a bit too filler-y, but does it need to be shorter -- or to divide itself into the two, or maybe three, documentaries fighting for space within it? Later, we talk about Paramount's Rest In Power, and how recent the murder of Trayvon Martin still seems after six years; why S...
51m Aug 29, 2018
51m
065: Pamela Smart: An American Murder Mystery And Captivated: The Trials Of Pamela Smart
Eve Batey is back to assess which of these Pam Smart properties is worth your time; whether the old-school newsmag model of true crime needs to be retired in 2018; how the Heisenberg principle relates to Smart's ability to get a fair trial; and why cops interviewed on TV can't just say "smoking weed" like everyone else in America. Don't traumatize the dog or anything, but this The Blotter Prese...
1hr 2m Aug 22, 2018
1hr 2m
064: Slow Burn And Patty Has A Gun
Last week, the Slow Burn podcast turned its attention to the pettily tawdry period in American politics known as "the Bill Clinton Impeachment," and Canadian Alex Collins has politely agreed to turn HER attention to the Slate podcast's second season. Do we think differently about Clinton's "high crimes" -- and their victims -- than we did back then? And how will Slow Burn tell us something new ...
1hr 4m Aug 15, 2018
1hr 4m
063: Golden State Killer: Main Suspect And A Trillin True-Crime Reader
In Episode 048, Mike Dunn and I talked about Michelle McNamara's I'll Be Gone In The Dark and the adjacent TV special, Golden State Killer: It's Not Over. It's...over now! Well, until the trial (and the HBO documentary series, which Mike will no doubt return for also). Authorities took Joseph D'Angelo into custody six weeks after we recorded; last Saturday, Oxygen aired its update special, Gold...
48m Aug 08, 2018
48m
062: You Must Remember This And Cocaine & Rhinestones
It's a new season of Old-Hollywood podcast You Must Remember This, and Kevin Smokler joins me to unpack Karina Longworth's captivating take on the unsolved murder of William Desmond Taylor, with a look back at 2015's "Charles Manson's Hollywood" season. Later, we get a chuckle out of Ernest Tubb's bunny slippers (note: he wasn't really wearing bunny slippers) in the Cold Case section as we talk...
1hr 5m Aug 01, 2018
1hr 5m
The Summer Of Scam
Vulture.com has dubbed it The Summer Of Scam, and with a handful of sisters very much doing it for themselves, I've got your essential longform long-cons reading list. Later, we'll take a trip through the-blotter.com's archives with fake Rockefellers, French nationals in over their heads, and other grifty tramps and thieves in the Cold Case section. Lock down those last fours of your Socials: i...
19m Jul 25, 2018
19m
18 July 2018
A look back into the archives, and some reading recommendations. SHOW NOTES Find The Blotter on Twitter (https://twitter.com/blotterpresents) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/blotterpresents/) Find me on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/7172951-sarah-d-bunting) "Threeway Two Ways" (http://www.the-blotter.com/threeway-two-ways-heartbreakers-and-the-murder-of-billy-mac-fleming...
6m Jul 18, 2018
6m
061: The Last Defense
Produced by, among others, national treasure Viola Davis, The Last Defense is the latest limited series to focus on death-row inmates who may have cases for new trials. The show hasn't gotten to Julius Jones yet, but based on its approach to the Darlie Routier investigation and trial, Dan Patrick Brady and I are looking forward to keeping up with the show during our vacation: there's some over-...
35m Jun 27, 2018
35m
060: Drinks, Crime And Prohibition And Ken Burns's Prohibition
The Smithsonian Channel premiered a documentary special on Prohibition last week, and while my guest Toby Ball and I learned a lot of new cocktail recipes, we also kind of couldn't figure out who the show is for -- heritage-drinks fans? history buffs? the collectibles market? It's a serviceable show, but superfluous, because... ...we also watched Ken Burns's 2011 three-parter, Prohibition, whic...
49m Jun 20, 2018
49m
Episode 66: 059: The Staircase And Forensic Files
De Lestrade and his team return once more with three new episodes of prestige-true-crime forerunner The Staircase, and Stephanie Early Green returns to discuss the end of the story. Did it need three more episodes? Does it do what it thinks it does in terms of casting Michael Peterson and his family as sympathetic, and Kathleen Peterson's sisters as obsessed harpies -- or the opposite? One of o...
59m Jun 13, 2018
59m
Episode 65: 058: Wrong Man And Behind Mansion Walls
Joe Berlinger returns with another limited series, this one -- Wrong Man, on Starz -- looking into possible wrongful convictions; Eve Batey returns to The Blotter Presents to talk about the all-star team assembled to look into these cases. Which attorney do we predict will go on to host her own show? Is Ron Kuby getting soft(er) in his old age? Would we watch a show that just ran footage of inv...
59m Jun 06, 2018
59m
057: Dead North And Dark Angel
Dan Patrick Brady's back for a look at ID's latest miniseries, Dead North, which follows Upper Peninsula police chief Laura Frizzo in the search for a missing man, through a bizarre love quadrangle, to a gruesome discovery while filming in the woods...and a possible woman serial killer. It's not your average true-crime fare, and might have worked better as a podcast, but Dan and Sarah are in fo...
53m May 30, 2018
53m
056: The Case Of: Caylee Anthony And Confessions Of Crime
The Real Crime Profile team returns to TV with a three-part series on Oxygen that looks into the death of Caylee Anthony and the trial of her mother, Casey. The Crime Writers On team returns to The Blotter Presents in the person of Rebecca Lavoie, who does not think well of the The Case Of series; sexist assumptions about maternal grief; the prosecution's failure to execute on a narrative; or, ...
1hr 29m May 23, 2018
1hr 29m
055: Abuse Of Power And An Unsolved Unsolved Mysteries Mystery
Abuse Of Power is a professionally made, serviceable, and superfluous Teevee True-Crime Product that actually does a couple things well, or at least notably. But does it need to exist? Or does it just need to exist under another name? Dan Patrick Brady is back to talk about bad acting, sad cops, and Fred Tokars's similarities to Donald J. Trump. Later, it's time for YOU the listener to track do...
37m May 16, 2018
37m
Episode 61: 050: Evil Genius And FBI Files
The unfortunate Brian Wells walked into a bank in 2003 with a bomb around his neck; grabbed a lollipop from the counter; and set off (so to speak) a chain reaction of mayhem that led investigators back to a pair of "masterminds" who may have outsmarted themselves instead of law enforcement. Netflix's four-part docuseries Evil Genius drops Friday May 11 (so, warning: this section may contain spo...
1hr 5m May 09, 2018
1hr 5m