053: Wild Wild Country And Beautiful And Twisted
A couple weeks after everyone else laid the subject to rest, Kevin Smokler is back to talk with me about Wild Wild Country, Netflix's six-part series on the poisonings, beaver-shakes, and other crimes against traditional values perpetrated by a free-love "cult" in 1980s Oregon. It's eminently watchable, but at the same time noticeably incurious about certain aspects of its subjects -- do the Wa...
1hr 21m Apr 25, 2018
1hr 21m
Episode 59: 052: I Am Evidence And Australia On Trial
Almost 15 years ago, de Lestrade's The Staircase paved the way for the Making A Murderers and Jinxes after it with a lingering, textured look at the case against Michael Peterson. Did his wife Kathleen fall down the stairs? Did he push her or beat her with the notorious blowpoke? Was a wild creature responsible all along? And whose side are the filmmakers on as they slowly pile up the porn, inf...
58m Apr 18, 2018
58m
Episode 58: 051: The Staircase And An American Murder Mystery
Almost 15 years ago, de Lestrade's The Staircase paved the way for the Making A Murderers and Jinxes after it with a lingering, textured look at the case against Michael Peterson. Did his wife Kathleen fall down the stairs? Did he push her or beat her with the notorious blowpoke? Was a wild creature responsible all along? And whose side are the filmmakers on as they slowly pile up the porn, inf...
57m Apr 11, 2018
57m
Episode 57: 050: In Ice Cold Blood And Mysteries & Scandals
Given when In Ice Cold Blood premiered -- April 1st -- you might forgive me for thinking it was Oxygen's PR team tryna prank me. And it...might still be that, actually! But it's a pretty long con, if so, since we got screeners, and based on the first two episodes, guest Eve Batey and I are kind of about it: it's an interesting niche in terms of the crimes covered; the talking-heads and interrog...
58m Apr 04, 2018
58m
049: Trust And The Lost Tapes's Patty Hearst Episode
FX splashed out on some expensive talent to tell the story of the infamously cheap J. Paul Getty's negotiations for the return of his kidnapped hippie grandson -- whom he and many others thought had engineered the situation to get himself some spending money. The network's really put itself on the map with prestige-crime series in the last couple of years, but when the action moves to 1970s Rom...
57m Mar 28, 2018
57m
048: The Golden State Killer: It's Not Over And I'll Be Gone In The Dark
When Michelle McNamara passed away unexpectedly in 2016, Mike Dunn and I both made sure to pre-order the book she'd left unfinished -- I'll Be Gone In The Dark, on a prolific rapist turned serial killer operating in two areas of California in the late '70s and early '80s. The book showed up at our houses a couple weeks ago, so we decided to turn the pod into a book club for an episode and discu...
55m Mar 14, 2018
55m
Episode 54: 047: Unsolved And The Family
USA debuted yet another take on the still-open cases of the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher "Biggie" Wallace last week, this one featuring pretty much every procedural Hey, It's That Guy! you can think of (Brent Sexton, Jamie McShane) plus a couple top names (Black Mirror's Jimmi Simpson, Josh "Mr. Fergie" Duhamel, Dwayne Johnson) (...right? hey, the IMDb doesn't lie), and a great deal ...
1hr 11m Mar 07, 2018
1hr 11m
Episode 53: 046: Love And Hate Crime And A Murder On Orchard Street
The Huffs and I thought, based on the customary punnish titling of Love And Hate Crime, that we were in for predictable filler-y fare. We...were very much not, as a BBC-produced look at the murder of trans teen Mercedes Williamson by her much older Latin King boyfriend in rural Mississippi doesn't shy away from harsh crime-scene photos, even harsher language, and an unblinking look at the hypoc...
1hr 1m Feb 28, 2018
1hr 1m
Episode 52: 045: Warren Jeffs: Prophet Of Evil, Plus A Mormon-Adjacent True-Crime Must List
[Note: Today's episode contains crackling that may annoy you. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working on ironing out the issue!] A&E leans into its sub-branding as a cult-studies destination with Warren Jeffs: Prophet Of Evil. Dan and I leaned into the Warren Jeffs topic by watching not just A&E's outing but the 2015 documentary from Showtime, and discussed the similarities between L...
40m Feb 21, 2018
40m
044: 48 Hours And Unsolved Mysteries
California law enforcement has former Hart To Hart star and current fossil Robert Wagner as a person of interest in the death of his then wife, Natalie Wood, in 1981. My valentine, Dan Patrick Brady, is back to talk about whether the 48 Hours on the case worth watching, or if phrases like "the Banging Dinghy Theory" sink the episode. And in our Cold Case segment, a vintage Unsolved Mysteries ha...
1hr 4m Feb 14, 2018
1hr 4m
Episode 50: 043: The Trade And Alcatraz Revisited
Showtime enters an already tragically crowded field with The Trade, a comprehensive look at the business of heroin from poppy to police intervention -- and Eve Batey returns to the podcast to talk about the show's bleak effectiveness. If you've watched any combination of Live PD, Intervention, and any number of recent HBO documentaries, The Trade won't tell you anything new, but it's still a th...
51m Feb 07, 2018
51m
Episode 49: 042: Two Waco Projects And Marjoe
The twenty-fifth anniversary of the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound is approaching, and with it comes a veritable barrage of material on Waco, David Koresh, and how it all went pear-shaped. Toby Ball and I selected two of the higher-profile, A&E's documentary event Waco: Madman Or Messiah and the just-born Paramount Network's big-splash mini-series starring Taylor Kitsch, Waco. Does ei...
1hr 7m Jan 31, 2018
1hr 7m
Episode 48: 041: Jodi Arias: An American Murder Mystery And 1980s: The Deadliest Decade
As we approach the tenth anniversary of Travis Alexander's murder, Jodi Arias is back on our teevees in ID's Jodi Arias: An American Murder Mystery. It isn't really a mystery, and neither is the pervasive misogyny and black-and-white narrative manipulation that turned a confused and off-putting young girl into a scheming black widow, but returning guest Kevin Smokler and I found it very watchab...
1hr 22m Jan 24, 2018
1hr 22m
Episode 47: 040: The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story And The Chad Boushell Interview
American Crime Story returns after a triumphant first season with an all-new mid-nineties crime, and Tara Ariano returns to discuss it, and whether, after 20 years, we should accept that sometimes there is no "why." We'll also be discussing whether Sarah's the only one who thinks Édgar Ramirez as Versace looks AND sounds like Enrico Colantoni; if it's appropriate to covet a character's clothing...
46m Jan 17, 2018
46m
039: Final Appeal And There's Something Wrong With Aunt Diane
Oxygen starts 2018 with Final Appeal, which is basically MTV's Unlocking The Truth with different personnel and slower pacing. Did Patty Prewitt kill her husband? What's going on with the threatening phone calls? And was key evidence seriously just sitting in a sheriff's office storage locker for nearly 35 years? We had a lot of questions about the Prewitt case, but not nearly as many as we sti...
44m Jan 10, 2018
44m
038: True Conviction And Bride Killa
Investigation Discovery kicked off 2018 with an afternoon of premieres, and returning guest/enduring spouse Dan Brady and I took a look at two of them. True Conviction has an interesting premise -- but doesn't stick to it closely enough, falling into some crime-tabloid structural cliches instead of focusing on prosecutors and their work, plus host Anna-Sigga Nicolazzi keeps, well, leading the w...
59m Jan 03, 2018
59m
Episode 44: 037: The Best Of 2017 In TV True Crime
Looking to kill an afternoon with the fam -- or a whole holiday-hammock week with your crime-nut in-laws? Recs ahoy, as Sarah D. Bunting runs down her top tens for both movies and series that aired on TV in 2017. Strong showings as usual from Netflix (The Keepers; American Vandal) and HBO (Mommy Dead And Dearest), a comeback in progress for Investigation Discovery, the overlooked highlights fro...
30m Dec 27, 2017
30m
Episode 43: 036: The Family I Had And Killer Kids
At this time of year, thoughts turn to family...unfortunately. Kevin Flynn of Crime Writers On... and Law & Order pod These Are Their Stories joins Sarah D. Bunting for a discussion of the spare, bleak, thought-provoking documentary The Family I Had, a stripped-down look at the family destroyed, then rebuilt, by and around Charity Bennett after her 13-year-old son murdered her 4-year-old daught...
55m Dec 20, 2017
55m
035: Final Vision And Murder In A College Town
I'd hoped to have John Ramos join me to talk about Final Vision, with Scott Foley as Jeffrey MacDonald, since MacDonald is a fellow college alum and Felicity is a show we both are very fond of...but Time Warner Cable wasn't having it, so I took John's notes and forged ahead on my own. I didn't get any answers to questions like "Who is this movie for?" and "Why did they put that angry Brillo pad...
37m Dec 13, 2017
37m
Episode 41: 034: Homicide For The Holidays And Guilty Rich
It's the mooooost murderous tiiiiime of the yeeeeear -- and if you think that's crass, wait until you hear Homicide For The Holidays's episode-naming conventions. Stephanie Cangro pulls up a (polished) chair to talk about HFTH's second-season premiere, "Thanks-Killing," and how soon we guessed whodunnit without Googling the murders of Earl and Terry Robertson in 1997. I was a little creeped out...
48m Dec 06, 2017
48m
033: Village Of The Damned And JFK: The Smoking Gun
Dan Brady's back for a look at yet another Investigation Discovery joint, Village Of The Damned, a limited series on the strange and deadly cluster of tragedies that struck Dryden, NY over the course of a decade. We discuss the re-enacting, the evocative soundtrack, and whether the stories of the Harris family, the disappearance of Aliza Bush, and others might be better suited to a podcast than...
54m Nov 29, 2017
54m
Episode 39: 032: Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders And Mugshots
We're talking about another Joe Berlinger project, and we're talking with Mark Blankenship again about it: Cold Blooded: The Clutter Family Murders, an investigation of the murders that made, and perhaps broke, our first non-fiction novelist, and rippled through a family and a town. Later, we discuss a Mugshots episode on Robert Blake, who starred in In Cold Blood. Did he kill his wife, con art...
49m Nov 22, 2017
49m
Episode 38: 031: The Hunt For The Zodiac Killer And American Horror Story: Cult
Eve Batey returns for yet another look at the Zodiac case, this one from History Channel -- is the much-ballyhooed new evidence and groundbreaking technology worth tuning in for? Or will the lack of context for certain "discoveries" frustrate viewers with any knowledge of the case? (And...all the other viewers?) Later, we discuss AHS's season-long remix of notorious cults and criminals, includi...
53m Nov 15, 2017
53m
Episode 37: SJ: And Did You Ask God For Forgiveness?
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30m Nov 15, 2017
30m
Episode 36: 030: The Lost Wife Of Robert Durst And Crime Musicals
Is The Lost Wife Of Robert Durst -- or, as Sarah D. Bunting billed it to her guests, Smash meets The Jinx -- worth the two hours? Panel of Smash experts Tara Ariano, Adam Grosswirth, and Kevin O'Keeffe weigh in on the case narrative, bad wigs, worse accents, and who this movie is for. Later, the group pitted famous cases against each other in King Of "Notorious Crime: The Musical" Mountain. Lea...
38m Nov 08, 2017
38m
Episode 35: SJ: I've Run Off And Joined The Media Circus
As the jury struggles to agree on a verdict against Lyle and Erik, Leslie and Jill struggle to balance work and family, and Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting struggle to understand why the emergence of the OJ Simpson case is handled so badly in the penultimate episode of the season. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
31m Nov 08, 2017
31m
Episode 34: 029: On The Case With Paula Zahn and The Ryan Ferguson Case
On The Case With Paula Zahn returns for its 16th (!) season, and Dan Patrick Brady returns to the podcast for a reminiscence of...well, how we used to use the show as a sleep aid. Assessing the show's coverage of the 1989 Roundy/Gray case in Idaho Falls, we complain about inaccurate auto re-enactments; marvel at the piddling insurance payouts that murderers are motivated by; and theorize that P...
41m Nov 01, 2017
41m
Episode 33: SJ: No One's Gonna Protect Us
Episode 6 of The Menendez Murders sees the Menendez brothers getting very real about the abuse they (allegedly?) suffered, as well as knock-knock jokes, Oziel talking back to the TV the same as we do, and terrible blocking and flashback wigs. The show's clearly picked a side vis-a-vis Lyle and Erik's justification for killing their parents, but do Tara and Sarah pick a side vis-a-vis whether th...
27m Nov 01, 2017
27m
SJ: One Liar At A Time
Episode 5 of The Menendez Murders centers the action on the courtroom -- but with two juries, a dozen pointedly pastel sweaters on the defendants, and myriad clanky lines of dialogue, Sarah and Tara find the writing guilty of amateurish checklisting. On the plus side, there's a top-notch portrayal of post-Princeton snottiness, Dominick Dunne shade given and received, and Dr. Oziel's foray into ...
26m Oct 25, 2017
26m
028: Mindhunter And The Eleven
Netflix's new series, Mindhunter, gets off to a slow start as it chronicles the evolution of a profiling program we have come to take for granted in true-crime narratives, but Anna Beth and I are going to stick with it, despite some over-explaining and an annoying girlfriend for the protagonist. The Eleven we're not so sure about, as the melodramatic VO seems to have crowded out some essential ...
35m Oct 18, 2017
35m
SJ: The Sickest Secrets Come Out On Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders
José and Kitty's survivors are left reeling when Lyle and Erik confess that they actually did kill their parents...and also why. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
22m Oct 18, 2017
22m
027: Criminal Confessions And Showrunner 'Would You Rather'
In the excitement about The Menendez Murders, you may have missed that Dick Wolf snuck ANOTHER show onto the schedule: Oxygen's Criminal Confessions, a process-y look at law enforcement's efforts to get suspects to admit their guilt. Uproxx's Alan Sepinwall took a break from new-book promotion to discuss what the show does right, how long it can sustain our interest, and how it stacks up agains...
34m Oct 11, 2017
34m
SJ: Some Kind Of A Reality TV Show
As Erik finally lets his legal team know what ELSE might be on those tapes of Jerry Oziel's, Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting go over the Star Witnesses (Judalon's boobs; Leslie's hiring of so many women) and Aggravating Factors (Diane Faux-yer; the jacket Julianne Nicholson borrowed from David Silver) in E03 of The Menendez Murders. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/...
26m Oct 11, 2017
26m
026: The Disappearance Of Maura Murray And 'The Psychiatrist And The Selfie'
Maura Murray's disappearance has preoccupied the internet for years -- and some of the nutballs theories about it have preoccupied Sarah D. Bunting and Stephanie Green for almost as long. Does Oxygen's The Disappearance Of Maura Murray add anything to the case file, or only to our annoyance? Later, our Cold Case section delves into Jake Nolan's attempted murder of his cousin/shrink/possible lov...
1hr 7m Oct 04, 2017
1hr 7m
SJ: Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders E02
Welcome to The Blotter Presents: Summary Judgment -- a shorter pod devoted to continuing coverage of a single series we're finding noteworthy. This inaugural episode and the half dozen following will be putting Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders under a microscope -- and in this ep, Tara Ariano and Sarah D. Bunting look at the Star Witnesses (what worked) and Aggravating Factors (what...
19m Oct 04, 2017
19m
025: Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders And The Russell Williams Case
The long-awaited Dick Wolf take on the verrrrry well-trodden ground of the Menendez case has finally arrived, and Tara Ariano is in for the entire series. What does this property do well that others don't? What is it about this case that producers and actors seem to love? And why is Lyle's wig the best one on the screen? Later, the Cold Case section looks at murderer and serial rapist Russell W...
46m Sep 27, 2017
46m
024: Strong Island And Two Takes On Sam Cooke
Yance Ford's Strong Island is a, well, actually it's a flinching look at the injustice of grief and loss, and guest Mark Blankenship is here to take us through its elements of Greek tragedy as Ford memorializes his murdered brother. Then we contemplate the life and death of Sam Cooke in two very different shows, American Masters and Mysteries & Scandals. Show Notes The New Yorker's review of St...
1hr 3m Sep 20, 2017
1hr 3m
023: The Confession Tapes And Unraveled
First-time guest Anna Beth Chao joined Sarah D. Bunting in a horrified binge-watch of The Confession Tapes, a new series on old cases that convicted "killers" based on false confessions. How does this keep happening? Why do juries keep believing them? And when we will learn from the West Memphis Three? Later, Unraveled introduces us to better-than-normal re-enactments (and can afford to pay Jim...
44m Sep 13, 2017
44m
022: Biggie: The Life Of Notorious B.I.G. And Gesualdo: Death For Five Voices
A&E debuts its life of Biggie Smalls at last, and my Mark And Sarah Talk About Songs co-host, Mark Blankenship, has a few thoughts on Jay-Z, versification, and whether it matters that the film spends only a few minutes on Christopher Wallace's murder. Then we take a detour into the Werner-Herzog weird with a German-TV docu on Italian madrigal composer and melodramatic murderer Carlo Gesualdo. P...
42m Aug 30, 2017
42m
Episode 21: 021: The Disappearance Of Natalee Holloway And The Charlie Brandt Case
Oxygen premiered The Disappearance Of Natalee Holloway over the weekend, and Al Lowe Huff is back to talk about the case, new twists on old evidence, whether the miniseries' weird undercover set-up is going to yield new clues, and how mad we'll be if it ends up in a(nother) big nothing. Al also brought a 48 Hours on Charlie Brandt to our Cold Case section -- and we're thinking maybe the show sh...
55m Aug 23, 2017
55m
Episode 20: 020: The Murder Of Laci Peterson And The Stacey Castor Case
As the 15th anniversary of Laci Peterson's disappearance approaches, A&E interrogates the case against her widower Scott with The Murder of Laci Peterson -- and Kim Reed returns to interrogate the rationalizations of Scott's defenders (and make fun of Nancy Grace). Kim's also got another crime tale with a personal connection as we dig into a Forensic Files about a Southern Tier black widow. Lea...
47m Aug 16, 2017
47m
Episode 19: 019: The Zodiac(s)
Good news: neither Eve's nor my dad is the Zodiac! Bad news: True Crime With Aphrodite Jones isn't as skeptical as it could be about claims like that. Later, we look at some local-news takes on the Zodiac case, and the great Forensic Files runs into some story-structure problems in its episode about the east-coast version, Eddie Seda. Dumb profiling, junk science, and the two pairs of glasses e...
43m Aug 09, 2017
43m
Episode 18: 018: Son Of Sam
Chipperish Media/How Story Works chief Lani Diane Rich sat down with me to see which Son Of Sam stories worked -- Investigation Discovery's, Smithsonian's, or the 1985 CBS version starring Martin Sheen -- and the one that's so bad it's good may surprise you. Why do David Berkowitz's crimes still preoccupy us? What's with every single Sam-doc producer having to put several minutes of public-doma...
1hr 3m Aug 02, 2017
1hr 3m
Episode 17: 017: Gone: The Forgotten Women Of Ohio And The System
Monty Ashley joins me this week to take a look at TV's second run at the murders in Chillicothe, Ohio. Paradise Lost's Joe Berlinger comes in with a hot serial-killer theory, then shifts gears -- but not before giving airtime to a grieving aunt's crackpot theory (and wasting some on chopper shots of a cemetery). Will we keep watching? And how does Berlinger's 2014 series on breakdowns in Americ...
52m Jul 26, 2017
52m
Episode 16: 016: The Jury Speaks And Live PD
Oxygen's four-night "event," The Jury Speaks, debuts this coming weekend, and my husband Dan is "back" to talk about what we learned about Michael Jackson, George Zimmerman, Aphrodite Jones, and the rules of evidence. Later, we look at A&E's Live PD and whether it protects and serves its portrayal of law enforcement. Were our objections overruled? Have a listen and find out. Learn more about yo...
46m Jul 19, 2017
46m
Episode 15: 015: H.H. Holmes
Noir novelist and Radio Free Dystopia co-host Toby Ball is back -- and may never come on the pod again after Sarah D. Bunting subjected him to American Ripper and H.H. Holmes: America's First Serial Killer. Is Holmes just too tough a subject for documentaries to cover effectively? Did the creators miss opportunities to explore new angles on The Devil In The White City's already well-told tale? ...
41m Jul 12, 2017
41m
Episode 14: 014: Aileen Wuornos
Deadly Women devoted a "Predators" segment to Aileen Wuornos; Chris Huff and I devoted a Cold Case segment to lamenting the "Go Toros!" acting from the day players, before moving on to Overkill: The Aileen Wuornos Story, which stars Jean Smart and Park Overall in a weirdly elliptical but also very empathetic treatment of Wuornos's life in crime. Boston marriages, honeysuckle accents, gender pol...
50m Jun 28, 2017
50m
013: Jonestown
American Experience's "Jonestown: the Life And Death Of Peoples Temple" and 1980's Guyana Tragedy: The Story Of Jim Jones make up our all-Cold-Case episode this week, as Eve Batey comes back to talk about the Peoples Temple's lasting effect on San Francisco, and California; what Jim Jones's particular breed of amoral manipulation and surreal paranoia can tell us about today's headlines; and who...
1hr 4m Jun 21, 2017
1hr 4m
Episode 12: 012: Menendez: Blood Brothers And John List On American Justice
Alex Collins joins Sarah D. Bunting for a riot grrrrl, Bill Kurtis, and two VERY unhappy families.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://megaphone.fm/adchoices
38m Jun 14, 2017
38m
011: Bill Cosby: An American Scandal And The Dr. Robert Neulander Case
Charter member of the Virtual True Crime Book Club Kim Reed reunites to talk about The National Enquirer Investigates's take on the Bill Cosby allegations as they go to trial this week. What is his wife's role in all this? Has he gotten a fair trial in the court of public opinion -- and is that because of his race? And would you be better off listening to WHYY's pod on the story instead? Later,...
1hr 1m Jun 07, 2017
1hr 1m