Andrew Tate · Rick Singer · Capitol cover-up
Plus: Is the new Madoff docuseries timely or past the sell-by date?
the true crime that's worth your time
Hello, Friday! I know we just got back from the holidays, but somehow, this weekend couldn’t have come soon enough. I’ve been too busy to watch anything fun, but I’m hoping to change that this weekend.
I’m strongly considering a look at Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street, which just joined Netflix’s lineup. This is yet another Joe Berlinger joint for the streamer — this time he directed — and he says that the recent headlines regarding the fall of FTX and the claims against Sam Bankman-Fried are “a perfect analogy” to the Madoff case.
Berlinger refers to Madoff as a “financial serial killer,” which is an interesting turn of phrase, and one I don’t quite agree with. Serial killers, almost by definition, operate outside the mores of society. Meanwhile, folks like Madoff and Bankman-Fried are products of our societal system, folks who work within it and — arguably — personify capitalism taken to its logical conclusion. (Madoff’s business model of promising benefits to folks who pay him enough sure sounds like, say, the U.S. health insurance system in a lot more ways than we might like to admit.)
Esquire’s Abigail Covington makes a good point, though, that this story has been told again and again, so…why?
…in the streaming giant’s latest release, Madoff: Monster of Wall Street (streaming now), director Joe Berlinger attempts to package Bernie Madoff as both—a scamillain, if you will. Madoff affixes the worst touchstones of the true crime industrial complex to the Bernie Madoff scam, which, in our mind-numbing era of IP content, has already been told by HBO (Wizard of Lies), ABC (Madoff), PBS (The Madoff Affair), a handful of documentaries (In God We Trust, Chasing Madoff), and too many podcast episodes to count. You know the drill: eerie music, awkward reenactments, and dimly-lit talking heads.
Madoff is a lot like those other works, except longer. The series’ producers stretched the story into four hour-long episodes by adding interviews with fresh sources and new material, including footage from Madoff’s deposition. Given how familiar and straightforward the Madoff scam is, I’m not sure this was necessary. (As the forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky succinctly explained in the final episode: “Bernie Madoff’s fraud was not a complex fraud. It involved taking people’s money, telling them he was going to invest their money, and then simply never doing it.”)
And, really, why now? It’s not like the FTX fall happened, then Berlinger thought, “Egads, a perfect parallel to that 15-year-old Ponzi scheme, I must revisit!”
Y’all, did I just talk myself out of watching Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street? I think I might have! Another option, which tbh seems more to my taste today, is Death in the Dorms, which dropped on Hulu yesterday.
This docuseries is about on-campus slayings in cases ranging from 2003-2022, and (based on its trailer) it has a very throwback, pre-prestige vibe. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! In fact, if my options are ABC News Studios-style straightforwardness or the cinematic flourishes that come with higher-falutin’ storytelling, this weekend, I might be more up for the former.
What about you? What true crime are you watching, listening to, or reading this weekend? Let us know! — EB
When does true crime get swept under the rug? When it’s an attempt to overthrow the government, I guess: according to the Washington Post, while folks who visit the U.S. Capitol hear all about the building’s history, including attacks it faced in past centuries, the attack on the structure on Jan. 6 2021 is intentionally omitted from the info presented to visitors. Not even kidding.
The attack is not mentioned in the Capitol Visitor Center’s newly renovated exhibition hall, which provides a robust history of the building. Nor is it discussed in the seven-minute introductory film that visitors watch before the tour commences. And as the second anniversary of the attack approaches, the visitor center has not announced any plans to address it.
It is not by accident that the guides are silent about one of the building’s darkest and most consequential days, even as highly publicized hearings about what happened unfolded under the same roof. They have been told to only refer to Jan. 6 if questioned on a tour, according to former tour guides and people familiar with the center’s operations. It is a policy that in many ways reflects a country at odds with itself, unable to agree on fact and truth and reluctant to engage on the history of a day that threatened democracy.
This is especially wild to those of us who focus on true crime real estate and locations, like folks who drove around Indianapolis the other day looking at H. H. Holmes-related sites. (I felt weird about posting them to Instagram! My feed is already cursed, why buy more trouble?)
Visitor center officials declined to comment, saying that the omission of mention of recent history “is in keeping with our history of deferring to congressional authorities on most issues.” As noted by the Post, the House Administration Committee and the Senate Rules and Administration Committee is where the buck stops for the tourist arm of the Capitol, presumably the authorities the visitor center officials are referring to.
According to Liam Gideon, the owner of an outside tour group, if visitors ask, they’re told, “We’re not allowed to answer any questions about that.” According to a former guide, the policy might be the only option, though, as “So many visitors are going to be on both sides, for lack of a better term.” Gideon disagrees, saying, “Some of them won’t be happy with what you are saying. But we base everything we say about Jan. 6 off of historical facts. It makes it hard for people to get irritated by that or push back when you’re sticking to the actual facts.”
But if folks are denied those facts — or, worse, if those facts are withheld as a matter of policy — it’s hard not to think that officials are intentionally sowing longterm ignorance to avoid a little temporary awkwardness now. One might ask any teacher grappling with how to truthfully educate kids about colonization or slavery how that true crime coverup policy has worked out for us so far. — EB
The Guardian has a very handy explainer on the Andrew Tate case. Those of us safe from influencer culture might not know who Tate is — I had only heard of him through my niece, who’d stumbled across his misogynistic rants on YouTube this summer. Tate, who referred to himself as a “success coach,” was banned from Instagram, Facebook, TikTok and YouTube this fall. Per NBC:
Tate, 35, continues to go viral in large part due to his extreme statements: comparing women to property, graphically describing how he would assault a woman for accusing him of cheating, and claiming that men would rather date 18- and 19-year-olds over women in their mid-20s because the former have had sex with fewer men. Since they’re less experienced in dating, men can “make an imprint” on teenagers, Tate has claimed.
Yes, vile, but sadly common — and with a name like that, he doesn’t seem like someone who would necessarily be remembered much post-deplatforming, which is why headlines last week that he’d been 1) arrested 2) after twitter beef (Elon Muck reinstated him in November, natch) with climate advocate Greta Thunberg left me wondering how much reading I’d have to do to fill in all the perplexing blanks.
So thank you, Today in Focus, the Guardian’s servicey “wait, what happened?” podcast. From the treadmill, I learned that “for many young people it can feel like he is all but inescapable – on chat shows, podcasts, YouTube and all over their social media feeds” until he was arrested in Bucharest on human trafficking and rape allegations. And there’s more to know, including fun with pizza boxes, charges that stretch back to April, and other details ready-made for a ripped-from-the-headlines dramatic adaptation. — EB
Rick Singer was sentenced this week to 3.5 years in prison for his role in the college admissions scandal. Immediately, I thought “someone get Matthew Modine on the horn!” Modine played Singer so memorably in 2021’s Netflix adaptation of the case, Operation Varsity Blues: The College Admissions Scandal, which was a weird and oddly wonderful look at the rich jerks/fancy colleges story.
Singer, who masterminded the scheme, flipped on his wealthy clients when buttonholed by the feds, which is why no one here can look at Felicity Huffman without saying “ruh-roh” ever again. That cooperation is likely why the sentence — the longest one handed down in the case to date was so brief.
His sentencing spurred me to reread this fantastic Bay Area News Group longread from 2022 on Singer’s move into a Florida trailer park. (It’s subscriber-only content, but is is available through many local libraries if you can’t spare the cash.) It’s a bizarre story, and a read that’ll make you want Modine to return for OVB: TCAS 2. Here’s a snip:
Within weeks of moving in, Singer – a fitness fanatic who lives in athletic shorts and T-shirts – focused his attention on getting the sedentary set of Isle of Palms moving.
Like the aliens who filled a swimming pool with “life force” that rejuvenated senior citizens in the 1985 movie “Cocoon” – filmed at a nearby St. Petersburg retirement community and shuffleboard club – Singer seems bent on a similar mission.
At an HOA meeting last year, Singer suggested turning a visitors parking lot next to the laundry room into a pickleball court, volunteered to donate a cornhole set to the clubhouse and offered paddle boards and two-seater kayaks for free outings.
In a community that seems to prefer four-wheeled scooters, no one really took him up on his offers.
But another proposition gained more traction – a walking club that would meet outside the park office every night at 7.
Blankenship, who weighed more than 300 pounds, became Singer’s first project.
“I turned him down four or five times. And finally he said, ‘We’ll just go down to the end of the block and back,’” said Blankenship, a retired truck driver and factory worker. “I knew he knew that I couldn’t go very far. And so that’s how we started.”
In a follow-up report following his sentencing, the same BANG reporter who tracked Singer to Florida, Julia Prodis Sulek, writes that Singer seemed to assume he’d be back soon, and that “two of his vehicles, one loaded with paddle boards, were still in the parking lots Wednesday.” In fact, “Everything is still here, like he’s just coming back from the beach at any moment,” a neighbor told Sulek. ““I don’t think he expected this.” — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: Hitchcock, the Boston Strangler, and soccer.
What is this thing? This should help. Follow Best Evidence @bestevidencefyi on Instagram, email us at editorial at bestevidence dot fyi, or call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.