Body Cameras · Griffith Park · Monsters
While everyone else watches Hallmark fare, we're sticking with crime this weekend
the true crime that's worth your time
I get why the true crime streaming calendar is especially lean this weekend. Would you slate your docuseries against Elf, A Christmas Story, or the latest rom-com about the high-powered city gal who returns to the small town in which she was raised to somehow find love with her high school boyfriend, a longtime resident of the town who — through the magic of the movies — is not a Pizzagate-believing Trump-loving gun-nut Nazi. With all those options out there, who still has two thumbs and wants to think about theft, deception, or murder? This guy!
Face to Face with ETA: Conversations with a Terrorist is a Netflix release of a Spanish documentary about Basque separatist group the ETA. Based on the trailer (I couldn’t find a version with subtitles, I apologize) it clearly has production values that take it past the typical quality of a jailhouse interview, but based on the press materials for No Me llame Ternera — as it was known in its September release in Spain — that’s basically what it is.
The interviewer is Jordi Évole, the subject is Josu Urrutikoetxea, aka Josu Ternera, who led many of the group’s actions and attacks in the 1960s and 1970s. He’s been imprisoned since 1989, aka the year Taylor Swift was born and I graduated from high school, so he’s been out of circulation for a minute. Given that, what observatiuons might he have that would be relevant to us today? Is there anything we can learn from the thinking behind his 50-60+ year old crimes? Is there worth to hearing from these people? I am undecided on all these matters, but am eager to hear your thoughts. — EB
I am starting to lose track of all the cult-related docuseries we’ve gotten in recent weeks. Are you feeling this, too? The latest entry is Born In Synanon, which (like Face to Face with ETA) makes its U.S. streaming debut today. This time, the platform is Paramount+, and the topic is the Santa Monica-based drug rehab program Tender Loving Care, which was later rebranded as the Church of Synanon.
As was popular in the 1970s, the church employed “attack therapy,” a technique not that dissimilar to the methods used by the wildly popular Erhard Seminars Training movement just a few years later. (Kids, ask your parents about EST.) This 2014 Gizmodo report, “Synanon's Sober Utopia: How a Drug Rehab Program Became a Violent Cult,” covers the group’s high points intriguingly enough that I’m tempted by the Paramount series, but I’ll warn you, it’s a four-parter. Is there enough there there to justify a four-hour commitment over a busy holiday weekend? That, my friends, is up to you. — EB
Hearsay
The Failed Promise of Police Body Cameras (New York Times gift link)
This ambitious, multi-media report uses New York’s first police shooting caught on body camera as a jumping-off point for an exploration of how, in actuality, cameras are a band aid, over an, ugh, gunshot wound. Snip:
When body-worn cameras were introduced a decade ago, they seemed to hold the promise of a revolution. Once police officers knew they were being filmed, surely they would think twice about engaging in misconduct. And if they crossed the line, they would be held accountable: The public, no longer having to rely on official accounts, would know about wrongdoing.
…
Yet without deeper changes, it was a fix bound to fall far short of those hopes. In every city, the police ostensibly report to mayors and other elected officials. But in practice, they have been given wide latitude to run their departments as they wish and to police — and protect — themselves. And so as policymakers rushed to equip the police with cameras, they often failed to grapple with a fundamental question: Who would control the footage?
This is a thought-provoking longread that effectively illustrates the impunity with which many police departments operate, as well as how (perhaps like with the filming of reality shows) the presence of cameras doesn’t have the behavior-modifying powers we might think they do. — EB
“A Slippery Slope”: NYPD Is Relocating Reporters From Police HQ to a Trailer [Vanity Fair]
This is a quickie I’m including today mainly because it’s small moves like this that temper and flavor today’s daily news coverage before it becomes the true crime of tomorrow. Creating even more distance between reporters and the police will, in fact, mean less coverage of their activities — and less scrutiny of their behavior. When read in tandem with the body cam story, the NYPD isn’t looking so hot this week! — EB
Delusions Of Grandeur: The Scandalous Crime Of A Los Angeles Millionaire [Crime Reads]
You’ve seen LA’s Griffith Park in pretty-much every LA-set TV show ever, but the man it was named for — with the improbably moniker of Griffith Jenkins Griffith — was a domestic abuser and real estate and tax fraudster who shot his wife in the face. Here’s a snip:
The defense scrambled to prove that Griffith had been legally insane when he pulled the trigger. Tina was asked to repeat the first words she said when a doctor arrived at the hotel to tend to her wounds: “Oh, the colonel is crazy, he is surely crazy!” Business associates and fellow members of his club described his heavy drinking, erratic behavior, and growing paranoia about Catholics plotting to kill him. A procession of medical experts diagnosed him as suffering from what they termed “chronic alcoholic insanity.” The prosecution countered with experts of its own who had examined Griffith and were convinced he was sane.
The jurors – all men – deliberated for six hours before returning with a compromise verdict. They rejected the insanity plea and found Griffith guilty of the less-serious offence of assault with a deadly weapon. The Evening Post-Record, incensed by what it considered a travesty of justice, reported the news under the headline, “Farce of Rich Man’s Trial Is Over.”
Jury deliberations begin in the trial of actor Jonathan Majors [NPR]
Have you folks been following the day-by-day coverage of this trial? His testified-to threats of suicide after she told a friend about abuse, his on-the-court-record texts in which he proclaims himself both “a great man” and “a monster”? It’s hard to see him as the victim here, which is what his defense team claims — but it’s even harder to see how Disney/Marvel can safely continue to build its franchise around him. (Surely I’m not the only person made so uncomfortable by Majors’ presence that they shut this season of Loki off?)
I hope I don’t sound like I’m dismissing what Grace Jabbari says was years of abuse, because I’m not. But I'm also interested in the greater implications of Majors’ public perception. Some argue that Ezra Miller’s mental health struggle and alleged crimes are the reason The Flash flopped at the box office…but it also wasn’t very good, so I don’t know how much Miller’s issues actually played into the latest chapter in DC’s decades of underperformance. Marvel’s arguably been on a downswing, too, and it doesn’t seem like it can afford to take on extra challenges like a lead actor who sends texts like "I'm a monster. A horrible man. Not capable of love,” let alone who allegedly physically harms the woman with whom he lives. — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: We’re wrapping up 2023 with two full weeks of Best Of lists. Please chime in on the picks, won’t you?
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