D.B. Cooper, unbound · Waxworks · Feeling gross
Sarah's favorite criminal scales the Best Evidence paywall
the true crime that's worth your time
Happy week between Christmas and New Years, all! Like you (we hope), we’re lazing around a bit this week, which means today’s issue includes a re-run of a July review that was initially sent only to subscribers, and two chatty and light items. All this to say that if you opened this issue worried that you’d miss some important true crime news, you can relax — but if you’re looking to hang out with us in the comments, pull up a comfy chair! — EB
Review originally published July 11, 2022.
The crime
On November 24, 1971, please tell me I do not have to finish this sentence. (As it were.)
The story
I don’t entirely know where to begin with a review of D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?!, which premieres Wednesday July 13 on Netflix, so I’ll start with a lighter-weight observation, to wit: DBC material going forward needs to start thinking way outside the box with the titling conventions.
It is always some variation on Where Are You, Where Is He, The Hunt For, The Search For, DB Cooper: Case Closed/Reopened/The Complete File; Who Is DB, I Am DB. I’m the last person who will sit here all “SEO says what?” but for real, if you have a DBC project on the go, start getting creative some kind of way so I can distinguish your C-plus rehash of the case from the dozens of others just in the History Channel’s catalog. My kingdom for I Was A Teenage DB Cooper or Everybody Loves DB Cooper or Beyond The Valley Of The DB Cooper or Bride Of DB Cooper. Inglourious DB Cooperds. Ready Cooper One. Anything. Help me help you!
Because as it is, I have to append a parenthetical to every doc or book I review (“the Gray one,” “the film-festival one”), and I’ll have to do the same with DBC:WAY from now on (“the Zenovich one on Netflix”), but having buried the lede halfway to Outer Mongolia: “the Zenovich one on Netflix” is good.
But as it always goes with DB Cooperiana, the quality is perhaps not as pertinent as the necessity, and DBC:WAY isn’t essential. But it does have a number of things to recommend it, including the fact that, very early in the four-episode series’ runtime, it begins to become about the meta aspects of the case — what it says about American outlaw myth, what it says about the internet and “citizen sleuthing,” what it says about confirmation bias. And more specifically, what it says about Tom “Case Breakers” Colbert, the true-crime genre, and theory-selling vs. truth-seeking.
You’ve seen Colbert before, in various anniversary specials devoted to the case; you’ve seen a handful of his “cold-case team”mates as well, and you’ve also seen Eric Ulis, possibly in the pages of Best Evidence, where I “this fuckin’ guy”ed him for presiding over yet another fruitless dig for parachute fragments or whatever the hell.
I owe Ulis an apology: not that said dig wasn’t bullshit, but he has a lot of on-point observations about Colbert, the so-called Cooper curse, and how spending too much time with the unenlightening fragments of evidence we do have tends to create magical thinking. (He’s not as low-pH as my man Bryan Burrough, who starts out with various measured comments about the historical appeal of the case, but eventually can’t resist ranting about the fact that all tinfoil-hat-strewn roads lead to Robert Rackstraw, which: yeah.)
Other big-name pleasures include Bill Kurtis expositing about the skyjacking in contemporary news footage; man-on-the-street interviews in which John Q. Publics say they respect a man who takes the time to plan a job and do it well, and call DB “one of the slickest cats” out there; and the Cooper case’s equivalent of a papal schism between Colbert and Jim Forbes.
Forbes worked on the notorious History Channel doc in which the FBI 1) dissed the Rackstraw theory and then 2) basically held a presser to close the file the next day; Colbert and other Rackstra…vians (?) received this as a betrayal, suspected the FBI of gaslighting them about their information while secretly using/burying it, and boomeranged the resentment into a FOIA lawsuit to get all the FBI’s files released. But Forbes, asked on camera by a shattered Colbert whether he still thought Rackstraw was Cooper, said he agreed with the feds — and he and Colbert really haven’t spoken since.
If this sounds like typical web-forum infighting and a who-careser, it kind of is and it kind of is, except that you will spend five minutes literally clutching your forehead trying to place Forbes’s voice, then finally realize he’s the narrator of Behind The Music. And it’s neat, in a way! But it’s also surreal as hell.
(Also surreal: the footage of the History special that introduces the team that’s assessing Colbert et al.’s evidence: former Bureau assistant director Tom Fuentes, who is named and chyronned; and “an author,” who is not. I can’t imagine director Marina Zenovich, who has also directed a Roman Polanski doc, wasn’t aware enough of “the author’s” “situation” to do a last-minute re-edit around him, and if you haven’t kept up with that story/don’t necessarily recognize the guy on sight, it’s relatively smooth. Then again, Zenovich also chooses to illustrate a segment about the comparative laxity of airport security in the early seventies with a snippet of OJ Simpson leaping a rope line in a Hertz ad, which is not the most careful, so who knows.)
The larger implication, later voiced in so many words by Skyjack author Geoffrey Gray, is that the FBI formally “closed” the case so that crackpots would quit calling the tip line to tell them they saw DB Cooper in the background of a Modern Family episode, and I don’t disagree with either the assertion or the rationale…but the question confronting us is whether D.B. Cooper: Where Are You?! is worth your time.
And it may be. As I said, it’s good. Zenovich is a thoughtful creator who seldom gets in her own way; Gray, whose book I quite liked until the very end, has a number of money quotes, including one I should get stitched on a pillow (“The fact that we can’t know — I think secretly we like it”); the series is visually very stylish, and it does show you a few things you haven’t seen. It is, I would say, trying to do something beyond the stereotypical splashing out for accurately-vintage re-enactments, or funding goose chases into the woods looking for briefcase hinges.
But: it is too long by about 15 percent, and that along with a certain lack of assurance in terms of really making DBC:WAY about the stories DB Cooper sees us telling — about Colbert, conspiracy theories in general, etc. — is no doubt the result of Netflix, well, Netflixing the property to fit what it does, which is manageably watchable 3-4-part docuseries with genre “beats.”
I don’t love feeling like I’m going to have to mask up and go to CooperCon this year so I can cross it off my list but I did enjoy DBC:WAY, and if you haven’t really treated with the case’s other docs and materials, this is a very solid one-stop shop on the crime and its Hydra of stories. But if the thought exhausts you, I get it, and you can skip it. — SDB
The BBC has a surprisingly servicey piece on the true crime tales behind Madame Tussauds’ Chamber of Horrors. The London attraction has apparently been out of commission for the last six years, and just recently reopened — that, and the ongoing popularity of true crime (perhaps you’ve heard that true crime is big now?) act as the news hook for this holiday week article.
Madame Tussaud, who understood the appeal of villainy better than most, famously immortalised the murderous in wax at her Chamber of Horrors, which was recently restored to the London attraction she founded after a six-year absence.
Waxworks to have featured there include those of figures as notorious as Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson and Dr Crippen - although as the makers of the many recent true-crime TV series and podcasts have come to realise, it's not necessarily the best-known stories of depravity that are the most captivating.
Did my super woke brow raise at the assertion that depravity is captivating? Perhaps! But I guess if you’re writing about a tourist trap there’s little room for political contemplation. And it’s that thesis that powers the rest of the piece, pocket-size histories of folks included in the CoH who lack the household-nameness of Manson, et al. Here’s the one that sent me to Google to see if it had been adapted:
Between 1944 and 1949, London conman John Haigh beat to death and fatally shot six people for financial gain: William McSwan and his parents Donald and Amy McSwan, Archibald Henderson and his wife Rosalie, and Olive Durand-Deacon.
He dumped all of his victims' bodies in a large drum filled with sulphuric acid to dispose of the evidence.
Haigh was eventually arrested and confessed to the killings, pleading insanity. He claimed he had drunk a cup of all of his victims' blood. He apparently believed, mistakenly, he could not be convicted of murder because the bodies of his victims were not found.
Haigh was found guilty within minutes by a jury at Lewes Assizes and was executed by hanging at Wandsworth Prison.
He bequeathed his suit and shoes to Madame Tussauds.
And, guess what, it has! A is for Acid aired on ITV in 2002. Martin Clunes (aka Doc Martin) plays Haigh, but even he (ha ha) wasn’t much of a draw — per Wikipedia, the TV movie’s ratings were pretty dismal. But, hey, it’s available in full on YouTube as of this writing! So now we have something to do later today. — EB
We’re in the last days of our end of year sale. Get a paid subscription to Best Evidence for only $50/year — that’s $5 off the usual annual price, and $10 off what you’d pay month-to-month — and you’ll get reviews like the DB Cooper one above the day they’re released, special bonus reviews, and access to our full archives.
I’ll note that a sub to Best Evidence is cheaper than a Madame Tussauds ticket that includes access to their Chamber of Horrors, so already, you’re getting a superb deal. — EB
The Best New True Crime That Won’t Make You Feel Gross [Slate]
This is an interesting premise for a listicle from a news org! I guess it’s smart and self-aware to acknowledge that there are things that make content consumers feel gross, but given how subjective that is as a concept — for example, scaremongering and oft racist broadcast news crime coverage makes me feel gross af — it’s a bold claim to make. And there are a couple items on this Slate list that definitely made me feel gross, so this is definitely a ymmv situation.
But it did make me think about feeling gross, and what that means for those of us more deeply invested in the telling of true crime tales than most. What true crime properties have you dropped midway because they made you feel down? Are there books, movies or podcasts that left you needing a shower? Let’s hear it. — EB
Thursday and Friday on Best Evidence: An end of year budget doc cleanup so comprehensive, our options were to break it into two days or just call 1-800-GOT-Junk. We chose the former!
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