Errol Morris · Danny Masterson · Airbnb
Plus: Your true-crime weekend
the true crime that's worth your time
Ugh, I’m so behind on everything that I don’t know if I have time for true crime. I’ve got unwatched episodes of She-Hulk and Bad Sisters, and I haven’t even started on the new season of The Good Fight, Abbott Elementary, and whatever that Star Wars thing is.
If I were to add true crime to my watchlist, it would probably be A Friend of the Family, Peacock’s dramatic adaptation of the Jan Broberg case (as in, the one we all know from Abducted in Plain Sight).
The Hollywood Reporter gave it a lukewarm review, true, but I’m so intrigued by the combination of bewigged Anna Paquin, be-bald-capped Colin Hanks, and Jake Lacy that I can’t say “no,” at least not to the first episode. After that, we’ll see.
What about you? How’s your true-crime weekend shaping up? — EB
I got so excited at the beginning of this headline, but my excitement leveled off by the end. “Errol Morris Plots More Texas True-Crime” read the first bit from the pages of Deadline, and I thought “oh my god, he’s finally finishing his Ed Gein project.”
The Gein story is the stuff of legend, and hard to track down confirmation of online. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Inspired by Hitchcock's Psycho, Morris visited Plainfield, Wisconsin, in 1975. While in Wisconsin, he conducted multiple interviews with Ed Gein, the infamous serial killer who resided at Mendota State Hospital in Madison. He later made plans with German film director Werner Herzog, whom Tom Luddy had introduced to Morris, to return in the summer of 1975 to secretly open the grave of Gein's mother to test their theory that Gein himself had already dug her up.
Herzog arrived on schedule, but Morris had second thoughts and was not there. Herzog did not open the grave. Morris later returned to Plainfield, this time staying for almost a year, conducting hundreds of hours of interviews. Although he had plans to either write a book or make a film (which he would call Digging up the Past), Morris never completed his Ed Gein project. In the fall of 1976, Herzog visited Plainfield again, this time to shoot part of his film Stroszek.
If I was smart, I would have remembered that though Gein is the inspiration for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (and Psycho, and loads of other stuff), his crimes weren’t in Texas, and the case in question is Benjamine Spencer, who was freed from prison in March after serving 34 years for a crime he says didn’t commit.
Per Deadline, Morris is serving as executive producer on the docuseries, which is based on Barbara Bradley Hagerty’s 2018 Atlantic piece Can You Prove Your Innocence Without DNA?
Hagerty’s longread is worth a revisit — as with Serial, there are bits that hit differently now, but the bones are all there.
Snip:
Detective Jesus Briseno arrived in West Dallas early Monday morning. He had been working homicide cases for two years, though rarely as the lead investigator, as he would be in the Young case. Canvassing the neighborhood, he had little initial luck finding cooperative witnesses. West Dallas in the 1980s was not a place where residents were in the habit of helping the police; the predominantly black neighborhood viewed police with suspicion, if not hostility. In the hope of turning up leads, Young’s parent company offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and indictment. Electronic Data Systems, the Plano company founded by Ross Perot, offered its own $25,000 reward—Young’s father had worked closely with Perot.
On Monday, 42-year-old Gladys Oliver told the police the same thing most of her neighbors had told them: She had seen nothing. The next day, however, she called Crime Stoppers, an organization that feeds anonymous tips to the police and also offers rewards for information that leads to an arrest. Crime Stoppers informed her that she would need to tell her story to the police to receive her reward. She called them the next day. From her bedroom window, she said, she had watched a young man jump out of the passenger seat of the BMW and dash away. She then saw another young man, short and squat, get out of the driver’s side and walk toward the trunk. Both men were black; she knew them from the neighborhood. The stocky one, Robert Mitchell, lived around the corner, and would sometimes buy the barbecue sandwiches Oliver sold on Sunday nights. The other man was an acquaintance of her son’s; he’d looked in on a dominoes game her son had hosted on her porch the day Jeffrey Young was attacked. His name was Benjamine Spencer.
In a statement, Morris says of the project that “Benjamine Spencer’s story picks up where The Thin Blue Line left off. As Randall Adams was walking out of prison, Spencer was being sentenced to life by the same people who helped ensure Adams’s conviction. Both men were innocent. But one remained in prison for decades.”
Things are early enough in production that we don’t have any details on where the docuseries will air, but we do know that the director is Zo Wesson, who has a bone to pick with Texas, telling Deadline, “I did a lot of production work in Texas where I would commute between Las Colinas and Fort Worth. During routine stops, I was often met with suspicious eyes, and I remember thinking that if I was falsely arrested there I wouldn’t have a chance, just like Benjamine. Back then, Texas’s slogan was ‘It’s Like a Whole Other Country,’ and as a Black man, that’s exactly how I felt. As a filmmaker of color, I believe we must persist in challenging this reality.” — EB
The alleged crimes of Eric Weinberg, Harvey Weinstein and Danny Masterson are back in the news. First, Scrubs producer Weinberg, who faces 18 charges of sexual assault involving five women, CNN reports.
The charges were announced Wednesday, with DA George Gascón saying in a press conference that Weinberg “relied on his position of influence to lure young women for photo shoots where he allegedly sexually assaulted them.” Weinberg remains free on $5 million bail, after a judge threw out Gascón’s request to deny bail. “As we anticipated, he used his incredible wealth to bail out,” Gascón said.
Prosecutors tell the LA Times that “dozens” of women have come forward with allegations against Weinberg since news of his arrest broke.
Meanwhile, a well-researched piece from The Hollywood Reporter gives us a preview of the upcoming LA criminal cases of Harvey Weinstein and Danny Masterson, both of whom begin jury trials in separate sexual assault cases this month. Weinstein, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence in New York for a number of other sexual assaults, faces 11 counts in the assaults of five women; Masterson faces three criminal charges of rape. Both say they’re innocent, and both, analysts say, face uphill battles.
Snip:
In Masterson’s case, prosecutors allege a pattern of behavior, which attorneys say is an important factor. Masterson is accused of inviting each of the women to his Hollywood Hills home, giving them a drink that made them feel discombobulated and dragging them into a jacuzzi before taking them upstairs and raping them. “That’s the MO,” says Dhanidina, who emphasizes the consistency of the accounts. “The use of drugging to incapacitate complaining witnesses, along with the hot tub, is a compelling piece of evidence.”
Notes criminal defense attorney Julia Jayne: “In the absence of physical evidence where cases are old, it adds a lot of weight to the prosecution’s case. It gives more context to the relationship because the defense is going to say it was consensual.” (Prior bad acts, even if uncharged, can be introduced into trial, even though police declined to press charges.)
One of Masterson’s accusers reported her alleged rape to police in 2004. Even though no charges were filed against the actor, who didn’t respond to requests for comment, prosecutors could introduce that report. Meanwhile, Weinstein faces the same hurdle of prosecutors presenting evidence of “prior bad acts.” In addition to the five Jane Does whose accounts are related to the charges, four other women will testify that Weinstein assaulted them. (L.A. judge Lisa Lench is excluding testimony from actresses Rose McGowan and Daryl Hannah, the former because many of the accounts were more recent than McGowan’s and the latter because Hannah didn’t allege assault.)
Jury selection for Weinstein’s case begins on October 10, Masterson’s the next day. Meanwhile, a civil sexual assault case against Kevin Spacey just kicked off yesterday in New York, and director Paul Haggis also heads to an NY courtroom on October 17 for Haleigh Breest’s sexual assault claim against him. October is quite the month! — EB
I’ll leave you with this Vice longread on how your criminal record might get you booted off Airbnb. While most places, a misdemeanor conviction can’t get you barred from employment, the short-term rental platform apparently feels that minor infractions like taillight or dog-licensing violations make one a dangerous enough character that they should be denied the company’s services.
Snip:
Before his ban, Steven had been a “superhost.'' For about a year, the 30-something IT professional had been carefully building up his reputation on the platform by hosting people in the Southeast U.S. Self-described as Airbnb’s “biggest fan,” he had encouraged everyone he knew with rental properties to try hosting on the platform.
Then, in August, he received an email from Airbnb stating that he was banned from the platform due to a “criminal records match.” All of his pending guest bookings were immediately canceled, meaning he had lost hundreds of dollars the second Airbnb made its decision, and stood to lose many thousands more in the years ahead.
“This whole situation has been a huge slap in the face,” he told Motherboard. “I've made a large investment in starting this business and I cannot begin to comprehend why they do not have a way to talk to a live person in real time about why these minor incidents of my past are suddenly about to bankrupt me.”
Anyone who’s contacted Airbnb’s customer service can attest to how opaque interactions with the company can be, between conflicting canned responses and what often appears to be a significant communication barrier. But this piece also makes you think, given the actually remarkable trust people put in the company to connect them with strangers who won’t murder them/steal their stuff. What background check red flags should get a guest or host booted from Airbnb — and what violations should be ignored? — EB
Next week on Best Evidence: Chess scams, neighborhood crime reporting, and Kim Kardashian’s podcast.
What is this thing? This should help. Follow Best Evidence @bestevidencefyi on Twitter and Instagram. You can also call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.