October 20, 2022

Facebook Sleuths · Jersey Psychics

Plus, "The Watcher"? We hardly even know 'er

the true crime that's worth your time

Rolling Stone reported earlier this week that a Facebook group “played a role” in apprehending a serial-murder suspect in Stockton, CA — but the tone of Andrea Marks’s piece kiiiind of makes it sound like said “role” was “annoying law enforcement.” Maybe it’s just me, so I’ll see what you guys think of this snip about the Stockton County Serial Killer page, which went from zero to four thousand followers in just days:

Long before the arrest, the amateur detectives on the Stockton County Serial Killer page had gotten to work. Some users speculated about the criminal’s method of operations or his profile. “He likely lives near the Delta College campus and uses the public transit bus route to target his victims being that each of the murders was within feet of a bus stop,” posted one user, who said they studied serial murder. “He’s also more than likely a loner who tries to blend in but has no perceivable social group and tries to place himself into positions of authority.” It is not clear yet whether the user got any of those details right.

Others speculated about the motive. Some theorized he had a vendetta against homeless people, since multiple victims had struggled with housing stability. Others suggested he must be mentally ill. “I’m thinking he’s mentally deranged,” a user said. “No normal human being would shoot strangers for no reason.”

Again, I could be projecting, but there’s an Onion-esque, “Area ‘Profiler’ Confident Years Of Criminal Minds Consumption Qualifies Her To Solve Zodiac Case” tone to the way Marks sets off some of the quotes that made me chuckle.

A Stockton PD spokescop did tell Marks that “he’s grateful to the social media groups that elevated the public profile of the case and encouraged tips to come in by the hundreds each day,” but “declined to specify which tip led to [alleged perpetrator Wesley] Brownlee’s arrest.” SFGate’s account of Brownlee’s arraignment yesterday doesn’t mention the FB irregulars, referring merely to “hundreds of tips” that helped focus investigators on Brownlee.

But another quote from the spokescop got me thinking about the Wired piece on true-crime community I talked about a couple weeks back:

“In the olden days, it was just a phone line but now, with social media, I think there’s a bigger audience of people that wanna help in these cases.”

The two things might not seem related, but I found both striking in this way: we as a culture still don’t quite know how to talk, or generally feel, about the internet’s way of making everything simultaneously easier and more complicated — but especially when it comes to crime-solving. The fact that anyone can get on the internet and start digging around on a case from a fresh perspective is both helpful and intrusive; it both brought the Golden State Killer to justice, and put the lead researcher in the ground. Forensic genealogy overall, same duality: it can eliminate suspects, but then, it can make thousands of people suspects without their knowing it (or consenting). Bonding over a legendary podcast or a compelling cold case builds community, and can become unhealthy or violate boundaries. I could go on but you get the idea.

We all take that duality for granted to a certain extent, because the internet is so ubiquitous for so many of us, but there’s so much true-crime content — and, honestly, cop shows and cozy mysteries do it too — that isn’t reckoning with it on that level. There’s a dated resistance to the idea that the internet contains multitudes, seeing “the cyber” only as an endless sticky gauntlet of predators, hackers, and humorless kink activism (tabloid and basic-cable series still rely surprisingly heavily on this POV).

And that may go hand-in-hand with a law-enforcement nostalgia for the “olden” days when the absence of an internet, and the still-imposing status of pre-DNA “forensics,” meant that detectives could more easily maintain their mystique. If a case went cold, it was the case’s fault, not inept investigative work or corruption or reliance on junk science or overmatched local cops throwing up their hands and blaming Satanism.

In other words, I don’t disagree that homicide task forces should view Facebook mindhunters sans portfolio with skepticism. I think I know fuck-all because I’ve read a few John Douglas books; doesn’t make it so. But the old ways weren’t better, just different, and suspicion about overinvested amateurs should have nothing to do with whether they’re making the PD look bad, because that’s on the PD; overinvested amateurs can still get it right. That’s…all Unsolved Mysteries was, overinvested amateurs with a time slot. That’s all handwriting analysis is. If my loved one goes missing and my choice is TikTok or psychics? TikTok, all day. — SDB

“Or the Vidocq Society, don’t forget them!” Friend, I would never. It is my dream to get myself snuck into one of those meetings one day. In the meantime, the Society’s website has a list of publications about those meetings, which will have to do — AND a pretty lengthy list of books by/about Vidocq members.

Has anyone read the Capuzzo? Any Tar Heels here that know whether the case noted in this 2011 Guardian piece got cracked? — SDB

Leave a comment

But speaking of psychics, I actually got a lot out of a Reader’s Digest listicle, “20 Mysteries Actually Solved by Psychics” — albeit perhaps not what author Lauren Cahn was aiming for me to get. I came across it in the first place by Googling “crime solver psychics,” just to see what would come up, since I had the comparison with cold-case Reddit in mind. Scrolling down, I almost immediately thought, “What’s with all the cases from Jersey?” Like, in a list of 20 items of anything that is not explicitly about the Garden State, you wouldn’t necessarily expect 20 percent of the items discussed to hail from there, but four of the first five items in this list are NJ cases, and the sixth is from Staten Island, which…is basically New Jersey1.

Still another case, which originated in Chelsea with the disappearance of a four-year-old, reached its dispiritingly noisome conclusion on a chicken farm in New Jersey. (The suspect’s full name is…Fred Thompson.)

From there, my attention began to wander — not helped by the sense that one psychic in particular, a Kristy Robinett, features in three of the items her own self and may have guided the editorial somewhat; also, the definition of the term “solved” is stretched to the point of violence, duh — and I opened another tab to see if anything new had happened with the Jeannette DePalma case. The Weird NJ team had a book out a few years back about DePalma’s still-unsolved murder, which IIRC was better than you’d expect while not quite getting to “very good,” but the authors didn’t bail on the case after publication…and county officials finally coughed up the case file in February of 2021. The resulting update, and elimination of satanic posing/scene elements as a factor, is a good read.

(This is not far from where I grew up, and as it happens, WNJ posted a photo tour of some spooky spots in Watchung Reservation, which is more or less where all this went down, just yesterday.)

But other locals who can’t let the case go aren’t convinced that Old Nick and his minions didn’t have a hand in DePalma’s murder; one of them talked to the Daily Beast earlier this year. I could understand satanic-panic theories taking hold with kids (God knows we heard enough horror stories about “gangs” roaming around Elephants Graveyard back in the day); grown-ups should know better, especially when there’s a more logical explanation available, but sometimes in a town like mine, it’s easier to think we were under attack from some outré dark-worship outfit than that a murderous scumbag picked up a teenage hitchhiker and…did what murderous scumbags do.

If you’d like to read an academic paper comparing media portrayals of psychics and mediums in investigations to the reality (including comparative success rates), I found one here. — SDB

You don’t need a crystal ball to see what’s coming…because we don’t like asking for money, but we have to, because Times subscriptions, Prime memberships, rope ladders down into wiki-holes so SDB can get out after an entry like today’s, etc. etc. aren’t free. The economy’s not great, we know, but your paid subscriptions help a lot.

Subscribe now

Thanks so much for being here regardless!

Before I go: we talked about The Watcher on Extra Hot Great yesterday. It’s a bloated, badly scripted waste of time, in the panel’s view; save yourself seven hours and read The Cut’s coverage instead. — SDB

Coming up on Best Evidence: I see a body of water and the letter E.

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.