September 8, 2022

Hall-Mills · False Reports

Plus Theranos witness-nanigans, and our NSW correspondent on "evidence" that isn't

the true crime that's worth your time

The suburb of Canterbury in Sydney is decidedly lower-socio-economic-status; it’s post-industrial and a little grimy. There are river views but our river is muddy, polluted and choked with mangroves — for three months a crashed Toyota Camry could be seen in it while the authorities haggled over who should get it out, and how.

But on the other hand, the depressed property values mean it’s been perfect for developers — lots of the old warehouses, factories and post-war workers’ homes have been knocked down and brand-new apartments built. And in one of those brand-new apartments, two young women died in strange circumstances we may never know in full.

In fact, we don’t even know if they died there.

Asra and Amaal Alsehli, sisters aged 23 and 24, were found dead in June when their landlord, who hadn’t received rent for months, asked someone to check on them.

We don’t know how they died; we don’t know when they died; they could have died on the scene or elsewhere. It had been too long for any meaningful forensic evidence to remain. We only know that each was found dead in separate rooms, and they’d been there for weeks.

The story was very much of the times: many people were staying home because of Covid restrictions; the women had nearly all their food delivered via gig-economy scooters; many of the people in Canterbury are new migrants with limited English; it was bitterly cold in June, so everyone’s doors and windows stayed shut. But there were some paradoxical aspects: the sisters were asylum seekers, but their home country was one of the richest in the world. One of them had taken out a restraining order against a man, then withdrawn it. One of them had registered for a business licence but the police wouldn’t say what type of business it was. Neighbours described the two women as like little birds, terrified of outside contact.

Did they die of suicide? The Murdoch press said there were “chemicals” found in the apartment, but there’s no need to dignify that with a link. Is it possible the cold weather was the culprit, and carbon monoxide from a heater the “weapon”?

The respected radio program Background Briefing devoted an atmospheric forty minutes to the sisters, capturing the mystery but also the broader background of displaced women from middle eastern countries and whether Australia is able or willing to meet their needs. Even that in-depth story may have jumped the gun a little, because more recently a witness came forward to say they’d seen the sisters at a queer event, adding a whole new, even more poignant level to their story.

The apartment is for rent, if you’re interested. NSW law says you have to be notified if a crime took place in an apartment you’re looking at…as a buyer. If you’re renting, you’re on your own.

I pass the building every day. When I fill up my car at the service station next door I look up at their windows. The details are tantalising: asylum-seekers who drove a BMW; their family choosing to delegate the funeral arrangements to the local consulate; their terror of men lurking in the shadows, contrasted with the straightforward kindness they received from two everyday Aussie blokes, a busy plumber and property manager who sensed something was very wrong and just wanted to help; the fear they so obviously felt, but the bravery it must have taken to attend a lesbian event — and sisters who went through so much together but ended up alone in separate rooms.

We may never know. — L.B. Jefferies

Elizabeth Holmes wants a new trial. I mean, “shocker,” but the actual claim is that

Adam Rosendorff, a former Theranos lab director who testified for five days in her criminal-fraud trial, showed up unannounced at her home Aug. 8. During his visit, Dr. Rosendorff spoke to Ms. Holmes’s partner and said that the government had twisted his testimony that Theranos was “working so hard to do something good and meaningful,” and that he felt guilty “to the point where he had difficulty sleeping,” according to the court filing.

Both Rosendorff and a spokesman for the US attorney’s Northern District of California have declined to comment; the latter is no surprise, but the former raises an eyebrow, for me, because if this is utter fabrication, you might expect Rosendorff to say so — but that could be years of law-enforcement “takes” on how people “should” behave during criminal proceedings influencing my knee-jerk reaction.

As to Holmes’s angle here, WSJ goes on to note that

Ms. Holmes last week requested an acquittal, and during the hearing, her legal team said they had newly discovered information that would help her case but didn’t provide further details. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Edward Davila denied the motion for an acquittal. Ms. Holmes is scheduled to be sentenced in October, while Mr. Balwani is set to be sentenced the following month.

So Rosendorff could have had a crisis of whatever and come to the Holmeshaus doorstep…or this is just so much desperate pre-sentencing squid-inking. My money’s on the latter, given what we know about this case, but

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if you think I’m being unfair. — SDB

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Agent Sterling Lord died over the long weekend. Lord’s advocacy for Jack Kerouac led most of the obits, but his roster contained multitudes — including one author who generated the Google alert for this correspondent:

Thanks to his friendship with Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, Lord helped launch Stan and Jan Berenstain’s multimillion-selling books about an anthropomorphic bear family. He negotiated terms between McGinniss and accused killer Jeffrey MacDonald, later convicted, for the true-crime classic “Fatal Vision.” He found a publisher for Nicholas Pileggi’s mob story “Wiseguy” and helped arrange the deal for its celebrated film adaptation, “Goodfellas.”

So that’s two true-crime classics, really, although I don’t know that the McGinniss deal is such a soft feather in Lord’s cap given that MacDonald found a way to get a breach-of-contract lawsuit all the way to trial in 1984, but the book itself is a classic. — SDB

Rachel Aviv’s “The Victim Who Became the Accused” in the September 12 New Yorker is a stunner. It is infuriating, and may be triggering for some because it concerns sexual-assault allegations; the subhed — “After a Black female police officer reported that a white male colleague had taken advantage of her sexually, she found herself on trial.” — gives some indication as to the ground Aviv covers.

And it’s a lot of ground: the trauma in the background of the officer, Arica Waters; how internet predators can put pre-teens in situations they don’t understand; the concept of the “good victim”; how Waters figured in a Catfish episode from ten years ago1, and how a private investigator working for the accused colleague tried to use that against her. But Aviv is especially good at neatly unpacking why the system can seem so ill-equipped to contend with sexual misconduct

The legal system generally puts sexual intercourse into two categories—rape or not rape—a binary that is at odds with the way these things often unfold: two drunk people with unequal power who find themselves sexually involved for reasons that are complex and unstated. Such encounters are rarely not confusing.

and how even a good-faith search for “the truth” in these “encounters” is bound to end in a frustrating array of answers, none of them “right”:

We expect victims to have unblemished histories, in part because sexual violence is addressed at the individual level, where, for good reason, the burden of proof is high; less attention is paid to the social and structural reasons that people become victims—the imbalances of power that shape identities over a lifetime.

It’s extremely well-built, comprehensive but contained, and if you can stomach it, I recommend it. — SDB

A couple of noteworthy recent pieces from Air Mail, in case you’re considering a subscription to that pub…starting with a peek behind the curtain with Michael Bronner. Bronner, the screenwriter on Rogue Agent, has written a two-part account of how he got involved with, then brought to screen, the story of “Robert Hendy-Freegard, then 34, who had become the first Englishman ever convicted of the novel crime of ‘kidnapping by fraud.’ In other words, kidnapping by brainwashing—by mindfuck—as opposed to the more traditional ‘by force.’”

Rogue Agent came out last month, and I sort of half-clocked it and then let it go by, but I don’t think I was aware it starred Norton, who played a very effective baddie in Happy Valley and is somewhat undersung, at least on this side of the pond. Anyone seen it? Should I give it a look?

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And our esteemed colleague Sarah Weinman convinced me to give a new book on the Hall-Mills case a look when she reviewed it for AM last week. Joe Pompeo’s Blood & Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder That Hooked America On True Crime may sport a category of subtitle I don’t care for — “[X Case] Created True Crime As America Now Understand It” is just never accurate, ask the colonial pamphleteers working in the genre in the 1700s — but 1) I understand why they happen, 2) it’s never the author’s “fault,” and 3) that particular case did share a lot of facets with more contemporary cases in terms of feverish coverage, ensuing law-enforcement bungling, and so on.

Weinman has a couple of problems with Blood & Ink — but makes the case for side-by-siding it with Tinseltown, which I’ve had on my TBR shelf for several years. Okay, Weinman herself already did that on a case level when she was in high school, but there’s worse thought processes to mirror than hers, right?

Both Taylor’s murder and those of Hall and Mills are remembered today because of their high scandal-and-sin quotient, major investigative errors by law enforcement, and changing technology (radio, newswires) that disseminated the news nationally in an unprecedented way. Though [William] Mann focused more on illuminating the myriad dysfunctional personalities at the center of the Taylor case, Pompeo infuses more energy into the media coverage of Hall-Mills, and the tabloid wars that resulted from, and forever contaminated, the story.

I do have about a dozen books I “have to” read before settling in with either of these, including one recommended highly by, um, Weinman — but I’ll at least move Tinseltown up a few slots. — SDB

Coming soon to Best Evidence: The Burger Chef murders, vintage Esquire, and more.

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