Hunters Point Riots · Kim Kardashian · Kiwi Pathologist
Plus: How crime shows evolved from PI-based to pro-cop propaganda
the true crime that's worth your time
The Golden City isn’t a true-crime podcast. It’s a show about San Francisco and its stories — take a scoot down its feed and you’ll hear me on escaped monkeys, my husband on the city’s (now silent) noon siren, and hostile architecture.
This week’s episode might be it’s most important: in it, host Walter Thompson covers the Hunters Point riots of 1966, a massive civil uprising spurred by the fatal shooting of a 16-year-old Black kid by a white San Francisco police officer.
The episode dropped this morning, and its true crime history lesson intersects with a news article I read last week, one I haven’t been able to get out of my brain. It’s not a huge story: The police chief of Menlo Park, California (an extremely affluent neighborhood in Silicon Valley) abruptly resigned during a town meeting last week, surprising the city’s Mayor and city council.
Here’s what soon-to-be former Police Chief Dave Bertini said right before he basically peaced out: “All police officers are hurting right now based on actions that happened a thousand miles away from us” (and then he quit). That remark keeps echoing in my head. 1) He’s complaining that police officers are hurting and 2) he thinks that the issue that’s driven people to reconsider policing in this nation is a recent one, and “one that happened a thousand miles away from us.”
I guess the proper response is “good riddance,” as you probably don’t want a person who gets all mad when he’s questioned and flounces off the job running around your town with a gun, but I think that attitude — that the cops who are doing unacceptable things are always ones on the other side of the country (state, town) are why we’re in this mess in the first place. This shooting in 1966, which led to three days of civil unrest across SF, probably felt like it should have been the end of the issue, and to many (privileged) people, in the years following, police brutality was something that only happened “thousand miles away from us.”
It doesn’t; it’s always been on your street, ahead of you in traffic, or next door to you. And if you don’t believe me, listen to the last line of The Golden City’s most recent podcast, to hear what Walter — one of the calmest, most rational, and kindest people (this man has a 19-year-old cat, for pete’s sake) I know — has to say about police in America. If this doesn’t well-and-truly send home the disastrous effect the current law enforcement system has had on our society, I don’t know what will. — EB
I’d be a ding-dong to think that I’m the first person to tell you about Kim Kardashian West’s new criminal-justice podcast. My assumption is that everyone who knows you dig true crime has texted, Slacked, or carrier-pigeoned you the news that the polymath has signed an exclusive deal with Spotify for a show adjacent to West's work with the Innocence Project.
The WSJ broke the news, but since they’re paywalled, everyone else proceeded to reblog it with gleeful abandon. According to The Verge, the show will also spotlight “the investigative work of co-producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi,” work she apparently did regarding the case of Kevin Keith, a man convicted in 1994 of three murders he maintains he did not commit. I’ll leave Ansaldi’s LinkedIn right here in case you can see what her “investigative work” is, because I sure can’t.
West’s folks have subsequently confirmed all key points, including the information that the show’s distributor will be Parcast, notorious as one of Sarah’s least favorite networks. Sarah isn’t the only person with Parcast beef, though — here’s Jezebel’s Shannon Melero on the matter:
…Even more curious is that Kardashian West is tackling a trial from ’94 when she could have easily sold a podcast to Spotify discussing one particularly wild case from 1995.
Regardless of Kardashian West’s affiliation with this endeavor, there is no reason to have another true-crime podcast in a market that is oversaturated with crime content…Parcast podcasts include Solved Murders, Serial Killers, Today in True Crime, Sports Criminals, Unexplained Mysteries, Kingpins, Crimes of Passion, Female Criminals, and Not Guilty just to name a few. That’s only one network for fuck’s sake! Pick a different topic.
A release date for the Kardashian podcast (name TBD) has yet to be announced, but I’m sure there’ll be no shortage of announcements when it’s ready to drop. — EB
There’s a true-crime reason why so much fictional crime is about cops. Twitter user WillMcAvoyACN, an anonymous parody account for a dumb show (it’s also a Twitter account that announced its retirement a couple years ago, not that it matters), surfaced a great Washington Post series from 2018, a set of thoroughly-reported items on how people who make crime shows — even beloved ones like The Wire — have bent over backward to appease the cops the shows depict.
The five-part series (was that a drop of drool, longread fans?) from Alyssa Rosenberg details how “police influence played a powerful role in shaping early Hollywood,” which has “has since spent decades advancing ideas about policing that play out in some of our most agonized public debates.” Oh, 2018 Washington Post, you’re telling us.
Here’s the breakdown:
Did I read this back in 2018? Maybe! But I’m reading it again, with even fresher eyes. It’s been a long, long two years. — EB
The crime
Take your pick — rural New Zealand may not have many murders, but after thirty years as a forensic pathologist Dr. Cynric Temple-Camp has assembled a book’s worth of material based on the bodies that have come through his lab’s doors. There’s killer livestock, amateur exhumations, and a possible case of spontaneous human combustion. But the most notorious case here is the Mark Lundy axe murders, where his forensic evidence was reviewed by the UK’s Supreme Court.
The story
After leaving his career as a GP in South Africa after treating a victim of a trampling elephant, Dr. Temple-Camp retrains as a pathologist and heads to a job in the considerably less exotic location of Palmerston North, New Zealand. While Palmerston North doesn't see many elephant tramplings, it has its own tragedies, as he learns on his first day when he gets dispatched to a cemetery to investigate an attempted grave-robbing.
Origin story out of the way, each chapter of The Cause of Death: True Stories of Death and Murder from a New Zealand Pathologist is a case study, starting with a body and the question: how did this death happen? While the answer isn't always murder, it is often unexpected or unknown. Temple-Camp is committed to upholding the best practices of his field, but he's happy to share the dark jokes and occasional blunders that go on behind morgue doors. And apparently you get used to the smell, though it upsets the reporters who show up in the lab for a scoop.
The devotion to science and procedure doesn’t make this a dry read; as the doctor himself observes, “An autopsy is a very liquid experience.” Needles and eyeballs regularly come into close contact here, and the reader will leave the book with a thorough understanding of the postmortem state of digestive systems and properties of brain tissue. It’s the brain tissue (found on a polo shirt) that implicates travelling salesman Mark Lundy in the killing of his wife and child, despite the hotly debated circumstances of the deaths. This is where Temple-Camp is at his best, scrupulously laying out the science behind the forensics. He’s absorbed the New Zealand tendency for self-deprecation, starting stories with him running late for a court appearance with baby vomit on his shoes or mixing up human bones with those from a walrus, but he is serious about providing dignity for the dead by using the best tools he can to tell their story. If you have a high tolerance for medical matters and dad jokes, this is an addictive read about real CSI work. — Margaret Howie
I’m not going to get Quibi, which means I’ll probably never get to watch Murder House Flip. I mean, that’s probably fine — it’s not like I’m out of things to watch (yet), and Sarah tells me it’s not that great.
But, somehow, it’s good enough to get a second season on Quibi, Deadline reports. “Thank you all for your making Murder House Flip a success! I can’t wait for a bigger and better season of spooky renovations and telling it like it is!” co-host Mikel Welch says via press release, while counterpart Joelle Uzye says, “We are so grateful to everyone who responded to our show. I can’t wait to get some incredible new renovations underway. Looking forward to changing the lives of some very deserving homeowners!” These people are sure! excited! about! flipping! murder! houses!
In other news, “good enough to get a second season on Quibi” is my new favorite insult. Try it during your next mediocre experience and it’ll become yours, too. — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: It’s The Blotter Presents, Episode 148, with guest Jeb Lund. They’ll be discussing kidnapping doc Miracle Fishing and Netflix forensics series Exhibit A.
What is this thing? This should help. Follow The Blotter @blotterpresents on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to The Blotter Presents via the podcast app of your choice. You can also call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.