John Walker Lindh · The Alcàsser Murders · The Confession Tapes
Plus: Lots of DNA stuff, being a bad detective, and homicidal children.
the true crime that's worth your time
John Walker Lindh will be the subject of a Showtime documentary. Reading headlines of last week’s release of the so-called “American Taliban” last week, I asked Sarah why his tale hadn’t been the subject of any high-profile adaptations. After all, the tale of a pampered Marin County resident who converted to Islam after viewing the Spike Lee film Malcolm X seems like a rich vein to mine: There’s his seemingly permissive upbringing, his travel to Afghanistan at age 20 to join the Taliban, and his eventual capture in 2001 during a skirmish.
Lindh is now 38, and has spent a little more than 17 years in prison. That’s nearly half his life. You can see why the story attracted documentarian Greg Barker, who in a press release says that "I’ve been intrigued by John Walker Lindh’s story since my first trip to Afghanistan back in 2002, as it has all the hallmarks of a great high-stakes drama, played out on the battlefield and in the courtroom; now, with the perspective of time, it’s clear this is one of those origin stories that came to define an era, and still resonates today.” (Wow, that’s a press release-y quote, huh?) Barker says he’s been working on the doc, which is called Detainee 001 since 2017, and has scored “never-before-revealed details from [Lindh’s] legal case.” The film isn’t yet wrapped, nor do we have a release date for the project, but you’ll eventually find it somewhere between Billions and Shameless, it seems. -- EB
Netflix’s upcoming true crime roster includes takes on the Alcàsser Murders and bad DNA evidence. On June 14 watch for The Alcàsser Murders, a four-ep doc on the 1992 kidnapping, rape, and murder of three Spanish teens. As many as seven suspects were implicated by DNA evidence, but only one man was ever jailed in the case.
The streaming platform is also dropping a show called Exhibit A on June 28, the intention of which is to show “how innocent people have been convicted with dubious forensic techniques.” That one calls out seemingly accepted investigative tools like touch DNA and cadaver dogs (the fallibility of which Sarah and I discussed when we looked at Netflix’s Madeline McCann series).
While we’re at it, it’s worth mentioning that Season 2 of The Confession Tapes is expected on June 21. I didn’t watch the first season -- if you did, hit replay on this email and tell us what you thought of it -- but Sarah and Anna Beth Chao talked about it in Ep 023 of The Blotter Presents. -- EB
Writer Lilly Dancyger is asking true-crime consumers to consider the victim when consuming the content. She writes that nine years ago, her cousin was murdered, but even now the thought of her story as…a story is “unfathomable.” Dancyger says she’s a fan of scripted crime yarns like Law & Order, and says that she doesn’t “begrudge true crime fans their shows.”
I’m not here to tell you you’re a bad person if you enjoy these stories. But I wish that the audiences and creators of these shows would give a little extra thought to how the dead woman (because it’s almost always a woman) at the heart of the story is treated in the telling. Is she treated like a human being who had more life left to live, with people who loved her, who will never be the same because of her loss? Or is she reduced to a gory crime scene photo and a plot point in a story about a man who doesn’t deserve anyone’s fascination?
It’s a provocative essay, which you can take in in its entirety over at CrimeReads. -- EB
A retired crime reporter has penned a book on the Port Alberni murders. The title, which dropped earlier this month, is called The Bulldog and the Helix: DNA and the Pursuit of Justice in a Frontier Town, and is by Shayne Morrow, a reporter who covered one of the cases. The Vancouver Island homicides -- one in 1977 and one in 1998 -- both involved young girls who were abducted and killed, and both were solved using then-emerging DNA techniques, including “blooding,” in which samples are taken from every person known to have been near the crime scene. Both investigations “changed the course of forensic DNA history in Canada,” the book’s publisher said, so it seems like a good pick for fans of the forensic side of things. -- EB
Before you quit your job to open your own detective agency (admit it, you’ve thought about this), you should read this essay. Writer Michael Rovner says he was briefly hired at a a PI firm after a career dishing celebrity dirt. He was fired after a few months on the job, for as opposed to being “Bond, Holmes and Serpico,” Rovner was “Inspector Clouseau, had he been slightly less efficient than Dwight Schrute from The Office.” -- EB
If you’re planning a trip to England in the next few weeks, you’ll be just in time for some shocking juvenile offenses. A new doc called Britain’s Deadliest Kids made its debut three weeks ago, and has thus far covered teacher-stabber William Cornick; Lorraine Thorpe, who bears the distinction of being the UK’s youngest female double murderer; and 15-year-old James Fairweather, who’s billed as the country’s youngest serial killer. There are regional issues that might prevent you from streaming the show in the US, but you’re smart people and I am sure you can figure something out. -- EB
Friday on Best Evidence: Why are there so many Manson movies coming out this year? Let’s discuss.
What is this thing? This should help.
Follow The Blotter @blotterpresents on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, and subscribe to The Blotter Presents via the podcast app of your choice.