Jon Hamm · Rachel Uchitel · White House Plumbers
Plus: a Victorian-era serial killer
the true crime that's worth your time
True-crime podcasts sure are getting fancy. Vanity Fair announced its latest audio product this week, a podcast about the Walter Wanger/Joan Bennett scandal. I know this is a case we’ve discussed before (Substack’s discovery UI is…/not ideal, sorry), as the Hollywood Reporter did a great little summary of the oddly glam tale of stalking and attempted homicide between Wanger (produced Stagecoach and Foreign Correspondent) and Bennett (Little Women, Scarlet Street).
Working with the “golden era of Hollywood”-worshipping pub Vanity Fair, filmmaker Vanessa Hope — the doomed duo’s granddaughter — works through her progenitor’s drama, but with a load of contemporary stars acting out the drama: John Hamm will lend his voice to Wanger, Zooey Deschanel is Bennett, and Griffin Dunne (speaking of complicated family stuff), Mara Wilson, and Adam Mortimer are also in the cast. And of course You Must Remember This’s Karina Longworth is hosting.
In VF’s announcement of the 10-episode series, which drops at all the usual places on August 17, the mag writes:
Questions abound in the series, which examines both the lead-up to Walter and Joan’s fateful 1951 encounter and its misogynistic aftermath. “Why would my grandfather, a successful movie producer, a liberal thinker, a man who helped Jewish émigrés escape Hitler, take a gun to confront his wife?” Hope asks in a preview of the podcast. “Why would my grandmother, a beautiful movie star who had all but invented the archetype of the film noir femme fatale, and was then starring in a hit franchise of family films, risk everything to sneak around with her agent?”
What a fascinating thing it must be, to break down your family’s confounding secrets with a passel of A-B list voices. It’s already got me thinking about who to approach for a podcast about my grandfather’s legendary antipathy for my great grandmother after she — per completely un fact-checked family lore — killed his pet chicken and fed it to him. I’ll bet that’s worth five episodes, at least. — EB
gh, real life. A couple updates from two cases that would have arguably never made it to court without docuseries on the suspects:
R. Kelly’s Brooklyn racketeering trial is gearing up to begin. I urge you to click through to this Reuters article on the case for the oddly beautiful courtroom sketches from the great Jane Rosenberg (more on her amazing career here). We’re just in the jury selection phase now, with opening arguments set for August 18. This is Kelly’s first trial in a series of three (Illinois and Minnesota are next) trials on allegations — many raised in Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly — that the 54-year-old singer participated (per the WSJ) “in the sexual exploitation of children, kidnapping and forced labor, as well as violations related to coercing and transporting women and girls to engage in illegal sexual activity.”
I opened up the livestream of Robert Durst’s testimony at a really weird time. As I clicked through the courtroom live link Monday, I caught Durst saying "about a day's worth of poop, and all that needed to be cleaned up." No, not as opportune as the seeming confession caught on mic in The Jinx, but still, another moment where I thought “this guy is very very weird.” I don’t know what that whole poop story was about and I didn’t have the patience to stick around to find out, but the AP confirms that he’s steadfastly maintaining his innocence in the death of Susan Berman. Durst remained on the stand all this week. In the latest report, also from the AP, Andrew dalton writes that (as though we could forget) “Durst was arrested on a warrant in Berman’s killing in New Orleans in 2015 on the eve of the airing of the final episode of the HBO documentary series The Jinx on his life and the deaths he's been connected to. He told many of the same stories in the series that he repeated from the stand.” I don’t remember the poop story from The Jinx, maybe I was getting a snack? — EB
This NYT piece on Rachel Uchitel gives a fascinating peek into Gloria Allred’s high-profit world. To be clear, Uchitel isn’t a true-crime figure, nor was her work with Allred part of a civil case: Instead, the former Bloomberg news producer found herself in Allred’s care after her relationship with Tiger Woods went public.
Allred’s perhaps best known as the attorney who represents high-profile victims of sexual harassment or assault, but in this case, she helped negotiate Uchitel’s silence regarding her romance with the then-married golfer. Let’s take a look at the numbers, as reported by Katherine Rosman:
“Tell them $10 million,” Ms. Uchitel told her lawyers.
Both sides worked through the night. (Ms. Allred’s firm, Allred, Maroko & Goldberg wanted a 40 percent cut of Ms. Uchitel’s payout; she talked them down to 20 percent.) Sometime after 3 a.m., Ms. Uchitel was handed papers to sign.
“I’m not an idiot, I’m not a hooker, I’m not a prostitute,” she said. “I was and am a very smart girl and that’s why I negotiated $8 million, because I knew it was going to affect my life.”
But $8 million was not what she got. For one, there were taxes and Ms. Allred’s fees to pay — about $1 million for five days’ work — netting Ms. Uchitel about $2 million of the original $5 million, she said. Then, when it came for the first additional $1 million payment, Mr. Woods’s team balked.
But wait, there’s more.
Days later, Ms. Uchitel also signed a retainer granting the lawyers 10 to 20 percent of any paid media appearances they helped to negotiate.
…
Then, another indignity: As Ms. Allred’s associates presented Ms. Uchitel with the signature pages of this new deal, they flagged a provision stating that Mr. Woods agreed to pay their firm $600,000: their cut of the $3 million Ms. Uchitel was giving up. This made no sense to Ms. Uchitel, their client; why would she owe them 20 percent of money she was being pressured by them to give up? But she still signed, worrying that getting another lawyer’s opinion would violate her N.D.A.
These grafs are by no means the only mathy bits of the story, which deftly illustrates why in so many cases the recipients of vast-seeming settlements for oft-male misconduct (or worse) still end up broke. I assume by the end of the piece you’ll start to rethink the idea that settled civil sex offense suits are the windfalls they appear on paper. — EB
HBO true-crime series The White House Plumbers went on ice this week, after a mysterious “on-set incident.” The show’s a narrow-focus Watergate take, on how E. Howard Hunt (played by Woody Harrelson) and G. Gordon Liddy (Justin Theroux) “accidentally toppled the presidency they zealously were trying to protect.”
In a statement to Deadline, HBO said “HBO has received reports of alleged unprofessional behavior on the set of White House Plumbers. We take very seriously our responsibility to ensure a respectful work environment on all our productions, and we are investigating the matter fully.”
Depending on your interests, you may or may not be relieved to hear that the stars are off the hook: it actually sounds like an alleged bullying incident between the show’s director and a member of the prop department that was caught on tape. Insert Nixon tapes joke here! As of publication time, there’s not been any announcement on when the production will resume. — EB
If this review of The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream doesn’t get you scrambling to your library app/book vendor of choice, you aren’t reading this newsletter. Writing for the Washington Post, Michael Dirda offers more of a recap than an assessment of the book, true crime columnist/journalism prof Dean Jobb’s look at (potential Jack the Ripper) Thomas Neill Cream. Here’s a quick snip:
Cream was introduced to the respectable Laura Sabbatini and, following a whirlwind courtship, she agreed to marry him. Two months later, in January 1892, her new fiance briefly returned to Canada and while there noticed that a maid in his Quebec City hotel looked a bit peaked. After trying one of the two pills Cream generously offered her, she experienced a burning pain in her stomach and quite sensibly threw away the other. In March, the pragmatic doctor purchased a bulk order of various narcotics and poisons, mainly strychnine, from a New York drug dealer, then booked a first-class passage back to London. Losing no time, in April he managed to poison two more prostitutes, both on the same evening. Finally detecting a pattern, the London police started searching for a mysterious cross-eyed medical gentleman, possibly known as Fred.
At this point, let me stress, Jobb’s book has only just begun.
Timeless themes here: the killer who victimized sex workers because he knows they’re less likely to be missed is a classic, as is the doctor who abuses vulnerable people’s trust. Add to that the old-timey Victorian setting (1890s London) and I’m down. How about you? [“It’s on sale at Exhibit B. this week; just saying! Code ExhibitH at checkout.” — SDB] — EB
Friday on Best Evidence: I saved the DB Cooper story in our budget for Sarah, so she better use it or lose it.
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