Joyce Carol Oates · Vatican Girl · Cannabis
It's the October budget sweep!
the true crime that's worth your time
Loyal Best Evidence readers know what’s going on here. The end of every month, I clean out the running list of story ideas Sarah and I share — most are links to current coverage, but there’s the occasional resurfaced item, tweet, or photo in there, too.
This issue is everything we didn’t get to in October, including some properties we decided against reviewing but still might be worth your attention, a couple fun longreads and even a vaguely rant-y video. Lots of good stuff! I think you’ll have fun with this one. — EB
Tracking true crime takes time! Sarah and I sift through news alerts, press releases and social media to find the best and most interesting true crime from the past and present. We love to do it, but we also love running a sustainable publication. We can only do that with your paid support, which also opens up an additional issue a week, Sarah’s monthly bonus review, and our full archives. Won’t you consider supporting Best Evidence today?
Princeton's Joyce Carol Oates draws on true crime inspiration for new novel, 'Babysitter' [Asbury Park Press]
Oates’s remarkable level of output is beyond comedy at this point — the author also finds time to tweet, promote her books, run a Substack, and did I mention she is 84 years old? So, yeah.
It’s no surprise that true crime informs her work, much of which has real life figures and incidents woven into it. Babysitter is an especially notable case, though, as Oates started mulling the Oakland County Child Killer — aka “Babysitter” — when they were active in the 1970s; “Then during the pandemic,” Oates said, “I worked on it. ... (I was) pretty much living in isolation at that time and working on that novel.” — EB
‘A Tree of Life’ Review: Synagogue Shooting Doc Goes Light on Politics, Deep on Humanity [The Hollywood Reporter]
A Tree of Life: The Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting dropped on HBO Wednesday; it’s a documentary about the white supremacy-driven mass shooting at Tree of Life*Or L’Simcha, which left 11 folks dead. It’s a timely release given the voice a certain celebrity has given to anti-Semitism (in addition to the voice he gave to white supremacy, misogyny, slavery denial…but who’s counting?).
The doc’s list of producers reads like a star studded “walks into a bar” joke: it’s Michael Keaton, Billy Porter, and Mark Cuban on the masthead (among many others). The Trish Adlesic-directed feature is getting roundly positive reviews, with THR calling it “an act of love toward humanity.” — EB
FBI Raid on ABC News Bigshot Producer Wasn’t Tied to His Work [The Daily Beast]
A Rolling Stone report that suggested that a raid on the Arlington apartment of ABC News investigative producer James Gordon Meek was intended to stifle his reporting might be in error, TDB says, citing a multitude of unnamed sources at ABC.
“He resigned very abruptly for personal reasons and hasn’t worked for us for months, and we don’t comment or report on speculation” is what the network’s official statement says of the affair. Speaking with Radar, of all outlets, Meek’s lawyer said that the issue wasn’t classified documents (as RS claimed), but declined to explain what the Department of Justice was looking for in the April 27 effort. — EB
Dad Was Serial Killer, Woman says, as Cadaver Dogs Scour Field of Nightmares [Newsweek]
Reading this piece, you end up with more questions than answers: if, as the report claims, “Lucy Studey told anyone who would listen that her father had murdered scores of young women and buried them with the help of his children” for the last 45 years, why are officials only looking into it now?
A follow-up from The Des Moines Register gives some insight, quoting Fremont County Sheriff Kevin Aistrope as saying, “She’s got a hell of a story but we don’t have any proof of anything other than we had a cadaver dog hit.” But Studey remains steadfast that her dad, Donald Dean Studey, killed about 70 women over the course of several years, and made her help bury the bodies in a nearby field. As of this writing, though, no one’s been able to verify her claims, and other than Newsweek, Studey has declined all attempts from reporters to reach her. Something about this seems off, but who knows? What do you think? — EB
Moors Murders: No bones found in search for Keith Bennett [Guardian]
And another fruitless search, this time related to a case we all know: The Moors Murders, a series of child killings in the 1960s that spawned two TV adaptations, a docuseries, a Smiths song, and a book by Edward Gorey, among others.
Headlines in late September suggested that the remains of Keith Bennett (the only victim of killers Ian Brady and Myra Hindley who’s never been found) were possibly discovered by “a member of the public researching Keith's murder” (hoo boy). A lengthy search followed, but “No bones, fabric or items of interest were recovered from the soil,” a police spokesperson said, seemingly putting to lie tabloid claims that a skull had been found at the site. — EB
The Department of Corrections Couldn’t Stop This Lifer From Winning a Pulitzer Prize—It Tried [Slate]
Formerly incarcerated podcaster David Luis “Suave” Gonzalez won the Pulitzer for his podcast, Suave, and has another show called Death by Incarceration. In this piece he speaks with Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, the San Quentin resident who is also the “inside host” of Pulitzer nominee Ear Hustle. Topics covered include behind-bars college classes, the mental toll a life sentence takes, and America’s obsession with “justice.” Says Thomas:
America is infatuated with prisons and incarceration. They [are] infatuated with this, man. This is like cherry pie to them. Like they think that they could incarcerate the way out of every problem in America and they can’t.
You can also listen to the conversation below. — EB
Female bodybuilders describe widespread sexual exploitation [Washington Post]
As opposed to summarizing this longread, I’ll let the lede graf do the work:
Officials of bodybuilding’s two premier federations have been sexually exploiting female athletes for decades — pressuring them to pose for nude photographs, posting those photos to soft-core pornography sites, and, at times, manipulating contest results in favor of cooperative competitors, a Washington Post investigation has found.
It’s a bombshell investigation into the alleged actions of J.M. Manion, a scion of one of the most prominent names in competitive bodybuilding; the first in a series of stories called Built and Broken. Watch for more news as the investigation unfolds — and if ever a case were ripe for adaptation, this is the case. We’ll be seeing this story across other media soon, I’d wager. — EB
‘Vatican Girl’: Netflix’s true-crime documentary on the Holy See’s 40-year-old missing person mystery [Jesuit Review]
Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi made it past me when it was released, but now I have “Vatican Girl” in my head to the tune of “Calendar Girl” so thanks for that.
Anyway, I was curious to see how a publication with ties to the Vatican approached the show, and they did…better than I expected, I guess? Here’s the heart of it:
The documentary editors juxtapose these comments with photos of Emanuela as a young child and headlines about priests sexually abusing children, which seem to suggest to the viewer that the teenage girl could have been sexually abused from a young age, but none of the interviews that are included in the show make that claim. There is a compelling argument made that if what Orlandi’s friend says is true and was known by her captors—that someone, possibly a cardinal close to the pope, made advances on a minor in 1983, well before the church’s reckoning with sexual abuse—any proof could have been leveraged to blackmail the Vatican.
Variety interviewed director Mark Lewis (Don’t Fuck With Cats), who said of the docuseries:
It’s a story that Dan Brown could have written. It starts with a small local story of a young girl going missing on a hot summer afternoon in the middle of Rome in 1983, and then the story spirals into one involving the KGB and Cold War politics. We discover factions working within the Vatican to push particular policies and to restore Catholicism to the Eastern Bloc. Then there is the Mafia and the Roman underworld side of the story. So, it instinctively felt like a political thriller, and that really appealed to me.
I’m not into that Da Vinci Code bullshit, but if you’re down and you watch it, tell us what you think. — EB
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On TikTok, Charles Manson Is a Cozy Fall Vibe [Rolling Stone]
I think I am also not into social media trend pieces, which are past the sell-by date as soon as they’re assigned. But for the sake of conversation, here’s an RS piece that claims that “Influencers are using a 1968 song by the murderous cult leader as a soundtrack to autumnal home aesthetics.”
Honestly, if it’s Manson or that “dick in your mouth” song everyone was using as they showed off lockdown fits in 2020…the bottom line is that folks were using the song without knowing its origins, snagging the audio from other TikToks they admired. Against my better judgement, I embedded one such use above, and it kind of does sound like every late 1990s Lallapalooza second-stager, so I see why it might appeal to a certain kind of edgy-meets-basic vibe. Guess the Kings have an episode idea for the next season of Evil! — EB
Inside California’s pot legalization failures: Corporate influence, ignored warnings [LA Times]
Weed was legalized in CA following the 2016 election, which, we sure needed something to take the edge off. But the gold rush and days of milk and honey promised by proponents of Prop 64 (aka “the pot bill”) never came, as any farmer or dispensary owner will happily explain.
But now you don’t need to stand in a Eureka field or a cannabis club to get the story of conflicting regulations and financial ruin, as reporter Patrick McGreevy lays out the whole thing, part of the paper’s months-long Legal Weed/Broken Promises series (and there goes your weekend!).
Is the moral of the story that pot shouldn’t be allowed, after all? Nope, as a commission appointed by state officials actually predicted most of these problems. Maybe the lesson here is that if you pay big money for someone to poke holes in your plan, you should listen to them. — EB
Inside Wealth-Conference Con Man Anthony Ritossa’s Wild Web of Lies [Vanity Fair]
Again, I’ll let the dek do the work: “A VF investigation reveals that a self-styled knight and purported Nobel Prize nominee is actually a Wall Street washout, a deadbeat dad, and a con artist, repeatedly jailed by European authorities.”
The VF yarn sent me to Ritossa’s website, which remains active. Here’s a list of the five things I noticed first when I went to his site:
In every photo of him, his gigantic Rolex is prominently displayed (watch people, if this is something even fancier than a Rolex, speak up.)
This barftastic quote and 3. the bizarre capitalization strategy
All these cities are also where Bond villains have their headquarters, I believe.
Per Vanity Fair, speaking to a Ritossa whistle-blower: “He’s made up so much: knight, professor, Nobel nominee. What’s next, astronaut?”
It’s a fun read, and it’s hilarious that even now, Ritossa’s website remains as-is. Man, I hope that watch is real. — EB
Monday on Best Evidence:
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