Michael K. Williams · Etsy · OnlyFans
A prestige panty raid?
the true crime that's worth your time
Michael K. Williams has died. Williams was best known for his portrayal of Omar Little on David Simon’s TV series The Wire; Little was based on Donnie Andrews, a Baltimore stickup artist and convicted murderer who (per Vice) ended up working with at-risk communities after he was released from prison.
Andrews died in 2021, at age 58, during an emergency heart surgery (this NYT obit gives a great look at the scope of his life). Williams was only 54 when he was found Monday inside his Brooklyn apartment, the victim of what the Times says “is being investigated as a possible drug overdose.” According to the New York Post, there “appeared to be heroin on the kitchen table” of the Williamsburg residence in which Williams was found. (Williams had spoken openly about his struggles with substance use disorder many times in the past.)
It was arguably Williams’ connection to real life crime that helped jump start his career. According to a 2014 interview with NPR (headlined “A Brawl At Bar Brought Michael K. Williams His Big Break”), his distinctive facial scar is what prompted his casting in various “thug roles” after years in obscurity as a backup dancer in music videos.
That differentiator might have become a challenge later on, as the above 2018 video from the Atlantic and HBO called “Am I being typecast” asked. The questions Williams poses, when it comes to the economics of roles for Black actors and the narratives they present, feel just as vital now as they did three years ago. — EB
A cop made “famous” on Live PD has quit the force and joined OnlyFans. 36-year-old El Paso Police Department officer Andrea Zendejas was nicknamed the “Bun of Justice” by fans of series for her “her signature hair bun” and her record of (as of a 2018 El Paso Times report) making “more than 60 arrests, checked 484 adults and 166 vehicles, seized four guns and her work helped shut down a bar where drugs were being sold.”
But like the since-canceled TV series, Zendejas’s time in law enforcement is apparently over. She tweeted in July that she was leaving the force, and has since launched an account on paid content platform OnlyFans, in which she bills herself as a “PLUS Size 🙌🏼, Big booty havin’, gun slingin’, tatted, lingerie lovin’, All-American Woman.” Subscriptions to the content she provides on the platform start at $15/month.
Speaking with broadcast TV wire service Nexstar Media, Zendejas says that her career transition was in the works before she made the decision to become a content creator. “I was leaving the police department anyway,” Zendejas said. “I had set it up to where I would be leaving this summer. It was a joke, like a running joke. Because of my social media following, my partner was, like, ‘Hey, you should open an OnlyFans.’”
OnlyFans has recently made headlines for an abortive attempt to ban pornography on the platform, a move that many said would marginalize and endanger sex workers. That doesn’t appear to be an issue for Zendejas, however, as she says she is “not doing anything ‘ratchet’ as they say,” a quote that is problematic in so many ways I’m not sure where to begin.
Instead, she says her content is “just a lot of plus-size modeling and people really, really like it.” She says she currently has 2,100 subscribers. OnlyFans takes a 20 percent cut, which means that of the $31,500 she generates per month, she takes home $25,200 — quite an upgrade from the (per Open Payrolls) $58,966.61 or so she made annually as an El Paso cop. — EB
Sadly, Sarah and I can’t rely on our moderately-sized booties to pay the bills. Instead of plus-sized modeling, we sit on those booties to type this thing for you, which arrives five days a week in your inbox for only $5 a month or $55/year. A comparable steal!
As Sarah mentioned last week, we’re slowly transitioning back to our pre-pandemic schedule of weekly issues that are for subscribers-only. Right now, that means Wednesday’s issues will be reserved for longer-form reviews, and will only go to folks with paid subscriptions. Also restricted to paid members are the full Best Evidence archive (two-plus years of stuff).
For now, we’ll keep comments and discussion threads open to all, a change we made when things got wild back in March 2020. We don’t have any plans to change that up now, and we love and value all of you, regardless of how much you pay. Thanks for helping us keep Best Evidence going, and for financially supporting two content creators who will never throw “ratchet” (and similar slang terms) around without understanding its cultural significance.
AirMail has an engaging refresher on the Theranos case for anyone who doesn’t feel up to reading Bad Blood all over again. It’s from author Rich Cohen, and gosh, I hope they keep him on for the whole trial: Cohen has serious business writing creds (his book on the creation of Sweet'N Low is a legit ride) as well as an understanding of how to tell a true crime story (his Tough Jews got him called the Mario Puzo of “the Jewish troops of Murder, Inc.” and includes dirt on Larry King!). Here’s a snip of this sharp and bubbly pre-trial piece:
The fact is that Elizabeth Holmes, who comes from a wealthy if beleaguered family—her father, Christian Rasmus Holmes IV, was a vice president at Enron—has become paradigmatic, a focus of dozens of newspaper and magazine pieces, fawning at first, scathing at last, with one great book (Bad Blood, by John Carreyrou), one good documentary (The Inventor, by Alex Gibney), and at least one future feature film, in which Jennifer Lawrence will reportedly play Holmes. (There is, in fact, a physical resemblance.)
At the core, all these stories circle a single question, which might be a central question for America itself (that’s what it means to be paradigmatic): Was Elizabeth Holmes a fraud from the start or did she begin with good intentions only to lose herself in a maze?
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It was the hottest start-up in the world, and it was all bullshit. When flares of alarm were sent up from the company’s lower ranks, with the engineers still trying and failing to build the thing, Holmes ignored them or fired the naysayers, then threatened legal action if anyone spilled the beans.
By the fall of 2015, patients and doctors were beginning to complain of faulty blood-test results. If Uber is on the fritz, you wind up on the side of the road; if Theranos is on the fritz, you could wind up in the emergency room.
It’s also a great piece to send to anyone who doesn’t quite get why this case is so remarkably fascinating to so many of us — Cohen captures that same dopamine-dripping interest Holmes inspires. I fervently hope he keeps writing about this case as it progresses, as he seems to get the razzle-dazzle that was Theranos a lot better than a lot of folks covering the trial.
Opening arguments are set to begin tomorrow, by the way, and as mentioned before, there won’t be any video from the courtroom — but transcripts will be released daily, and folks who manage to score a seat in the San Jose courthouse will be allowed to tweet and post from the scene. So, more to come. — EB
To understand this Rolling Stone headline, first you must understand “cheugy.” Cheugy, as the NYT reported back in May, is a slang term that means products or people that are “out of date or trying too hard.” Candidates include “anything associated with Barstool Sports, Gucci belts with the large double ‘G’ logo, being really into sneaker culture, Rae Dunn pottery.”
And now Rolling Stone wants to add some items perhaps tangentially relevant to our interests to the list, writing that “We Regret to Inform You That Etsy Has Become a Hotbed of Cheugy True-Crime Merch.”
Obviously, their statement of regret is a lie — this story is traffic gold. But it’s not just a slideshow of offensive serial killer stan stuff, it’s an actual reported piece that speaks with the makers attempting to capitalize on the true-crime trend. Here we go:
“I’m not going to be surprised when I see T-shirts in Target with these serial killers on them,” says Becky Grieser, who recently began selling true-crime-themed dish towels from her Etsy shop. “It’s going to happen because they’ve gotten so popular.”
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This past spring, when Grieser’s sister suggested she add true crime towels to her shop, 96 Palms, she initially felt hesitant. Before then, she’d sold earrings and a popular array of Schitt’s Creek towels (“Ew, David,” Etc). “At first it was a little bit uncomfortable to have them, because I didn’t want to romanticize serial killers,” she says.
But she tried it, pressing her own designs onto microfiber towels. One shows a bloody cleaver next to the exhausted-mom mantra, “Bless this mess.” There are two designs with a black-and-white mugshot of Dahmer. One says “I eat guys like you for breakfast.” The other says “I love you so much I could just eat you.” Grieser has sold more than 400 crime towels in just a few months and plans to continue to meet the demand. “We’re going to be actually adding more, like Ted Bundy and some other famous serial killers,” she says.
Grieser is just the tip of the iceberg, as the piece speaks to a rogue’s gallery of folks creating merch that’s emblazoned with, well, rogues. A lot of it seems to occupy an odd retail space between the Hallmark store and Spencer’s Gifts, and I’ll bet it does really well in certain circles.
And now I’m worried that well-meaning relatives will give stuff like this to all of us for Christmas! If so, check back in January when I’ll write about the reactions of various Goodwill donation workers when I try to get them to accept some murder-related holiday gifts I do not want. — EB
Here’s how Sarah presented this in our budget doc: “I dare you to pitch a prestige docuseries on this.” And by “this,” she means the arrest of 57-year-old Tetsuo Urata, who allegedly stole about 730 bras and panties in laundromats in the southern Japanese city of Beppu.
This isn’t the first such crime like this, the New York Post notes. In 2019, another Japanese man, Oita resident Toru Adachi, allegedly stole around 1,100 pairs of panties from laundromats in the city. According to Newsweek, there was a similar case in 2017, when a 61-year-old who told police he’d been stealing underwear for 20 years.
Perhaps oddest is this 2019 Japan Today coverage of a hot prowl underwear theft. From the outlet: “While this might sound like another case of panty thieving in Japan, the stranger who caught Ishii’s eye wasn’t a schoolgirl, office lady, or any other female demographic that’s often fetishized in Japan, but another guy.”
That is a lot to unpack, but, Sarah, with four different cases, as well as the general Japan Today suggestion that this is a fairly common crime, I think a prestige docuseries is exactly what serial underwear theft needs. — EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: Only our paid subscribers will know!
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