Murder houses of the 213, memories of the 215
Plus wacky tobacky in the 212, a Leto/Tambor "Freaky Friday," and more
the true crime that's worth your time
Today marks the anniversary of my grandmother’s death. It’s been dozens of years now, so the wound is not fresh, but each August 2 I like to take a minute and remember the things we liked to do together: standing in that closet-size heart at the Franklin Institute and giggling; rooting for those crazy kids Kayla and Patch to get it together; and taking long walks on the Bryn Mawr campus each day with her grumpy Brittany.
Per that lattermost item, here’s an online exhibit from the Bryn Mawr college library — which, when the leaves were down, you could see from my dad’s old bedroom — called “Pointing Fingers: Women, Sin, Crime, and Guilt.” Lots of fascinating graphics, pamphlets, and cases going back to the Renaissance, and any curator’s brief that uses the words “uxoricide” AND “ruffians” is my cuppa for sure.
Grandma wasn’t a big true-crime guy, but she liked Unsolved Mysteries, although she only watched it when I was visiting because it was “too spooky” to watch by herself. She also once referred to Nicky Scarfo as “extremely disagreeable,” which somehow doesn’t get near it, but at the same time nails it? …Miss you, GM. — Que Sarah
(Quick note on the area codes…yeah, I know Brooklyn’s the 718 now; it wasn’t back then. Bryn Mawr was the 610, I think, by the time Grandma passed, but was the 215 for most of the time I knew her. — a records clerk emerita)
I reviewed Generation Hustle over the weekend. Short version: it’s good, but if you know the case a given episode is covering, it’s probably superfluous. That review’s only for paid subscribers, but the good news is, if you drop a finsky on a subscription, you can read the entire archive of paywalled stuff!
And all y’all can vote on what I review for August. One property has a healthy lead, but The Seven Five is closing the gap, so if you haven’t voted yet,
And Generation Hustle was suggested by a “tipster,” so if you have suggestions or discussion-thread ideas, we’d love to hear them! Call or text us, 919-75-CRIME, or just leave a comment. — SDB
Oh thank God, the House of Gucci trailer has dropped. Dig it:
And, look, not that I’m not excited for this bad boy but I am far from the only one who got half a minute into the teaser and was like, “Wait, Tambor is in this?”
HoG isn’t coming out until American Thanksgiving, but CNN has a list of related documentaries we can pass the time with until November 24. If you’ve seen any or all of these and have auxiliary recs/rankings, let’s hear from you! — SDB
And speaking of prestige true-crime projects, Life After Lockup…has other things to offer! …Hee hee. Except: seriously, it actually does IMO, and I’ve talked about it before so I won’t bore you again (…with this anyway, heh). The trailer for the next season is below, and strongly suggests that a stream of #SHAWNjfc tweets is in our future:
At least there isn’t a long wait for this one; the new season hits August 27. — SDB
Return with me now to the reefer madness of yesteryear, compliments of Brooklyn Based and senior Brooklyn Public Library librarian Ben Gocker. BB’s Jordan Galloway wrapped up last week with a 70-year-old story on the city’s harvest of eight tons of cannabis “growing rampant around the city.” That the borough had that many vacant lots available in which the hemp could flourish is what struck me first, sadly, but I kept reading, and the story may send you down a bunch of archive rabbit holes thanks to Gocker. Gocker first surfaced the story 10 years ago, and looks back with Galloway at the evolution of Brooklyn Eagle archive preservation — not to mention the sensationalizing of “marihuana” use by the press for a public that, in the main, failed to be terrorized:
It was possibly ditch weed left over from the World War II, when hemp was grown as an alternative to less accessible industrial fibers for rope manufacturing. That didn’t, however, stop the media from whipping the public into a frenzy with stories about marijuana plantations and people in the West Village cooking their weed in frying pans surrounded by “strikingly pretty girls.”
“The way they would write about this was very much sort of cliched,” Gocker says. “In these articles, they would call it Dream Stuff, and talk about how crazy it would make you. You’d find articles like guys who would smoke weed and run out of a window, things like that, a lot of sensationalized journalism around it.”
It’s a quick read that also includes chickens and baseball; what’s not to love? — SDB
I’m interested to hear what you guys think of “The Murder House.” We’ve mentioned Jeff Maysh’s 2015 Medium piece — “A mysterious mansion. A murder-suicide. Paranormal activity. This is the true story of 2475 Glendower Place.” — before; Eve called it a “great read” when she noted its ongoing attempted-sale travails last year, and it’s in the index of recommended reads at the end of Unspeakable Acts. But I found it tough to get through. Accounts of “squirting” adrenaline never fill my own heart with joy, and while I think this graf is aiming for an Ellroyesque noir archness, it’s IMO unsuccessful:
Lillian Perelson had eaten a dinner of green beans before retiring to bed. She slept soundly in her nightdress, her head resting on the pillow in the marital bed on the second floor of the house. By midnight the temperature had dropped like a guillotine into the 40s.
Oh, is that how it dropped. …Okay, for real, though: I think the piece has something to tell us on a meta level, and a big part of that something is in Maysh’s rather affected prose. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve clocked a crime narrative for feeling evidently ashamed on the sentence level of what it is, and straining to the point of a separated shoulder for a “prestige” or “academic” tone that just isn’t necessary. The true crime that fails in this manner is still instructive, though, because it still reflects to us what’s important — to the author; to the reader seeking out the subject matter — and it still asks us to consider what makes true-crime material “good,” compelling.
The other question the piece raises is whether we should perhaps start…not shunning, but just giving less attention to the amateur sleuths who break into abandoned houses and then blog breathlessly about it. Maysh chronicles one woman’s obsession with and investigation of the Glendower property, and it’s hard to tell whether he disapproves, or envies her moxie. Maybe it’s both, and maybe that’s the point, but later on, those streams cross again:
“All of my friends think I am crazy to be into this, it’s so nice to read…it’s not just me!” writes one online homicide enthusiast. They call themselves “death hags” and have dedicated much time to tracking down the surviving Perelson children: “All three children are still living,” reads one post. “I have made the assumption that they were taken in by their father’s sister Esther Perelson Kramer who lived in NY.” These keyboard detectives, the type who wrongly identified the Boston Bomber online, like to fill in the gaps between facts and leap to quite dangerous conclusions. I had to find the real truth.
Maysh’s investigative-reporting c.v. is no joke, but readers who don’t know that offhand or only vaguely recognize the name from The New Yorker or The Atlantic — where IME he’s edited more sternly — may wonder what exactly is the difference between the “keyboard detectives” Maysh sneers down and Maysh himself, particularly when nobody’s suggested to him that perhaps the smiling-gargoyle motif is a bit much. On the other hand, it’s thoroughly reported, and you’ll find a lot of worthwhile period detail among the overbroad pronouncements mentioning TMZ.
All this by way of saying that, while I don’t think that’s why Sarah Weinman included it in the further-reading section, it’s why I would have — that it’s a little bit overwritten, and a little bit facile in its haunting symbology, but that it’s useful because of those qualities AND in spite of them. — SDB
This week on Best Evidence: Amanda Knox! Plagiarists! Corporate gumshoes!
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