Scammy psychics, body snatchers, and Sean "Diddy" Combs
the true crime that's worth your time
Best Evidence readers know that the end of the month isn’t just your cue to say "wow, where did last month go?" . It’s also when we clear out the document we keep of true-crime news, long reads, and press releases — all stuff that we think we might want to tackle at some point, either in an article or on our podcast, The Docket. Here’s the most intriguing, exciting, and worthwhile true crime news from July, 2024. We hope it provides you with an excellent second-screen diversion during the less gripping parts of the Olympics.
Scott Peterson Breaks Silence Over Laci Peterson Murder in Peacock Crime Docuseries [Hollywood Reporter]
Face to Face with Scott Peterson is set to drop on Peacock on August 20, and promises Peterson's first on-camera interview since 2003. Per the press release, "many still believe the jury got it right," but "Scott’s family and experts close to the case have spent over 20 years committed to uncovering inconsistencies in the evidence as well as finding new information around alternative theories surrounding Laci [Peterson}'s murder."
I don't know, y'all. I am always up for believing cops, prosecutors, and juries get it wrong, but this time I am cocking a brow, HARD. Why do you think that is? Call me out in the comments.
True Crime Master Casey Sherman Will Debut New Stage Show at Boston's Wilbur Theatre [Broadway World]
This press release on a play from true crime author Casey Sherman is...something else. A quick example:
"Not only will I be bringing Lana Turner and the Boston Strangler to the stage, but I will also re-introduce audiences to iconic writers, Kurt Vonnegut & Norman Mailer, who became obsessed with a sadistic serial killer in Provincetown in the late 1960's," Sherman said. "This show will be the ultimate campfire ghost story experience and a white knuckle ride for the audience."
‘Psychic’ and family of extortionists scam Md. man out of $4.2 million [Washington Post gift link]
I can't top this lead graf:
Gina Russell’s act as a psychic was so compelling that she convinced another woman bad things would happen to her and her family — unless she sent Russell large amounts of money, prosecutors said. When the woman struggled to come up with the cash, prosecutors alleged, Russell persuaded her to take up sex work.
The Kidnapping I Can’t Escape [New York Times Magazine gift link]
I'm putting this here as much for myself as for you — I meant to read this article from one of our greatest living features writers, Taffy Brodesser-Akner, when it dropped but lost it in a tide of breaking news. It's about the after-effects of this 1974 kidnapping, and I can't wait to sit down with it this weekend.
I Knew Diddy for Years. What I Now Remember Haunts Me. [New York Times Magazine gift link]
As powerful an illustration of how the media is just as complaint in covering up misconduct and abuse by the powerful as I've ever read.
Considering this nauseating image of myself running and hiding from Combs, of people at work protecting me, made me confront other things I’d possibly repressed about that feral and fantastic time in my life. To be a powerful woman in the music industry, and in the hip-hop media specifically, exacted a toll I’ve resisted reckoning with. It’s so much easier, frankly, to tell other people’s stories. As a journalist, I have learned how to get people to recall stuff they would rather forget or keep to themselves. It’s an art tart with betrayal. But it’s mine. And so Here we are, I was thinking in that garden. Now I have to remember.
I'm writing this the same day that a publication I used to work for wrote a glowing piece on a restaurant owned by a guy who drunk dialed and sexually harassed me, a place where when I brought this up a multitude of colleagues said "oh, yeah, he's a know creep." So, so it goes.
NYC medical examiners stop autopsies for some suspected overdoses, describe staffing 'crisis' [Gothamist]
New York only has 20 MEs to cover the deaths of the entire city, which should probably worry Mayor Eric Adams. Suspected ODs might not get a closer look, which sure does feel like the basis for a solid ripped-from-the headlines procedural story arc, if nothing else.
I Put Him on Death Row. He Shouldn’t Die. [New York Times]
This is the first in a three-part video series from the Times, "each taking a critical view of the death penalty by exposing flaws in cases and questioning whether retributive justice can truly provide closure."
Harvard, the human remains trade, and collectors who fuel the market [WBUR]
Bodies donated to Harvard for medical research were instead sold online to shady and gross collectors. This snip is stomach-churning, so brace:
In 2018, prosecutors say, Lodge began stealing body parts from the morgue and taking them home, in his orange Subaru that bore the license plate GRIM-R, to his tidy split-level in Goffstown, New Hampshire. His wife, Denise, would take it from there, handling logistics. She's the one who packed up the goods and took them to the post office, prosecutors allege; she communicated with the buyers and took payments through her PayPal account.
It was a lucrative business. Court records show that one buyer paid Denise Lodge more than $37,000, sending his payments with memos like “head number 7” and “braiiiiiins.”
A deserted Harvard medical campus in October 2020 seems to have given Cedric Lodge even greater opportunity, with classes and labs remote due to the COVID pandemic. Prosecutors say Lodge invited a buyer into the morgue at 1 p.m. on a Wednesday, essentially to shop for parts. The woman took home a brazen haul: two dissected faces, at the price of $600.
[Googles "crematoriums," emails to spouse.]
He Was Convicted of Killing His Baby. The DA’s Office Says He’s Innocent, but That Might Not Be Enough. [Pro Publica]
You know how they say it's easier to get married than it is to get divorced? The same is also true of post-conviction exoneration, even with the evidence is on your side. This is the story about the death of an infant and a father accused (perhaps falsely) of abuse, so some readers might want to avoid this one for now.
Guilty: Inside the high-risk, historic prosecution of a school shooter’s parents [Washington Post gift link]
Will prosecuting people who buy guns for others help quell our nation's out-of-control epidemic of gun violence? Not the way sensible laws against firearm ownership might, but since it seems like some folks basically build their whole identity around guns (is there a better way to announce that you're a dolt than by wearing an American-flag-made-of-guns shirt?) perhaps this will have to do.
It was a decision celebrated by those desperate for a new approach to address gun violence and criticized by some legal experts who called it prosecutorial overreach. The Crumbleys, whose attorneys declined comment for this story on their behalf, maintained they’d done nothing wrong and shouldn’t be held responsible for their son’s actions. Many people agreed with them. Even inside her own office, some of [prosecutor Karen] McDonald’s most experienced attorneys opposed what she was doing, dubious that she could win convictionsin prosecutions that would cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.
She did win, though, at a pair of nationally televised trials that set new legal precedent not just in Michigan, but also across the country. To make history, McDonald endured death threats, a judge-imposed gag order and unrelenting public scrutiny and skepticism.
On TikTok, True Crime Survivors Take Control [New York Times]
It's so hard to know what's up on TikTok outside the FYP, so this was news to me: social media users are leveraging this app to raise awareness of cases and crimes that other apps and the media scroll past.
Julie spent years trying to find out what happened to her sister, creating a website and trying to get coverage in traditional media. But it wasn’t until 2022, when a video she uploaded to @mauramurraymissing on TikTok amassed more than three million views, that she drew wider attention.
“I was able to sort of take agency over my sister’s story for the first time,” she said. “I can just go on and on and on about the wonders that TikTok has done for me.”
True crime podcasts, movies and investigative TV series are wildly popular, often raking in profits for their producers and platforms. Many, though, are made without the consent or involvement of those most closely affected. A growing number of survivors of crimes, and family members of the victims of unresolved attacks and disappearances, say that TikTok has given them more control over their stories.