Sophie · Sirico · Krouse · Clemente
Plus a pre-"Killers of the Flower Moon" prep list
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
In another book, the moment when writer Erika Krouse met a man by reaching for the same Paul Auster work would have been a meet-cute. Especially because the man, a stranger named Graham, immediately spilled all his secrets.
Instead, their chance encounter ended with a job offer. Graham, a lawyer (whose name was changed for the book), asked Krouse to work as his private investigator. She recounts their work together in her new memoir, Tell Me Everything.
The first few cases Krouse works for Graham are busts; she’s unable to uncover the evidence he’s seeking. Yet, instead of letting her go, he brings her a more significant case: Graham is seeking to prove that the local university is violating Title IX by allowing football players to get away with sexually assaulting students and staff. (While Krouse doesn’t name it, a quick Google search shows the school was the University of Colorado, Boulder.)
As he presents the case to Krouse, Graham says, “It’s rape. College rape, gang rape. That okay with you?” Krouse lies and says that’s fine. She begins to investigate the university — and her own history of sexual trauma.
The story
The new PI conducts countless interviews. She says she has one of those faces that make people open up to her, but she’s also clearly a talented interviewer. She mimics body language and knows what phrases will provoke a response.
I finished Tell Me Everything about a month ago, but it’s one of those books I know will stick with me for years. Krouse seamlessly weaves together two narratives: her near compulsive work to prove the university culpable; and her attempt to make sense of both the childhood sexual abuse she suffered, and her mother’s continued relationship with her abuser.
It’s an admirable feat, and one that what have felt overwrought in the hands of a lesser writer. Krouse, though, makes it a heart-wrenching read. While she avoids making the connections between the two cases too pat or neat, the memoir builds to Krouse’s internal revelation that her obsession with the campus rape was driven by an attempt to correct her own narrative. “I hadn’t been trying to prove a rape case to a bunch of white men in black robes who didn’t matter to me. I had been trying to prove it to my mother,” she writes.
That line demonstrates Krouse’s writing chops in terms of unadorned directness; the book also features gorgeous, lyrical descriptions of the Colorado wilderness, and sharp, almost visceral accounts of her time practicing martial arts.
These asides, the personal story, and the literary nature of the writing set it apart from other true-crime memoirs. It’s more of a writerly memoir — in the vein of Carmen Maria Machado’s In The Dream House — than a strict crimoir, like Paul Holes’s Unmasked.
Still, I think true crime fans will find a lot to appreciate in Tell Me Everything. It’s well worth the read. — Elizabeth Held
Exhibit B. has one copy left of Tell Me Everything — and like every other hardcover I’ve got in stock, it’s 15% off with code ExHB at checkout.
We don’t love that the ol’ Bet-Crap is turning into the ol’ Obit-Crap around here recently, but it’s our way of honoring contributions to the genre, so let us turn our arithmetical attentions now to my recently departed fellow Bay Ridgian Tony Sirico. Before looking at Sirico’s IMDb, I wouldn’t have known where to start re: guessing his percentage, because I didn’t think he’d have as many entries as he does (82!), but given the number of Mob properties he’s obviously in…tbh I still don’t know where to put the number, so let’s go with one that’s pertinent to craps and say 11.
(“Wait, so what are you talking about?” Click here to see how we calculate the Best Evidence True-Crime Résumé Percentage.)
Madon’, let’s do this.
Defiance, 1980. From the golden age of Jan-Michael Vincent vehicles, Defiance doesn’t really count, but I note it here because it’s allegedly the film that triggered co-star Theresa Saldana’s stalker, and that became a true-crime story in its own right (not least because Rebecca Schaeffer’s stalker picked up pointers from Saldana’s, ugh). No points for Sirico, though: 0
GoodFellas, 1991. HERE we go, after almost 15 years’ worth of credits. It is based on true events and it is a hall-of-famer for sure, so Sirico is finally on the board with: 2
In The Shadow Of A Killer, 1992. A cop-with-a-conscience period-piece TV movie starring Scott Bakula, it’s evidently based on a true story; 1
Gotti, 1996. The Emmy-bait TV movie starring Armand Assante. Name case, yes; Sirico isn’t playing a name I recognize, though, and you could make the argument for it as a HOFer, but I…will not in this case: 1
The Good Life, 1997. From the IMDB’s trivia section: “Because of a lawsuit, this film was never released.” When your top-line star is Frank Stallone?? What a waste! …jk. I would like to know what the lawsuit alleged, however. Point is: 0
Witness to the Mob, 1998. Another Gotti joint that looks like a Sopranos casting special; this time Tom Sizemore is the Dapper Don. Sirico is not credited and is ostensibly playing some Gambino I couldn’t pick out of a line-up (uh, as it were), so: 1, and let’s try to figure out what to do with…
The Sopranos, 1999. It’s a neighborhood play, but I think it’s a lot closer than the Godfather-verse, and series creator David Chase has acknowledged the debt the fictional Sopranos owe to the real-life DeCavalcantes, and to Richie “The Boot” Boiardo, whose gavon’ McMansion in Livingston was the subject of a bitchy Life Magazine photo essay in 1967. So I will award that point — but is it a hall-of-fame property in the genre? I know it’s probably weird to allow it as a true-ish story but not give it the HOF point, but…Chase also said it’s 90 percent fiction, and it’s just not thought of as true crime. And while Sirico shared a SAG ensemble award (and many nominations) with the rest of the cast, I don’t think that point is in play either. Just the 1.
And…that’s…kind of it? It’s definitely a trip to go through Sirico’s c.v. and see the sheer volume of a) variations he plays on characters named “Jimmy Nutz” and “Mr. Bobby,” and b) productions he appeared in along with at least one other major Sopranos figure (David Proval, Vinny Pastore, various Badalucci).
I’ll knock the 82 entries down to 80 because a couple of the projects aren’t complete; I will also add a point just on general principles, since the man did actual prison time and a documentary about Sirico would qualify in the genre. But that’s still only six points total; Sirico’s final BET-CRP number is 7.5 percent. — SDB
Real Crime Profile has analyzed Brian Laundrie’s “confession letter.” Should I analyze why I know what’s going on with that podcast, and why I’ve chosen to share it with you, before I tell you whether it’s worth your time? Totally, because I see a relationship between those things! Here we go:
I never unsubscribed from RCP; I don’t know why. I suspect it’s the same reason I never unsubscribed from any of the other squillion podcasts I still get updates from but don’t listen to regularly. In any event, yesterday morning the Apple pod app let me know RCP had dropped “Analyzing Gabby Petito’s Murderer’s ‘Confession’ - Part 2” (Episode 387), and almost any other day I’d have swiped left to clear it, but yesterday, for some reason, I said, “Huh,” and marked it to listen to later. Maybe it’s because the Vanity Fair piece we linked to last week is still clattering around in my mind, days later — that everything we’ve pieced together still adds up short, and those last bits are the ones that let a case dig into the mind. Maybe it’s because, as Laura Richards notes in the second half of RCP’s coverage, the Laundries’ “team” chose to share Brian’s “confession” in a Friday-news-dump announcement timed to vanish behind the overturning of Roe a few weeks ago. Quite a distance from the coverage levels at the end of last summer.
But for me, it’s in no small part because RCP is, at times, emotionally satisfying. Cheaply so, perhaps, and often performatively so — the listing of victim-“centering” hashtags at the end of the episode; ugh — but after reading that VF timeline and realizing Gabby Petito’s murder could have been prevented or diverted at a dozen different junctures, to listen to Jim Clemente just hollering all over Laundrie and his self-servingly narcissistic goodbye-to-all-that letter? It’s like bourbon on the gums of my mental toddler; I just don’t know how else to put it. RCP is problematic in a lot of ways, and this isn’t a defense of the podcast, but it has its appeal in this overall — that when 1) those last unknown, unsolved pieces of a case seem designed to haunt us, and/or 2) the perpetrator is gone and cannot hear or answer for anything, there is at the very least a certain community in listening to Clemente and Richards shitting all over every inch of a self-pitying shithead murderer like Brian Laundrie.
Is it true crime that’s worth your time? I don’t think so. It’s worth mulling over the things we sometimes need from true-crime coverage, though, even (and especially?) when it’s ugly vengeful things that provide us the illusion of control. Like, if you think RCP is bullshit, you’re right. (Lord knows I looked at their recent episodes on Melissa Lucio and was like, nope, can’t do it.) But if you think it has something to offer, you’re also right. — SDB
Jim Sheridan’s five-part docuseries on the murder of Sophie Toscan du Plantier is finally coming out stateside. Topic announced yesterday that they’ve acquired the on-demand rights to Murder at the Cottage: The Search for Justice for Sophie; the plan is to premiere two eps on Thursday August 4, and drop new episodes each Thursday after that.
We first noted this du Plantier project two and a half years (!) ago; if you’re confused as to whether you’ve already watched it, it’s not the one I covered for Primetimer about a year ago — Sophie: A Murder in West Cork — but one that seemed at least in past coverage to have more participation from (i.e., “possibly be a rehabilitation of the reputation of”) Ian Bailey. Per Deadline, Murder at the Cottage
is written, directed and narrated by Sheridan and sees the filmmaker search for answers about the violent murder of French woman, Sophie Toscan du Plantier, at her holiday home in the idyllic Irish countryside. In 2019, the key suspect, English journalist Ian Bailey – the first reporter on the scene – was found guilty in absentia by the French courts, yet was never found guilty in Ireland, owing to a lack of reliable evidence.
…
“As a filmmaker, many stories fascinate me, but this story compels me,” said Sheridan. “Two legal systems and two investigations by the French and the Irish found two very different conclusions. I wanted to understand how that could happen, to search for justice and to help uncover the truth.”
Is this the prestige docuseries that really puts Topic on the map? And are we interested in a take on this case that centers the accused, even if it comes from an acclaimed director of scripted properties? — SDB
The crime
The “Reign of Terror” perpetrated against Osage oil headright owners in the early part of the last century (aka “the Killers of the Flower Moon” case).
The story
PBS’s 2022 Short Film Festival has a lot of worthwhile “travel-size” movies to check out, but for our purposes I went with Osage Murders, a 13-minute short by Dan Bigbee Jr. and Lily Shangreaux. Made in 2020, it feels much older, between the apparent shooting on video; the occasional difficulty matching aspect ratios; and the nineties sweaters on several talking-head interviewees. And at under a quarter of an hour, it’s tough to call it a waste of time — particularly not when one descendent of the Terrorized sighs that the various corrupt scam artists who came after the Osage’s fortunes didn’t have to resort to killing them: “If they’d’ve hung around long enough, we’d’ve given it to ’em.” Later, narrator Richard Ray Whitman describes the deaths of much of a generation of Osage as having “created a hole in the cosmos of Osage culture.” It has its haunting moments.
But its primary value is probably in suggesting other properties on the case, the better to prepare for the upcoming Scorsese adaptation of David Grann’s book (no release date for KotFM yet, but the IMDb page is really something; the estimated budget is $200 million? …sure). You can watch the short above, or
read an excerpt from Grann’s book;
listen to Grann discussing the case on Fresh Air;
check out the FBI’s take on what’s often called the Bureau’s “first big case”;
listen to a 1935 episode of radio show Gang Busters about the murders;
and what is apparently another documentary, about twice as long (so: still short!), from the same filmmaking team — Back in Time: Osage Murders - Reign of Terror. — SDB
Coming up on Best Evidence: Well, I didn’t get around to Black Bird yet, but maybe Eve will have a look — plus hampton, Holmes, and Helltown? We’ll find out!
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