Sunny Hostin Is Everywhere
Plus: Ted Bundy via book and docuseries
the true crime that's worth your time
Sunny Hostin is doubling down on true crime this week. Hostin’s a former federal prosecutor turned co-host of The View has a show called Truth About Murder With Sunny Hostin that drops on Investigation Discovery tonight.
According to a press release from when the show was announced, the six-episode show will see Hostin traveling “to the sites of America’s most perplexing cases, interviewing detectives, prosecutors, coroners, and speaking with victims’ families to piece together the emotions, evidence and, ultimately, truth of the case.”
From that description, it’s tough to see what might make this show different from the literal jillions of other shows on Oxygen, ID, et al. that feature a telegenic host with a legal background. Hostin’s press tour in support of the show doesn’t help much, I’m afraid: In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, she suggests that she show is different because it focuses on the “stories of victims and their loved ones, rather than trying to get inside the minds of cold-blooded killers,” a statement of market differentiation that seems pretty common these days. An interview with USA Today brings us more of the same, with Hostin saying "I have been approached about doing this kind of show, but it was always sort of from the mind of the killer, and I’ve never been interested in that because I’ve always been a victim advocate." If the sameness doesn’t put you off, it kicks off at 10 PM Tuesday night.
But ID isn’t the only place you can find Hostin this week, as she’s also behind a new podcast from ABC News called Have You Seen This Man? Its trailer dropped last week, and its first episode is slated for release on Wednesday. On the show, which is hosted by Hostin (not recommended to say that phrase after a couple drinks), you’ll hear about the U.S. Marshal Service search for Lester Eubanks, a convicted child murderer who escaped from prison in 1973 when he was essentially furloughed to do Christmas shopping. (Rolling Stone did a very solid piece on Eubanks and his escape; you can find it here.)
Honestly, if you said I had to check out an hour of one of the two Hostin properties available this week, this pod would be my pick -- this sounds a lot more interesting and less potentially redundant than her TV offering. If any of you try her show, please circle back with a report -- meanwhile, I’ll take on the podcast, which you can find subscription details for here. -- EB

If you didn’t think your life was complete without another Ted Bundy show, Amazon has you covered. The five-part documentary will be called Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer, Deadline reports, and -- as you might expect from the title -- frames the matter through his relationship with Elizabeth Kendall.
We’ve talked about Kendall before, as it was her out-of-print memoir that provided the inspiration for Netflix’s dramatic take on the killer, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile (a property that Sarah and guest Jeb Lund -- who, coincidentally, is also the guest on this week’s podcast -- discussed back in May). Kendall’s notoriously press-shy, but according to the press materials for the Amazon show, “after nearly 40 years of silence, Elizabeth Kendall and her daughter Molly share their experiences with unsettling new details about Bundy, the pull he had on women and an abundant archive of never-before-seen family photos.” (One of those is above, sent as a handout by Amazon’s press team.)
Is Kendall’s involvement enough to get you onto this train? You’ll have some time to decide, as the show has an as-yet-unannounced 2020 release date. If I had to guess when we might expect it, however, I’d say the first week of January: That’s when an updated version of Kendall’s book, The Phantom Prince: My Life with Ted Bundy is set for release on, um, Amazon -- and if there’s one thing that company has on lock, its corporate synergy. -- EB

As I was driving through Wyoming last week, I was thinking about Matthew Shepard. It’s wild to me that his slaying was 21 years ago -- he died on October 21, 1998. As part of its content strategy around Uncovered: Killed by Hate (which premiered Sunday), Oxygen published a follow-up on Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, who have both admitted to beating and killing Shepard.
Much of the Oxygen item is a reblog of an AP piece published on the 20th anniversary of Shepard’s death, which reported that both men remain in prison, where each serve two consecutive life sentences. In the year-old piece, Henderson continued to maintain (as he did when arrested) that neither he nor McKinney were motivated by homophobia, and were instead intent on robbery. However, in a Denver Post report from 2009, McKinney called himself “the poster child for hate-crime murders” and said that the pair targeted Shepard because “he was obviously gay. That played a part. His weakness. His frailty.” -- EB
Wednesday on Best Evidence: It’s The Blotter Presents, Episode 117, in which guest Jeb Lund joins Sarah to talk about Leavenworth and Criminal’s “The Escape” episode.
What is this thing? This should help.
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