Suspects · R. Kelly · Laetitia
Plus: The Dropout drops some new episodes
the true crime that's worth your time
An interesting group of true-crime creatives got together last week. The group — Zackary Drucker (The Lady and the Dale), Joe Berlinger (Paradise Lost, problematic emails), Amy Ziering (Allen v. Farrow), and Donald Albright (the Atlanta Monster podcast) — virtually assembled as part of Variety and Rolling Stone’s “Truth Seekers Summit.”
It’s an event name that might make you say “uh-oh,” as those who seem loudest about seeking the truth these are often the folks who are most eager to ignore it. But in this case, the one-day set of panels was intended to applaud actual legitimate “documentarians and investigative reporting that keeps us informed and shines light on the most pressing issues of our time,” the publications said via press release.
So that’s how we ended up with a 44-minute-long video (which is unembeddable by this publication, sorry) of the filmmakers, directors, and podcasters chatting it up. Highlights include Berlinger saying that Shakespeare “was the first true crime person” (nah), Ziering alllmost calling out Michael Moore as part of a conversation about what interviews to use, and Drucker on the challenge of applying today’s standards on gender identity to historical cases.
It’s a really great discussion on process, narrative, and editorial decisions, and is well worth the watch if you’re into how the true-crime sausage is made (which I assume is all of us, yeah?). You can watch the full panel discussion here. — EB
Two prominent and new true-crime properties are getting some pretty decent reviews. A dramatic adaptation of a French case and a star-studded super-American one hit the small screen in coming days, and so far, both look pretty solid. — EB
Review: ‘Laetitia,’ a French True-Crime Gem, Comes to HBO [New York Times]
I’d somehow missed that Laetitia, the French mini-series on the 2011 slaying of 18-year-old Laëtitia Perrais, was from The Staircase documentarian Jean-Xavier de Lestrade. This isn’t a doc; it’s a six-episode adaptation of the case that aired in France a bit ago, and arrived on HBOMax this week. “De Lestrade’s storytelling rarely hits a false note,” critic Mike Hale writes, as he “keeps us slightly ahead of the police investigation, orchestrating information in a way that builds a mounting dismay.”Impeachment: American Crime Story review: A gripping retelling of a presidential scandal [EW]
I’m a little relieved that critic Kristen Baldwin thinks this show worked out OK: Ryan Murphy’s work has been pretty hit-or-miss in recent years (what was the point of that Hulu-only American Horror Stories thing?), and this is too significant and loaded a case to totally fuck up. According to Baldwin, the season “is not as emotionally resonant as the previous ACS installments,” and the A-list cast “begins to feel a little like a prestige Love Boat,” but it “deftly avoids ‘both sides’ equivocations or overtly partisan shading” and overall, is “gripping and challenging.” — EB
Remember how R. Kelly argued that allowing a guy to testify against him might stoke homophobia in the jury? We mentioned it briefly here: the disgraced musician’s defense team argued that an male victim of Kelly’s alleged serial sexual abuse should be barred from his ongoing sex trafficking and racketeering trial, as the juror questionnaire was “void of a single question about their opinions or feelings on same-sex relationships.” That means they might be big homophobes, and would become prejudiced against Kelly, should he argue that his contact with the man (the victim was underaged during the alleged time of contact, but is an adult now) was consensual.
That argument didn’t fly, and the victim, who is now 31, took the stand this week, the AP reports. Here’s a snip, which you might want to scroll past if descriptions of sexual assault are a trigger for you:
Kelly asked the alleged victim, then 17, “what I was willing to do for music,” the witness said. He replied, “I’ll carry your bags. ... Anything you need, I’ll be willing to do.”
“That’s not it. That’s not it,” he said Kelly responded before asking him if he ever fantasized about having sex with men. He described how Kelly then “crawled down on his knees and proceeded to give me oral sex,” even though, “I wasn’t into it.”
Afterward, “he told me to keep between him and me,” he said.
In a later episode, Kelly snapped his fingers to summon a naked girl from where she was hiding under a boxing ring to give Kelly and the witness oral sex, the man told the jury.
Another victim, who testified later in the week, said that Kelly “infected her with herpes and filmed her during sex without her knowledge or consent,” Buzzfeed reports. Another snip, also disturbing and worth skipping if you find this case detrimental to your mental health:
Kelly did not use a condom, even though she asked if he would, she testified. “He said, ‘We don’t need a condom,’” Faith said.
But Kelly did not inform her he had had herpes for over a decade, as his former physician previously testified.
Immediately after that sexual encounter, Faith said, Kelly was critical of her sexual performance, saying she had “a lot to learn.” He also allegedly questioned whether she might be younger than 19 but seemed unperturbed by the possibility. “He said, ‘You know, if you’re really 16, you can tell Daddy.’”
According to ABC, tales like these have been common throughout the New York trial:
Kelly, 54, has repeatedly denied accusations that he preyed on victims during a 30-year career. His lawyers have portrayed his accusers as groupies who are lying about their relationships with him.
Jurors so far have heard from a steady stream of accusers claiming Kelly began sexually degrading them when they were still in their teens. They said he used his stardom to lure them into an insular world where he watched their every move and doled out perverse punishments, spanking them and isolating them in hotel rooms if they broke a vow to never speak about him to anyone else.
Kelly’s personal physician has also testified, saying he treated him for herpes for several years.
Meanwhile, the Guardian just published a profile of Kelly defense attorney Nicole Blank Becker, the only woman on the musician’s defense team. Of note:
Once the head of a sex crimes unit at the Macomb county prosecutor’s office outside of Detroit, where she worked as a prosecutor since 2005, Becker opened her own private practice in Michigan and became a defense attorney in 2018 – just a year before she would join Kelly’s defense team.
In the era of #MeToo, Becker has branded herself as a staunch defender of those who have been accused of sexual abuse. “Being wrongfully accused of sexual assault, rape or any type of sex crimes may leave you with a lot of questions,” reads Becker’s website. “You need a lawyer who isn’t afraid to fight on your behalf.”
Becker said previously that she made the 180-degree switch from being prosecutor to a defense attorney for sex crimes because the jobs “use the exact same skills”.
Kelly’s New York trial is expected to continue for several more weeks. — EB
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Speaking of a current trial, The Dropout is back. Those of us who routinely cull our podcast subscriptions might want to re-sub to The Dropout, that long-dormant ABC audio series about Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. The podcast dropped out of our ears (ha ha I am so sorry) back in February of 2019, when its final episode, entitles “What Now?” appeared.
The show returned this week, with two new episodes that dropped on August 31. It’s now packaging itself as The Dropout: Elizabeth Holmes on Trial, and promises to “take you inside the courtroom, breaking down the evidence and keeping score for both sides.”
So far, though, it’s just been catch-up content — we’re still in jury selection mode, so there’s not much courtroom action to document. That means a recap of a lot of the same coverage we’ve discussed here in recent years, which is actually pretty handy! I had almost forgotten, for example, that her significant other is Billy Evans, whose role in his family’s hotel business is unclear (but per The Cut, he “worked for LinkedIn”). It’s nice to get a refresher on little details like that before the trial goes into full swing.
This week I’m also set to dive into Suspect, a podcast that was released for Wondery+ users a while ago and to the rest of us slobs this week.
The logline is pretty fantastic, so I’ll just dump it on you:
An apartment complex hosts a big Halloween party with themed rooms and costumed partygoers. By the end of the night one of the party’s hosts is murdered. And the partygoers are the main suspects in the eyes of the police: was it the guy in the devil mask, the guy dressed as Jesus, the bank robber, the construction worker? As a complex investigation winds its way through forensic evidence, witness testimony, DNA, and even a psychic, the police zero in on one suspect in particular -- but why?
The party host in question was 24-year-old Arpana Jinaga, who was dressed as Little Red Riding Hood for the 2008 shindig. Here’s a link that spoils the podcast for you, if you don’t mind being unsurprised as you listen — for the rest of you, I’ll just say that there’s been little movement in the case since 2019. It’s a very forensically complicated case, given the party scene circumstances, so I’m hoping for a process-and-science-heavy listen. — EB
Friday on Best Evidence: How the vacillation of OnlyFans could kill sex workers.
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