The James Caan Bet-Crap · Where The Crawdads Sing
Plus: a (fairly unsurprising) Theranos decision
the true crime that's worth your time
”Your book club probably already read Where the Crawdads Sing,” reads a Slate headline from 2019. That just about sums up the success of Delia Owens’ debut novel, a wildly successful fiction tale about a murder in North Carolina. My mom read it and urged me to read it. Yours probably did, too.
The book ended up as one of the best-selling hardbacks that year (and also holds the honor, I confess, as an e-book I reserved from the library than didn’t bother to read three times over, a record only surpassed by the number of times I’ve reserved than failed to read The Case For Keto after an extremely carb-heavy weekend). Reese Witherspoon’s production company picked it up not that long after the book peaked. But it wasn’t until March of this year that folks started raising troubling questions about allegations against Owens’ ex-husband and his son, who some witnesses have implicated in a 1995 homicide in Zambia.
Buzzfeed first noted a backlash against, of all people, Taylor Swift, who reportedly provided some music for the film’s soundtrack. After she announced the new song, “Carolina,” folks started sharing a 2010 piece from the New Yorker about Mark and Delia Owens by Jeffrey Goldberg, one that’s sub-headed “Did American conservationists in Africa go too far?” It’s a long and involved read that includes allegations of racism and classism, as well as a writeup on their appearance on an ABC newsmag show called Turning Point, during which Mark Owens said some fairly troubling things:
The documentary suggests that the conflict between scouts and poachers had grown violent. Mark Owens is seen supervising the scouts’ firearms training, and at various points in the broadcast he carries a pistol, a hunting rifle, and an AR-15 automatic rifle. Later, he orders his scouts, “If you see poachers in the national park with a firearm, you don’t wait for them to shoot at you. You shoot at them first, all right? That means when you see the whites of his eyes, and if he has a firearm, you kill him before he kills you, because if you let him get—if you let him turn on you with an AK-47, he’s going to cut you in two. So go out there and get them. Go get them, O.K.?”
In a scene that follows, a scout under Mark Owens’ command appears to fatally shoot an alleged poacher. Per Buzzfeed, “Delia’s husband, Mark, appears to be dismissive of the death in an interview later on in the documentary when he tells journalist Meredith Vieira: ‘It’s the reality — the messy reality, I’m afraid.’” According to some witnesses, it was Christopher Owens, Mark’s son, who first shot the man.
After the show aired, Zambian authorities sought all three members of the Owens family for questioning. However, the trio were traveling when the investigation into the slaying began, and were warned by the U.S. embassy not to return to the region. They’ve reportedly stayed away ever since.
As Slate noted nine years later, right after WTCS was released, a few folks including Goldberg saw some parallels between the events in the novel and the slaying in Africa. A few folks, but not that many.
Goldberg—who spent months researching “The Hunted,” traveling to South Africa, Idaho, and Maine in addition to making three trips to the Luangwa area in Zambia, and interviewing over 100 sources—is bemused by how effectively Owens and her publisher have managed to overshadow perhaps the most fascinating, if troubling, episode in her life. “A number of people started emailing me about this book,” he told me in an email, “readers who made the connection between the Delia Owens of Crawdads and the Delia Owens of the New Yorker investigation. So I got a copy of Crawdads and I have to say I found it strange and uncomfortable to be reading the story of a Southern loner, a noble naturalist, who gets away with what is described as a righteously motivated murder in the remote wild.”
Several sources Goldberg spoke with, including the cameraman who filmed the shooting of the poacher, have stated that Christopher Owens—Mark Owens’ son and Delia Owens’ stepson—was the first member of a scouting party to shoot the man. (Two other scouts followed suit.) Others have claimed that Mark Owens covered up the killing by carrying the body, which was never recovered, up in his helicopter and dropping it in a lake. Whoever pulled the trigger that day, what seems indisputable from “The Hunted” is that, over the course of years, Mark Owens, in his zeal to save endangered elephants and other wildlife, became carried away by his own power, turning into a modern-day version of Joseph Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz—and that while Delia Owens objected, at times, to what was happening, she was either unable or unwilling to stop him or quit him. And despite being set in a different place and time, her bestselling novel contains striking echoes of those volatile years in the wilderness.
This is a complicated case, made even more challenging as we don’t know the true nature of Owens’ relationship with her then husband (he’s thanked in the acknowledgements to the book, but they apparently parted ways at some point around its publication? It’s very unclear) and how much control he exerted over her. There are arguments to be made that this isn’t something Owens, who is now in her 70s, should be held responsible for.
There are also arguments to be made that WTCS might be an elaborate justification for a crime committed by Delia Owens’ nearest and dearest, even unconsciously. As Slate’s Laura Miller writes, “Fiction writers often don’t realize how much of their own unconscious bubbles up in their work, but at times Owens seems to be deliberately calling back to her Zambian years.” Miller provides a number of examples of this (as well as significant racial failings of her book that echo the colonial mindset the Owens family seemed to demonstrate while in Zambia), but in the end, I am still struggling to decide where I stand.
Should reviewers who heaped praise on the novel have taken a deeper dive into Owens’ family history and noted the parallels? Should Witherspoon and her team have considered this history before embarking on the adaptation? Can Taylor Swift do anything that doesn’t piss someone off?
Now I’ll subject you to something I mainly force on my husband: my “if I were running crisis communications for this, what would I do?” rap. If I were trying to get ahead of this potential scandal, I’d pay Oprah whatever she wanted for a hour-long sitdown with Dana Owens and Witherspoon where she’d do a no-holds-barred dive into every aspect of the 1995 shooting and what the novelist’s involvement was.
Though I remain angry at Oprah for unleashing Dr. Oz, Phil McGraw and so many other corrosive figures on humanity, I still believe in her ability to prize the truth from just about anyone. And, let’s face it, WTCS seems like something she would have pushed on viewers back when her book club was a thing, so it’s a good fit all around. Reese, if you’re listening, you can have this one for free. — EB
It’s time to BETCRP James Caan. Caan, who was perhaps best known for playing Sonny Corleone in The Godfather, died this week at age 82. The go-to for Hollywood tough guys has expressed some problematic attitudes but never really made it into anyone’s MeToo or Times Up coverage, which made him a relative rarity for an actor of his generation — and also made me feel like he was a fine subject for my first-ever Best Evidence True-Crime Résumé Percentage, a quantification of a creative’s true crime career that Sarah developed last year. (If you want to know its methodology, tap below.)
What I swiftly realized that while Caan’s resume is laden with crime properties, almost all of them are fiction. Sarah noted in our Slack that some say that Sonny was “based on real guys,” but I’ve always felt like Mario Puzo retconned a lot of claims like that after critics of his books noted their soapiness. So, that’s not enough to get it counted. Here’s what made the cut:
The Gambler (1974) In a 2011 interview, screenwriter James Toback said that this film about a lit prof gambler who was pursued by the mob over his debts was “blatantly autobiographical,” which is some pretty major Mary Sue-ing when you realize the Toback character (Caan) gets the rock star name of Axel Freed. 1 pt.
Hide in Plain Sight (1980) Caan plays Thomas Hacklin, Jr. (who in real life was named Tom Leonard), a guy who has to sue to see his kids after his ex-wife (Jill Eikenberry) married an alleged mobster turned snitch who sent the family (including Hackin’s progeny) into witness protection. 3 pts.
The Yards (2000) Based on a real-life corruption case involving the father of director/co-writer James Gray. Caan plays a fictional railway car repair company owner/baddie/Marky Mark stepdad named Frank Olchin. 1 pt.
A Glimpse of Hell (2001) This FX movie is a dramatic adaptation of a book of the same name about the USS Iowa turret explosion, a 1989 blast that investigators (controversially) claimed was intentionally caused after the conclusion of a failed romance between two male crewmembers. Caan is Cap. Fred Moosally, the Iowa’s commanding officer. 3 pt.
Middle Men (2009) This is a movie about internet payment company/porn mogul Christopher Mallick, who allegedly defrauded his companies’ customers to the tune of millions to fund this floperoo. Hilariously, the Mallick of the film is a paragon of virtue, it’s everyone around him who’s pulling scams. Caan is “crooked lawyer … Jerry Haggerty.” 1 pt.
For the Love of Money (2012) Per THR, this story about an Israeli who fled to LA to escape his crime-riddled life is “based on the true-life story of one of its executive producers.” Caan is a “temperamental gangster” who is apparently only known as “Mickey,” he tries to lure the main character back to the dark side. 1 pt.
Con Man (2018) This film about convicted felon Barry Minkow (carpet company Ponzi scheme/accounting fraud case they actually teach in business schools) has Caan waaay down on the roster as “Agent Gamble.” 1 pt.
That’s a total of 11 points for Caan. His IMDB lists 137 credits, but two of those are just “announced,” so I’m cutting them — the BETCRP should only use projects that have entered production, I just now decreed. So, 11 divided by 135 gives James Caan a Bet-Crap score of 8.15 percent. Lower than I expected, but not un-respectable. Now, excuse me, I’m off to watch Thief. — EB
[updated 7/8/22 to correct divisor and final percentage]
But not before I point you to two last stories that broke as I was finalizing Caan’s score:
Former Theranos executive Ramesh "Sunny" Balwani convicted of fraud [CBS]
A San Jose, CA jury ruled that Balwani was guilty of all 12 of the felony counts he was accused of — Elizabeth Holmes, by contract, was convicted of four. Holmes’ sentencing was on hold until Balwani’s trial concluded, and is now set for September. Balwani’s sentencing date has yet to be announced. Both face as long as 20 years in prison.
Fred and Kim Goldman on Scars of O.J. Simpson Trial, Hollywood’s True-Crime Obsession [The Hollywood Reporter]
The sister of Ron Goldman, who many still believe was killed by O.J. Simpson in 1994, is promoting her new podcast with an interview with her and her dad. The pair touch on Depp/Heard, the Jan. 6 committee hearings, and detail how hard Simpson has allegedly worked to his assets following a $90 million civil judgement against him regarding the deaths of Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson.
Monday on Best Evidence: Black Bird and DB Cooper.
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