The People of the State of BE v. Giudice Lansky Lentz Bacot LLC
Plus the Kip Kinkel interview, Texas skinheads, and much more
the true crime that's worth your time
Good morning! Our budget doc is once again swollen with material, so grab a bev, some bifocals, and your watchlist: it’s on. — SDB
Meredith Blake on “the long history of financially troubled Real Housewives,” the “glam arms race” that may lead some of them astray, and how viewers’ both aspiring AND feeling superior to the franchise stars creates a felonious situation. Blake’s analysis for the L.A. Times would seem to concur in part with mine from April, at least vis-a-vis Teresa Giudice and how “just Jersey bein’ Jersey” accounting practices won’t fly when you’re on TV:
More frequently, as in the case of “New Jersey’s” Teresa Giudice, the conspicuous consumption crucial to the franchise’s formula casts a very public spotlight on the family finances.
Few Housewives have aroused suspicion as immediately or intensely as Giudice: Minutes into the very first episode of “New Jersey,” she spent $120,000 on furniture. “I hear the economy’s crashing, so that’s why I pay cash,” she said of the purchase, meant for the 10,000-square-foot faux French Chateau outfitted in marble, granite and onyx that she and her husband, Joe, spent three years building. The source of all this cash was murky: Joe, supposedly a successful entrepreneur, ran a construction company out of a modest storefront.
Not a ton of new information here; I’m kind of waiting for the Bravo-BTS version of this that confirms what most of these convicted-Housewife longreads can only presume re: how complicit production is in these outcomes. — SDB
Epstein’s Shadow: Ghislaine Maxwell drops tomorrow on Peacock. I wasn’t looking forward to covering it back in May, and having now seen it, I wouldn’t say it’s groundbreaking, exactly — although it’s not often you see talking-head interviewees’ glasses of alcohol in the shot — but I would cautiously recommend it. Unlike a lot of docs of its ilk, the ones that analyze from the outside, Epstein’s Shadow gestures at facing the fact that The Facts, and the truth, will likely elude us all here. My Primetimer review isn’t live yet, but it should show up at this link late tonight, and in the meantime, here’s a snip:
Epstein's Shadow spends several minutes in its final episode handicapping the chances that we'll ever know what, or how much, Maxwell knows. Survivor Maria Farmer notes acidly that "there's only one way [the rich and powerful] DON'T get away with anything, and that's if they get killed" — and more than one talking-head interviewee implies that Maxwell may not survive until her trial begins, which would leave survivors again deprived of the chance to face the monsters who continue to haunt them. In a way, it's the strongest and most interesting part of the series, that pessimistic commentary on what "justice" looks like in the Epstein case now that Epstein himself is out of reach.
It really got me thinking about how much of true crime is powered by a belief, on the creators’ and the consumers’ side, that answers exist for the finding. Epstein’s Shadow isn’t essential, perhaps, but it’s a bit surprising. — SDB
Patrick Strickland on the skinheads that terrorized Dallas in the 1980s. I appreciate Strickland’s use of the epithet “boneheads,” but while the Dallas Observer piece is well done, it’s also difficult going as a result; the opening sequence, in which a group of skins chases a Black man home from a pub, literally raised my heart rate. It’s also rather depressing to read watchdog groups’ assessment of the frightening numbers accrued by racist skinhead gangs nationwide when said numbers topped out at 2000 — like, I found myself muttering, “Oh, just you wait until the stupid internet comes along.” And then there’s this:
Years after I started my hunt for the Hammerskins, one image from court records sticks with me. Entered into evidence during their trial is a grainy, black-and-white snapshot taken around the time they chased Alexis Newton out of Lee Park. Around two dozen skinheads, only four or five girls among them, are posed in front of "Robert E. Lee on Traveller," the Confederate monument that once stood tall in the park. Most of them are smiling. All but one or two have their arms raised in a Nazi salute.
The piece goes on to describe, among other things, the Confederate Hammerskins’ branding efforts, including patches they made and wore; the “mushrooming” of neo-Nazi activity during Ronald Reagan’s rise to power; an Aryan “rock festival” in Oklahoma; and more. Again, bleak going, but well done. — SDB
Longreads included HuffPo’s “Kip Kinkel Is Ready To Speak” in its round-up last Friday. Perhaps the most powerful aspect of Jessica Schulberg’s piece, for me, is how long it took for me to remember which horrific massacre was Kinkel’s.
It was a rare opportunity to hear from the perpetrator of a school shooting; those that survive almost never speak publicly again. No questions were off-limits. He described to me the childhood onset of hallucinations and delusions that would later be identified as symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. He walked me through the events that drove him to amass weapons and his memory of the psychotic break he experienced during his crime. He described his intense guilt for what he had done. He told me about the treatment and support he received from his doctors, therapists, sister, volunteers and his community of juvenile lifers.
Certainly I’d forgotten that he was 15 at the time. Hearing from Kinkel about the voices, three of them, that began to bedevil him at age 12; about the conservative parents who didn’t believe in psychiatry; about the way Waco and Ruby Ridge were framed for this child, I got the same feeling I get from, say, pictures of OJ and Nicole Simpson’s wedding — like, this can be stopped, turned around. Something can be different. But…it can’t. All that remains is to ask whether we as a society are achieving justice by locking up mentally ill children, a question Schulberg’s piece also delves into. Again, not cheery, but exhaustive and thought-provoking. — SDB
I don’t know what it says when a trailer for an old-school organized-crime story passes for “a break,” but here’s the official trailer for Lansky:
The film releases Friday, and also stars Annasophia Robb (The Carrie Diaries) and Minka Kelly (Friday Night Lights); here’s the synopsis from the YouTube page:
David Stone (Sam Worthington), a renowned but down-on-his-luck writer, desperately needs a break. His luck changes when he receives a surprise call from Meyer Lansky (Academy Award®-nominee Harvey Keitel), the Jewish Godfather of organized crime. The retired gangster spins a dizzying tale, revealing the untold truth about his life as the notorious boss of Murder Inc. and the National Crime Syndicate. For decades, authorities have been trying to locate Lansky’s alleged fortune, hundreds of millions gone. This is their last chance to capture the aging gangster before he dies; but Lansky, as always, is one step ahead of the FBI, sending them on a wild chase, evading and outsmarting them at every turn.
I’m mildly intrigued, but Sam Worthington content tends to put me to sleep; anyone else planning to check this out? — SDB
Michelle McNamara is far from the only one to get sucked into an unsolved case; Katherine Dykstra got pulled into a 50-year-old Iowa file by her novelist mother-in-law. Here’s a snip that goes back to that void-at-the-center issue I mention in my Epstein’s Shadow review, and not just why true crime is made and consumed, but how the genre’s “gatekeepers” decide which is made and consumed:
Without a killer, she told me, the gatekeepers to whom she pitched Paula’s story all posed the same question: Who cares? Who cares about a 50-year-old homicide? Who cares about a crime with no culprit? Who cares about a girl that nobody had known and nobody knew now?
The lack of an ending was a problem. All stories depend on their conclusions, but true crime is uniquely built for its finish. The reader amasses clues as she turns pages slotting them into the timeline—action, reaction—until Rube Goldberg-like, the marble pops out the other side in the form of our culprit. Ta-da!
Dykstra’s book, What Happened To Paula, came out last week and presumably digs into not just Paula Oberbroeckling’s case but the “narrative fallacy” that both drives and defies so many of these narratives. (If you’re an audiobook listener and you’d like to support Exhibit B. Books while listening, you can try it on Libro.fm!) — SDB
Discovery+ has ordered a three-episode docuseries, Breaking Hillsong, “about the controversial megachurch Hillsong and its once-celebrity pastor Carl Lentz.”
The non-fiction subscription streaming service has partnered with New York Post and investigative journalist Hannah Frishberg, who has written a series of articles on Hillsong and Lentz. Drawing on Frishberg’s articles as source material, Breaking Hillsong will chronicle the headline-making world of Hillsong, with exclusive, never-before-seen interviews, including Ranin Karim, the New York-based fashion designer whose five-month affair with Lentz led to his downfall.
Is this DEFINITELY true crime? Well, given that I have a whole #churchshenanigans tag at the bookshop, I think we can bet the series will have no problem finding some; Deadline’s wrap-up adds that we can expect a look at “the greater phenomenon of corruption within megachurches.” Want a jump-start with Frishberg’s writing?
Gotta love a reddish NYC tabloid owned by an Australian going after a megachurch based in Australia. — SDB
The New Republic asks if criminal-justice reform can survive a crime wave. Awaiting the final results of the NYC mayoral primary, depressingly secure in the knowledge that Eric Adams is probably our next Hizzonner (for more on former cop and possible New Jerseyan Adams, read the New York piece that seems to have gotten its author banned from reporting on Adams’s election party last night;
this isn’t why I didn’t rank him on my ballot but it’s still not cute), and living in Red Brooklyn surrounded by Blue Lives flags, I have a particular interest in John Pfaff’s article. The subheadline, which is no doubt correct, will not discourage a certain type of voter from opting for law-and-order candidates: “An uptick in homicides across the country is getting blamed on reforms. That argument gets the data all wrong.” The rationalizing that will have accompanied various voters HERE holding their noses and voting for Adams is different — that argument is more along the lines of “well, at least he can talk to the cops; he was one” — but the problem as always is that most people are working with anecdotal evidence, hearing more sirens, getting more Nextdoor alerts, and conflating their anger over porch pirates yoinking their Prime Day boxes with meaningful responses to increases in gun violence.
Also most people don’t care about data if it goes against what they already think, but I respect Pfaff pissing into the wind anyway:
To be clear, the defenders of the status quo are mistaken. Not only have reforms been less extreme than they often claim, but the rise in homicides has occurred more or less equally in places that adopted reforms and those that rejected them. And given how few places have significantly altered their approach to crime, the homicide spike by and large took place on the status quo’s watch. Those who want policy to remain more punitive are thus arguing for more of what has mostly failed us this past year, and they are trying to blame reforms that appear to be uncorrelated with the surge.
Pfaff’s piece acknowledges that people believe what they want, but goes through the data anyway, carefully but not in a homework-y way — what contributed to 2020’s rise in murders, how we can reasonably compare them to spikes in the crime rate historically, the effect of 9/11 on our perceptions of crime and punishment, and so on. Highly recommended. — SDB
Last one, from WaPo: “She recounted decades of abuse by her husband in a best-selling book. Now she’s on trial for his murder.” Valérie Bacot admitted to killing her husband in a bestselling memoir out earlier this year (and to burying him in nearby woods “with the help of two of their children”…!!), which also recounted years of abuse at the hands of her former stepfather, who began assaulting her when she was 12.
And in case it’s not clear to you, as it wasn’t to me until I read the first few grafs a few times, her husband WAS her former stepfather.
French prosecutors say the murder was “premeditated,” and I’m sure it was; I’m also sure they can’t possibly get a conviction under the circs, but the piece is thought-provoking on everything from justifiable homicide to trauma to the role of the media and its “narratives” in criminal proceedings. — SDB
Thursday on Best Evidence: Good grief, I barely made a dent in the doc. We’ll see how far Eve gets before meeting me in the (virtual) bar.
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