True-Crime Link Lightning Round
We've got enough in there to keep you entertained for days
the true crime that's worth your time
Hello friends! As sometimes happens, Sarah’s and my Best Evidence story budget document is starting to look like an episode of Hoarders, packed with amazing wonderful treasures we haven’t used yet but can’t bear to throw in the dumpster. So we’re going to unload all those on you today…and, don’t worry, if I find any desiccated squirrel corpses in the pile, I’ll don gloves and get them into the dumpster before anyone notices. — EB
The trailer for docuseries The Con, a show about 2008’s mortgage meltdown is out. What timing, given the economic apocalypse that’s to come! Episodes are already available through “independent cinema partners,” and a streaming deal is presumably in the works.
Maximillian Potter’s book Shadows In The Vineyard, about a wild, wine world extortion plot, is set for a dramatic adaptation starring — get this — Judith Light and Noah Wyle. Wine Spectator has the scoop on the production, which is slated to begin in 2021.
“Riverdale’s Marisol Nichols’ Wild Tale Of Becoming An Undercover Sex Trafficking Agent To Be Turned Into TV Series By Sony Pictures Television” [Deadline]
Tiger King's Carole Baskin, Nelly among cast of ABC's 'Dancing with the Stars' season 29 [ABC 7]
As Sarah and I discussed on the last full The Blotter Presents ever, Jim Gaffigan deserves awards recognition for his turn in Most Wanted. He does not deserve the harassment and threats he’s faced since he unloaded on Trump supporters on Twitter. People are weird.
My friends and colleagues at The Verge just dropped a remarkable package called Capturing the Police. The set of reports are all “about how people use technology to bring awareness of police brutality and racism — and what it costs them when they agitate for justice.” All the stories are good, but I’ll direct you to Best Evidence subscriber Kim Lyons’s “Surviving a police shooting turned a teenager into an activist” for special attention, or if you only have room to read one.
Two decades into her career, mystery novelist Karen Slaughter takes to the pages of Bustle to reflect “on watching women begin to embrace their desire to read and learn more about these crimes.
“The Mount Vernon Police Tapes: In Secretly Recorded Calls, Officers Allege Beatings In Custody And Illegal Strip Searches” [Gothamist]
Porn star Ron Jeremy faces 20 additional counts of sex assault, including against 15-year-old [KTLA]
Virginia Beach Cold Case Files, a series about the disappearance of Barbara Jean Monaco in 1978, is now available on YouTube, Facebook, and IGTV.
Wonder why crime reporting can seem so one sided? Then read “How Prison Officials Block Access to the Media,” the American Prospect’s look at how “journalists are having trouble contacting sources, and inmates who speak on the record face retaliation.”
Reporter Justin Peters took a class from “a prominent police trainer” and “Learned to Think Like a ‘Warrior Cop.’” Lesson one: to “treat neighborhoods like battlegrounds—and to always be ready to kill.”
More casting news for Ridley Scott’s Maurizio Gucci assassination film. Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, Adam Driver, and Jared Leto are all in talks to join Lady Gaga in the film, Collider reports.
And finally, a couple longreads:
The bizarre story of a man who tried to murder a 600-year-old tree. “In May 1989, a bizarre murder attempt in Austin, Texas, gripped the nation and made worldwide news. The details of the case were unusual, and unlike anything police had seen before. The victim? Austin's oldest resident, a nearly 600-year-old tree known as Treaty Oak.” [CNN]
The man without a name. “Robert Ivan Nichols simply disappeared from his average, 1960s Midwestern life — until, using DNA, sleuths uncovered the truth. But were they digging where they shouldn’t have been?” [Vox]
And Sarah’s got a longread of her own to cover for you guys, so vote for the September bonus book-review tome today!
Oh my god, thank you guys, you don’t know how much better I feel with a beautiful, blank story slate for next week. And, remember, if you see something that you think we should spread around the Best Evidence-verse…
What is this thing? This should help. Follow Best Evidence @bestevidencefyi on Twitter and Instagram. You can also call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.