The Blotter Presents

Latest Episodes:

147: Belly Of The Beast, Coded Bias, and the Yasmin Neal interview Jun 17, 2020

Show notes

[CW for references to domestic violence, racial violence, and medical malpractice.]
The podcast staycations on the doc-festival circuit this week with a couple of films from the Human Rights Watch Film Festival: Belly Of The Beast, a harrowing account of involuntary sterilization in the California penal system, and the sickening persistence of eugenics in the U.S.; and Coded Bias, which explores the capitalist algorithm and everything artificial "intelligence" gets wrong. (Note: I'd intended also to review Down A Dark Stairwell, but that screener didn't come through; hopefully I'll get to it later in the month.)
In the Cold Case section, I talked to filmmaker Yasmin Neal about her 2019 short Target Practice, a six-minute short that "has become a viral representation of 'modern-day lynching.'" We covered Holiday vs. Simone, how to direct children in dark material, and American iconography for all. The documentaries of tomorrow and a timeless short of yesteryear, in The Blotter Presents, Episode 147.
SHOW NOTES

The Human Rights Watch Film Festival lineup
Amazon buckles on facial-recognition deployment
Target Practice on YouTube

146: Dirty John: The Betty Broderick Story and Woman On Trial: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story Jun 10, 2020

Show notes

The Dirty John franchise, clumsily named though it is, is back -- and Marcia Chatelain is back to talk about it. It doesn't feel "necessary," in These Times...and yet we're both planning to keep watching, thanks to Amanda Peet's fearless performance; the comparisons we can make with Mrs. America; and the fond memories it recalls of Meredith Baxter's definitive version.
Later, we're digging into a Lifetime movie about another '80s true-crime icon: Laurie "Bambi" Bembenek, whose quest to unmask corruption in Milwaukee law enforcement (yes, she was kind of trying to defund the police) got her embroiled with a bad husband and a worse frame job. We don't agree on Tatum O'Neal's performance; we do agree that this early-nineties movie was ahead of its time in its takes on stalking, feminist whistle-blowers, and the awesomeness of Victor Garber. That ominous piano can only mean one thing...The Blotter Presents, Episode 146.
SHOW NOTES

The Marshall Project
The Equal Justice Initiative
Dirty John on USA
Woman On Trial on YouTube
Marcia Chatelain on Twitter…
...and her book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America
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145: Quiz and No Stone Unturned Jun 03, 2020

Show notes

First-time guest and Best Evidence contributor Margaret Howie joined me to talk about Quiz, the miniseries about the UK Who Wants To Be A Millionaire scandal now airing on AMC. Is it as good for what it leaves out as what it puts in? Are there class issues at work that non-Brits can't get at? And how does Matthew MacFadyen manage to play Charles Ingram so neutrally?
Later, we talk about the great Alex Gibney's not AS great No Stone Unturned, a true-crime Troubles explainer that tackles the Loughinisland massacre in 1994. Gibney takes this one more personally than most; does that interfere with his usual "ear" for structure? Game-show process, overshadowing events, and six degrees of seventh-grade Sarah: it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 145.
SHOW NOTES

Vulture's Quiz explainer
The real WWTBAM episode on YouTube
The official podcast
"The Man Who Got No Whammies"
No Stone Unturned on Amazon
Owen Gleiberman on No Stone Unturned for Variety
The Irish Passport podcast
My review of Say Nothing
Find Margaret Howie at the Public Intellectual podcast, and in her Three Weeks newsletter
Best Evidence

Blotter Brief 43: Reed Redmond on Mobbed Up May 25, 2020

Show notes

Mobbed Up: The Fight For Las Vegas drops Tuesday, May 26. I interviewed producer and host Reed Redmond about the podcast, interviewing Mob enforcers, mid-century nostalgia, and NOT watching Casino.
SHOW NOTES

Mobbed Up at the Las Vegas Review-Journal
Tour the Mob Museum virtually

144: Fake Heiress and Unsolved Mysteries S03.E10 May 20, 2020

Show notes

After our plans to cover Amazon docuseries The Last Narc got disappeared along with the show, Jessica Liese and I pivoted back to familiar ground: Fake Heiress, a late-2019 pod on everyone's favorite art-foundationing NYC scammer, Anna Delvey/Sorokin. The podcast isn't good, and across-the-pond class issues read weirdly to us North Americans...but is it a fast and fun enough listen for us to recommend? Or are you better off rereading the contemporary coverage?
We went even further back in time for our second Cold Case of the episode: the third-season Unsolved Mysteries segment on the disappearance of Nyleen Marshall. We're pretty sure we know what really happened to little Nyleen, but the things we as a culture didn't understand about confessions, eyewitnesses, and the determination of amateur detectives 30 years ago led to an interesting discussion...and a proposal for a reboot we might actually need. Can't find this episode in your podcast app? We blame the CIA in The Blotter Presents, Episode 144.
SHOW NOTES

Fake Heiress on BBC
The Blotter Presents's "Summer Of Scam"-isode
Vice article backing my "really rich people look like hobos" play
The New Yorker profile of Hunter Lee Soik
Unsolved Mysteries S03.E10
The Unsolved Mysteries Wiki on Nyleen Marshall
…and on Monica Bonilla
The Jess Liese archive at Post-Show Recaps
Best Evidence

143: A Confession and Let Him Have It May 13, 2020

Show notes

Allison Lowe Huff returns for a UK docudrama two-fer, starting with A Confession, ITV's miniseries from last year about the murders of Sian O'Callaghan and Becky Godden, and the confession to them that cracked the cases but ruined a detective's career. Did we need more than six episodes with these people? Did Steve Fulcher's book have more crackpot theories than the TV adaptation allowed for? And is anyone worse than Pete? (Spoiler: no.) [NB: I discovered after recording that Britbox isn't available to those without a British CC or debit card. My apologies!] [Update: You can get it via Amazon Prime!]
Later, we discussed another scripted take on a big case: Derek Bentley's death sentence and the hole it left at the center of his family in Let Him Have It. Despite the occasional weird choice (what's with the hair?), Let Him Have It makes it clear why the UK moved away from capital punishment after this case, and why Christopher Eccleston is an international treasure (and Murray Melvin should be). It's a cavalcade of Midsomer Murders guest stars in The Blotter Presents, Episode 143.
SHOW NOTES

A Confession on Britbox
The murder of Sian O'Callaghan
Let Him Have It on Amazon
The Derek Bentley case
The Pierrepoint family of hangmen (and the tweet thread that opened this wormhole for Al)
Al at MHz Choice
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142: Stolen Babies and The Phoebe Judge Interview May 06, 2020

Show notes

Piper Weiss returned for a 1993 Lifetime movie about Tennessee baby broker Georgia Tann, Stolen Babies, that won Mary Tyler Moore an Emmy. Is this a notch above the usual '90s Lifetime fare, or do the accents ruin the relatively snappy pacing and shockingly direct villainy of Tann's actions?
We dug into the Tann story thanks to the second part of the podcast: Kevin Smokler's conversation with Criminal and This Is Love host and co-creator Phoebe Judge from April 22, 2020. They talked about everything from Criminal's production timeline, to staying out of "the gotcha game," to how to report mainstream crime stories, to...well, Georgia Tann. Criminal has never missed a drop date or taken a break, so we're extra-glad Ms. Judge made time to talk to us. Get your paperwork in order for an all-new episode of The Blotter Presents.
[Portions of the interview were edited/elided to remove Skype garbling.]
SHOW NOTES

Stolen Babies on YouTube
Variety's review of Stolen Babies
Criminal's 2019 episode on Georgia Tann, "Baby Snatcher"
Piper Weiss and Kevin Smokler on Twitter
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Best Evidence

141: Bad Education and Frontline's "Terror In Little Saigon" Apr 29, 2020

Show notes

Toby Ball takes a break from refilling the Clorox shot-ski to talk about HBO's ripped-from-the-2004-headlines docudrama, Bad Education, in which Wolverine and CJ Cregg defraud the Roslyn school district -- and Toby and I really liked it, but did it need a stronger or more singular point of view? Should it have embraced its All The President's American Vandals nature more openly? And what is Janney's accent doing?
Later, we went back to 2015 for a rather un-Frontline-y Frontline that tried to dig into the murders of Vietnamese journalists by an anti-Communist kill squad. Why does "Terror In Little Saigon" feel more like a Cold Justice than a Frontline? What should the episode have investigated instead? And how does Young Sheldon's grandfather figure into all of this? Drop off thirty grand worth of dry cleaning and join us for The Blotter Presents, Episode 141.
SHOW NOTES

The NY Mag deep dive by who else? Bob Kolker
Rebecca Lavoie on LI accentry on Crime Writers On...
Frontline's "Terror In Little Saigon"
Strange Arrivals
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140: True History Of The Kelly Gang and Catch & Kill Apr 22, 2020

Show notes

Australio-Irish icon Ned Kelly got the very first big-screen treatment in 1906, and now the director of Snowtown is back with yet another one. Does Justin Kurzel's time-shifted "punk" take on Peter Carey's novel hold Alex Segura's and my interest? Later, we'll talk about whether The Catch & Kill Podcast With Ronan Farrow needs to exist, what we'd rather have heard instead, and text niftinesses that don't translate. Grab a colander helmet; it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 140.
SHOW NOTES

True History Of The Kelly Gang
Keva York's review of True History for ABC
Ned Kelly (1970) and Ned Kelly (2003)
Catch & Kill podcast
My review of the book
AlexSegura.com
The Black Ghost Season One
Don't forget to check out Best Fiends!

138: A Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy and American Animals Apr 15, 2020

Show notes

A new hour-long documentary confronts the deaths of Jen and Sarah Hart and their six adopted children in A Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy -- but did this doc need to exist? And does it do anything the Broken Harts podcast didn't? Later, we'll talk about a docu-nactment hybrid, American Animals, from the director of The Imposter, and whether this genre-buster works where the Transy book heist did not. (Uh, spoiler.) No free hugs here, folks; it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 139.
SHOW NOTES

A Thread Of Deceit: The Hart Family Tragedy on Amazon
The Broken Harts podcast
My Blotter Brief on same, and Eve's write-up
Bello Collective's Nafari Vanaski on the difficulties more broadly of reporting this particular story
American Animals on HBOGo
VF's "Transy Book Heist" piece from 2007
The Imposter
Dave And Jeb Aren't Mean
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