(Content warning for suicide and addiction issues.)

Alex Segura somehow made time amongst his new babies -- a human AND a just-published last book in his Pete Fernandez series -- to talk about Leah Carroll's 2017 Down City, her memoir of her childhood after her mother's murder when Carroll was just four years old. The subject matter, which also includes her alcoholic father's decline, is rough going, but the storytelling is flawless. Alex and I talk about the poetry in austere prose, transitions that are harder than they look, "the repeated thing," and when an author's entrance into a crime story makes it a better story.

The FBI Files take on Yahweh ben Yahweh in S03.E10 isn't nearly as successful, as a story that spanned decades, multiple states, and a variety of RICO-predicate offenses needs a different approach from TFF's dry, linear narrative method. And while it's good at some things, like concise overviews, it's not good at giving context to, say, how many cult hitmen keep their dirty machetes between the couch cushions. One story we couldn't stop thinking about, another we almost couldn't get through, in The Blotter Presents, Episode 108.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Alex Segura.

Why is law enforcement so interested in bringing cases against a hip-hop star when he's alive...and not as interested in solving the case when he's dead? Eve Batey is back to talk about Amazon's Free Meek, which takes on the story of Meek Mill, punitive probation, an activist judge with opinions on remixes, and how "police contact" and the art of rhymes feed each other. But is Free Meek as good at telling Mill's true-crime story as Mill himself is?

In the Cold Case section, we dig into the ReMastered doc on the still-unsolved murder of Jam Master Jay, and we don't just have questions about why a seemingly straightforward case still hasn't gotten cracked. We're also wondering why the show takes so long to get to the murder; why crackpot theories even the interviewees don't seem to credit get so much airtime; and what it's going to take to get a podcast about David Seabrook's failed Plan Bs. Grab Nicki Minaj and come to our office: it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 107.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Eve Batey.

Sundance continues staking out space in the prestige-true-crime space with No One Saw A Thing, a six-parter on the killing of Ken Rex McElroy in Skidmore, MO in 1981 and what that's meant to the town since then...but although it's well made, Allison and I agreed that both-sides-ism and a certain cynical willingness to let correlation be causation undermined the series overall. Are you better off with MacLean's In Broad Daylight?

Another small town struggles with the legacy of an unsolved case in BBC Scotland's The Doorstep Murder, a podcast series from last year that surfaces the story of Alistair Wilson's mysterious 2004 murder. The Beeb pedigree, and presenter Fiona Walker's authoritative accent, lulled us for a while into thinking the podcast was good storytelling, but alas, this story too is undermined by self-indulgent tape and nothingburger interview questions we're beyond tired of. Two good stories, both marred by narrative choices, in The Blotter Presents, Episode 106.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Allison Lowe Huff.

Toby Ball and I liked Uncovered: The McMartin Family Trials well enough, but we still wished Oxygen were less whodunnit and more whydunnit in its coverage of this most famous of Satanic-panic cases -- how it got so big and lasted so long. We'll never know what really happened...so why not spend more time on why THIS was allowed to happen?

The second season of Bundyville gives us just the Frontline-ian perspective we craved, but without underlining its own conclusions. After investigating the rebellion of Cliven Bundy in its first season, Bundyville expands its scope in S02 to look at anti-government groups, white-supremacist code, Pacific-Northwestern crime sprees, and how they all connect to a seemingly random suicide bombing in Nevada. How domestic terrorists become radicalized, the ethics of undercover work, and why we wish host Leah Sottile had worn some body armor on location, in The Blotter Presents Episode 105.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Toby Ball.

...Why is Nancy Grace so successful? What is the point of her new Oxygen joint, Injustice With Nancy Grace, a show that complains about the very rushes to judgment in which she usually specializes? Does she make these grand banal pronunciamentos about pure evil at home, like after she walks through a spiderweb or something? Lani Diane Rich is back to help me tackle those questions.

Later, we preview Who Killed Garrett Phillips?, and while we may not get an answer to the titular question, we CAN tell you with authority that Liz Garbus's latest project is a well-structured, organized, suspenseful, and deeply compassionate look at a case's interminable toll on an entire community. This one doesn't air 'til next week, so you may want to put a pin in this podcast for now...and go set your DVRs, because while this one's maddening too, that's thanks to effective storytelling. Oh, and also idiot cops. Clichés, bad law-enforcement math, and much more in The Blotter Presents, Episode 104.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Lani Diane Rich.

Erin Lee Carr has had a busy year, but I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth vs. Michelle Carter proves she's not too busy for nuance. The two-part documentary film, airing this week on HBO, looks at both sides of Conrad Roy III's tragic death, acknowledges the human instinct to find someone to blame, and takes us back to our own gusty teenage girlhoods. "Enjoyable" isn't the right word, but it's evocative for sure.

Paul Schrader's late-eighties look at Patty Hearst and the SLA is less so, but we're not sure if that's down to a certain failure of nerve on the script's part, or the fact that we've just consumed too much Hearst-iana at this late date for any biopic to move the ball. Good performances don't save what is, here in 2019, a superfluous narrative -- but WE might save you some time/room on your watch list in The Blotter Presents, Episode 103.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Eve Batey.

Showtime's 16 Shots looks at the murder of Laquan McDonald in 2014, and why this police-involved shooting galvanized Chicago. Kevin and I talk about the excellent access filmmaker Richard Rowley gets on both sides of the issue; give suggestions for police procedural manuals; and wonder when the "a few bad apples" line of rationalizing will stop getting trotted out.

Another police-involved shooting, of a police officer, and the injustices that rolled downhill from it are the topic of Errol Morris's legendary The Thin Blue Line. Does it hold up, more than three decades after its release? Or does it mostly feel relevant because of the dozens of instances of misconduct and false confessions we've seen (and heard) laid bare in the meantime? The police, the public('s) trust, and the power of testimony in The Blotter Presents, Episode 102.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Kevin Smokler.

I'm so glad I could finally welcome Omar G to the TBP guest chair...and that it was to talk about David Lowery's The Old Man And The Gun, a charming joint about a senior bank robber and escape artist, Forrest Tucker, that flew totally under our radar last year. It shouldn't fly under yours, though; it's fun, smart about managing story, and elegantly shot, and an American legend is having the time of his life in his last go-round. And the movie's based on a New Yorker story by the great David Grann...

...as is the documentary we watched for the Cold Case section, Incendiary: The Willingham Case. This too got the scripted treatment, in a Laura Dern vehicle that's already left theaters after it premiered last month, but the doc had a lot of good things to say about the frailty of the forensic science we take for granted, the CYA maneuvering of state governments, and...a defense attorney's attention-whore rooster? Just listen, you'll see. Why Tom Waits should be in everything, why we shouldn't use space heaters for anything, and much more in The Blotter Presents, Episode 101.

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Special Guest: Omar Gallaga.

Did we close the door on the centenary episode with a bang, or a whimper? ...Whimper, I'm afraid. Toby Ball kindly made room in a packed day to join me for two Cold Case properties, the first a feature film about the Paradise Lost case, Devil's Knot, that doesn't know who it's for, what it wants to say, or how to fit a Shoah-size story into a feature-size runtime. Also, who just has a picture of Robert Johnson in his office if he's not a blues musician?

We hoped the second film, All The Queen's Horses, would show better (as it were), but though the story of Rita Crundwell's serial heisting of more than $50 million from the town coffers of Dixon, IL is fascinating, the direction is amateurish...and while we can live with not really understanding the why of this case, a film by an accounting professor should probably be a little clearer on the what. Here's to the next hundred episodes; to spelling "embezzlement" correctly; and to you, dear listeners, in The Blotter Presents, Episode 100.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Toby Ball.

Ava DuVernay's four-part masterpiece, When They See Us, hit Netflix last weekend, introducing us to the boys and men who survived getting railroaded for the 1989 "Central Park jogger" attacks; to the outsize acting talents of Jharrel Jerome, Asante Blackk, and many others; and to what it's like to cry when you see Coney Island. Piper and I discussed all that, plus innovations in flashback writing, in the Most Wanted section, but our words won't do the series justice, so just go watch it.

But TAKE our words for it: Who Killed Nancy? is a frustrating waste of time, a semi-vanity project from a self-appointed Sid Vicious-ologist that we could tell WANTED to call itself Sid DIDN'T Kill Nancy Spungen, But If He Had, Nobody Would Have Minded. Is this just how the culture talked about "groupies" and "Yokos" until recently, or was Nancy a special case? And who else read Nancy's mother's memoir of her daughter's life and wants to recommend it to Piper? Good podcasts, sad Gerard Malanga stories, and more in The Blotter Presents, Episode 099.

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SHOW NOTES

Special Guest: Piper Weiss.