The ultimate test for whether Thrive really works or not centers around the question: should you use it while pregnant? Is it safe to use while pregnant or could it actually harm the growing fetus?
In Shan’ann Watts case this question was even more pertinent since she suffered from lupus, an autoimmune disease that in some cases can actually prevent conception and pregnancy.
We take it as a given that using Thrive supplements might have no effect or a negligible effect. But looking closer, even the arrest affidavit states that Shan’ann was not feeling well during the trip to Arizona.
In fact, the entire Watts case starts because of a check well-being call. Nickole Atkinson alerted the police not to report a crime but because she was concerned about Shan’ann’s health while pregnant.
Atkinson had reason to be concerned on Monday morning. She’d personally witnessed Shan’ann not feeling well during their trip. On top of this, Shan’ann had a doctor’s appointment scheduled hours after her death.
Cut to exactly two months after the murders:
On October 12th, Watts’ attorneys filed a special motion to keep “health information” confidential. Since Le-Vel classifies itself as a health and wellness brand, and the Watts case is massively high-profile, it’s possible this instruction [or advice] actually came directly from Le-Vel.
Watts’ financial situation is dire, but Le-Vel’s isn’t. So who is paying for his defense? Well, wouldn’t Le-Vel – the company that hit $1 billion in lifetime sales just a year earlier – have a vested interest in protecting their brand by controlling the health aspect of the criminal trial narrative?
The legal loopholes will be dealt with in due course. For now, let’s deal with Shan’ann’s intentions to Thrive-brand her baby and Thrive-promote her pregnancy and the speed of her conception. Is there any evidence that’s what she intended to do?
Yes, based on her social media statements, it was clearly and explicitly on the cards .
Sounds like a fairy tale pregnancy already, doesn’t it? This was a far cry from her struggles to even have children once upon a time.
Irrespective of Shan’ann’s strategy to use her pregnancy as a vehicle to promote Thrive, there’s also the reality. Are Thrive products truly healthy? As I’ve mentioned, if Thrive is genuinely life-enhancing, then this is the ultimate test: can Thrive be used while pregnant?
Shan’ann wasn’t the first promoter to be faced with this question. One woman posted a query in September 2015.
Another in late 2017 expressed concern that she was 17 weeks pregnant and still losing weight because of the product.
But what was a doctor’s advice likely to be?
Apparently, Shan’ann had sought advice from her own doctor, based on these posts:
She hashtags both posts #DoctorApproved [implying but not saying directly that Thrive is approved by her doctor for pregnancy], but we see her wearing a patch so it must be, right? In the post on the left above #DoctorApproved she admits she’s “Not doing #burn!”
So evidently she has been advised, and has been advised not to use certain products after all. But was it really just certain products, or was she told, in lieu of her lupus, better be safe than sorry and stay away from Thrive completely in order to insure a healthy pregnancy?
We know that Shan’ann’s dizzy product promotion in July and August dropped precipitously, so if she intended to brand Niko a Thrive baby, something changed a few weeks into her pregnancy. There was definitely a shift in momentum, a reverse swing of the pendulum.
Over the last 7 months of her life the final 2 months showed the lowest output in Live videos, down from double digits to just 5, and then 0.
Apparently the same warnings applicable to Thrive are standard with another health supplement – Herbalife. Even Herbalife shakes are considered dodgy enough to require a doctor’s approval.
The advice from the medical professionals is pretty incredible. In order to enjoy a healthy diet one should simply eat a balanced diet. Talk about common sense operating as Rocket Science!
If Shan’ann had chosen to have a third child as a genius way to stand out among all the other promotors, finding out she couldn’t publicly endorse the product without getting herself [and possibly the company] into trouble would have been a huge blow. These health warnings would also have rung another bell, and one Chris Watts would have heard.
If Thrive promotion had to take a back seat during Shan’ann’s pregnancy, then their finances which were hanging by a thread were about to drop through the floor. And who would blame who for that?
At 4:44 in the interview clip Chris Watts lets slip an extraordinary clue. We missed it because the journalist used that moment to rejig his camera, and so as the question is being lined up, the image is temporarily off-camera.
This resetting throws Watts off camera and throws off our concentration as well. But when we anchor the scene to a narrative, when we nail it down to a transcript, the slippery slip is captured in our true crime net. So let’s do that now.
To pick up what he’s saying and how the slip happens, we need to back up about 50 seconds. Here’s the context: Chris Watts has just made a long speech about wanting everyone to “just come home.”
This is it:
REPORTER: Can I ask another tough question, your relation with the kids?
WATTS: Whe… whenever, I mean, the kids are my life, I mean, those… those smiles are my life and there’s, like, I mean, last night, like, during…you know, when they usually dinner it was just, like, I missed them like, I mean, I missed tell them: Hey, you got to eat that or you’re gonna… not gonna get your dessert! You know, and just, like: Not gonna get your snack after! I missed that, I missed them, you know, cuddle up on their couches. They have like a Minnie Mouse couch and Sophia couch that they cuddle up on and watch on Bubble Guppies or something and it was just, like, you know, I mean, I… I was com… it was tearing me apart last nightand I needed that, I needed that last night and for that… for nobody to be here last night and then going into their rooms and not… and know that I wasn’t gonna turn the rain machines on, I know that I wasn’t gonna turn their monitor on, no, I wasn’t gonna kiss them to bed tonight, it was… it… it was like I… I co… that’s why last night was just horrible, I couldn’t do it th… I was… I just want… I want everybody to come home like wherever they are at. Come home, that’s what I want.
He uses the past tense here, and refers to “tearing apart”. This clearly shows in his mind he knows they’re already dead.
But this is just the lead up to the slip. After this answer there’s a protracted silence where Watts curls his lower lip and presses it under his upper lip, and holds it there for a few seconds. The cameraman uses this break to set himself up at a better angle.
During this pause the dogs can be heard barking loudly, and Chris Watts appears to blink rapidly – anxiously. The subject matter they’re dealing with now is making him nervous, and it should.
It’s probably because of this anxiety, and the direct question about his children stirring up the still raw memory of their corpses, and the recent handling of their bodies, and having to account for it this soon, that causes his heart and mind to race. That’s why the slip happens when it does.
The reporter stumbles through his next question. He’s not sure, it seems, what he wants to ask. He says something like “where has she gone for” while the neighborhood dogs are still going nuts.
REPORTER: She was…she was…she came back Sunday just under two at night?
WATTS: Yeah, cause her flight got delayed from Arizona, cause, like, other storms around the…the nation, so she was supposed to get home like eleven, she got home at like 01:48 [swaying as his standing, flips out his left hand], got to bed [blinks] about 02:00.
Chris Watts glances towards the window as he says “got home at like 01:48”. Sometimes when we remember things, we do so in sympathy. We act out what happens. We look in the direction of where something happened as we re-navigate the memory of it.
The slow blink when he says the word bed is significant. I don’t think something happened in the bed as much as Shan’ann never made it to bed, and probably didn’t even make it upstairs.
REPORTER: What was she gone for? Like a family trip-?
WATTS [Swaying from one leg to the other]: It was a Thrive…direct sales, uh… it was a local event that was down there between a bunch of leaders [flaps out his hand] in-in the company.
Then, arms folded, he purses his lips again.
REPORTER: And then, the day she was back, I mean…?
And so this is where the slip happens. He’s still pursing his lips together, blinking rapidly, and the dogs are making a racket in the background when he starts answering. He starts answering with a stutter.
WATTS [Shaking his head, a slight flash of teeth as he smiles, still swaying from side to side the whole time]: I lef-I left wor-for work [glances left] early that morning like 05:15, 05:30 so like [holds out his hand]…she [shrugs]… barely let me in [glances up], she barely got… barely gotten [blinks] into bed pretty much.
His mouth is open at the end of that, in the holding pattern of a slight smile.
She barely gotten into bed pretty much
Consider that he buried her in a sheet from the bed, and so one nasty interpretation of the question and his answer: maybe he thinks it’s funny what he did to her and with her vis-a-vis the soft minimizing words he’s giving about her to the media:
She barely gotten into bed pretty much
A lot happens in the entirely of his answer too. So few words, so much going on, so many lives undone between those letters, those lines. He stutters, he interrupts himself, he repeats himself and he barely answers the question about what she – Shan’ann – was doing.
He talks about himself leaving, and where he was. The only word – and it’s only one word – that he offers to answer the implied question the reporter doesn’t quite ask [Where?] is bed. But he’d rather not say it. That’s why it’s bed…pretty much.
He doesn’t want to talk about where. Where is the big kahuna in this conversation, the one thing he really doesn’t want anyone to know.
If he’d answered as simply and as straightforward as he could, he could have said:
She came home late and went to bed.
But instead he seems be unsure whether or not she went to sleep. If we remove the last part, the bit he’s uncertain about, it becomes:
She came home late and…
She went to her grave. She went to bed. It’s symbolically similar pretty much, unless you’re Shan’ann.
He repeats the word barely three times. Think about the word barely and the context we’re talking about: Murder at the last minute. A flight delay of three hours. An early morning trip to a remote site before dawn.
Barely…
And all he has to say is she came home and went to bed. So what’s this barely business?
She barely let me in, she barely got, barely got in bed. Pretty much.
Pretty much got in bed? Or pretty much didn’t get into bed?
But none of this is the slip. The critical slip is where he says I left work [interrupts himself] and then says she barely let me in…barely got…before he interrupts himself again.
We know when he says he left-he left work-he left for work that actually he wasn’t working that morning, he was dumping bodies at his work. So we see what happens when he lies – he stutters.
What he seems to be struggling to avoid saying is:
she barely let me in
The slip up sounds like he’s remembering himself barely letting her inside before killing her. Or:
she barely let me
She barely let him…kill her?
Barely because he was pressed for time…
Barely because the three hours delay was driving him nuts and potentially scuttling his big plans…
Barely because when he struggled, she fought back…
And the repeated stuttering on the I left-I-left-I left is because the going to work was a crucial part of covering up the whole thing. At the time of the interview, the cover was still holding, the bodies were still missing, the status of the victims was still unknown. Barely.
When he left, it was all about being seen to leave for work like it was any other day. That was the point of it. But:
she barely let me
Since he was caught and arrested in record time it seems there was no barely about it; Shan’ann didn’t let him get away with anything after all.
1. The hearing about the autopsy reports for Shan’ann Watts, 34, and her two daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3, will take place at 9 a.m. Dec. 21 before Weld District Court Judge Todd Taylor. – Greeley Tribune
James (Whitey) Bulger, the South Boston mobster and F.B.I. informer who was captured after 16 years on the run and finally brought to justice in 2013 for a murderous reign of terror that inspired books, films and a saga of Irish-American brotherhood and brutality, was found beaten to death on Tuesday in a West Virginia prison. He was 89.
Two Federal Bureau of Prisons employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public, said Mr. Bulger had been beaten unrecognizable by inmates. No other details were immediately available.
Mr. Bulger, who had been serving two life sentences for 11 murders, had been transferred to the prison, the Hazelton federal penitentiary in Bruceton Mills, W.Va., on Monday.
He was found unresponsive at 8:20 Tuesday morning, according to a statement from the federal Bureau of Prisons. The bureau said that lifesaving measures had been initiated and that he was pronounced dead by the Preston County Medical Examiner. The statement did not indicate a cause of death.
Enriching the Bulger legend, his brother William became president of the Massachusetts State Senate and president of the University of Massachusetts. William Bulger always denied firsthand knowledge of his brother’s crimes and whereabouts, but said he loved him and could never give him up to the law.
It was not quite Christmas that year, 2001, when he strangled his wife, Mary Jane, and their 2-year-old daughter, Madison, then stuffed them into a suitcase and tossed it off the docks in Newport. He drowned Zachary and Sadie, dropping them off a bridge into Alsea Bay with rocks tied around their ankles.
Ten years later he’s now writing about his dead family. In a letter obtained by KATU News, Christian Longo tells a woman he says he loves, how he’s come to terms with his crimes.
He talks about the trial: “I got up on the stand and essentially blamed my wife for everything. I was still stuck in a phase where I couldn’t fathom the thought of me being capable of doing what I was convicted of.”
He writes that he eventually began “studying what a psychologist said I was and came to terms with it, almost totally agreeing that he was right … his conclusion was the narcissistic personality disorder which he called ‘compensatory’ — basically self-centeredness related to a damaged core sense of self.”
Joseph McStay, 40, ran a business providing interior water fountains primarily for corporate clients, and often hired Merritt to craft custom-made fountains.
McStay, his 43-year-old wife, Summer, and their children Gianni, 4, and Joey Jr., 3, moved from San Clemente to Fallbrook in late 2009. They vanished in February 2010, leaving food on the counter and their beloved dogs unattended.
The disappearance baffled family, friends and investigators. For a while, detectives suspected that the family had taken off south of the border, and the case was handed off to the FBI. Then on Nov. 11, 2013, a dirt-bike rider came across the family’s remains in the Mojave desert.
Authorities now believe the family was beaten to death with a sledgehammer in their Fallbrook home and then dumped in shallow graves outside Victorville, about 100 miles north up Interstate 15.
Merritt has long ties to the Victor Valley area.
Five years after a long missing Fallbrook family was found dead — beaten and buried in desert graves — screening began Monday for potential jurors in a murder trial for the man accused of killing them. The first week of November marks four years since the arrest of Chase Merritt, who is accused in the 2010 beating deaths of his business associate Joseph McStay, McStay’s wife and their two sons, ages 3 and 4.
Authorities suspect the family was killed in their home in February 2010. The trial is in San Bernardino County, where the family was found buried in shallow graves off Interstate 15 in November 2013. Investigators also found a small sledgehammer in one of the graves.
Merritt was arrested almost exactly a year later. For the last four years, he has remained in jail, awaiting trial in San Bernardino Superior Court.
“Knowing now that she could potentially be a mom again, I hope she does better this time around than what she did last time,” George Anthony said during an interview with television’s “Dr. Oz” scheduled to air Thursday.
George doesn’t sound nearly as outraged as he should.
Adv Badenhorst asks Parsons about apparent pearls in his penis. Adv Arend objects, then withdraws his objection. Parsons says the pearls are "his privacy". #HannahCornelius@TeamNews24
It seems like a snazzy way to avoid taking a polygraph test.
Steven eagerly submitted himself to "brain fingerprinting," a technique that uses electroencephalography to determine whether specific information is stored in a person's brain. pic.twitter.com/SBRqZZohCu
Attorneys for Frederick triple-murder suspect Christopher Watts filed a motion Friday objecting to Weld District Attorney Michael Rourke’s attempt to intervene in a civil case between the Greeley Tribune and Weld County Coroner Carl Blesch.
The Tribune, along with a coalition of print and broadcast media partners, contested Blesch’s attempt to keep sealed the autopsy reports of Shanann Watts, 34, and her two daughters, Bella, 4, and Celeste, 3….on Friday, the public defender’s office filed a motion arguing Rourke has not met a three-prong test to join the lawsuit as required by the Colorado Rules of Civil Procedure.
Those rules state a party may intervene into an action as a matter of right if he “has an interest relating to the transaction that is the subject of the action, his ability to protect that interest is impaired or impeded, and his interest is not adequately represented by the parties to the action.”
“I believe Mr. Hunter was professionally and personally outraged by tabloid accusations made against Burke in 1999 while he was the district attorney,” Wood notes in a Q&A below, “and I expect that he is equally outraged by the accusations made against this young man by CBS.”
Sorry, which young man is Lin Wood outraged about murder accusations? Is it the accusation that Burke Ramsey murdered his sister? If it’s so outrageous, say what the outrageous thing is that’s outraging you.
Westword: Why do you think Alex Hunter has been subpoenaed in relation to the lawsuit?
Lin Wood: CBS issued the subpoena, so only CBS can state why the subpoena was issued to Mr. Hunter.
Wow, he’s unwilling to venture an opinion on why CBS would subpoena Alex Hunter.
The CBS documentary concluded that Burke Ramsey killed his sister based on CBS’ representation that a full re-investigation of the evidence had been undertaken by its team of “experts.” In his libel lawsuit, Burke challenges not only the accusation, but also the legitimacy of this alleged “re-investigation.”
CBS has apparently realized that the evidence relied upon by its “experts” does not support the accusation against Burke.
Now he’s venturing an opinion on CBS’ behalf. When they they have this “change of heart”?
The recent discovery efforts aimed at Boulder officials, including Mr. Hunter, confirm that CBS is still searching for evidence to support its false and defamatory accusation against Burke. Stated differently, if CBS had enough evidence to support its accusation being broadcast to the world in its 2016 documentary, why in the world is CBS searching for more evidence in 2019?
Brilliant use of semantics. CBS is still “searching for evidence” is another way of saying CBS is trying to get hold of the evidence file. Naturally the way he frames it, it creates the impression there isn’t any evidence. That’s what the Ramsey case mostly is – impressions [mostly false, starting with the Ransom Note…]
The answer is obvious — the 2016 documentary was rank speculation unsupported by any credible evidence and CBS knows it. CBS is in search of a defense it will never find.
Maybe he’s right. Maybe he knows the file is all sewn up and the key figures lips sewn shut.
Why is it important that Alex Hunter cooperate with the subpoena?
Mr. Hunter is a third party to this litigation and has the right to question whether there is a legitimate need for his testimonyand/or whether the subpoena imposes unnecessary trouble and expense.
WHAT THE FUCK?
I do not view Mr. Hunter’s motion to quash as being based solely on inconvenience to him or as an effort on his part to be uncooperative. CBS has the burden of convincing the Court that there is a legitimate need for discovery from Mr. Hunter.
Season 3 of the true-crime podcast Serial doesn’t explore any brutal murders where the facts don’t add up.
What a fantastic opening, setting up the other case where the facts don’t match up.
Both Serial and Making a Murderer faced backlash for lending a too-sympathetic ear to potential perpetrators. The two shows have since taken different paths: Making a Murderer returned to Netflix in October to follow Avery’s appeals process in new episodes, while Serial has wisely ventured into new territory.
Making A Murderer hasn’t.
The second season of Making a Murderer struggles to find the right balance. Avery’s post-conviction lawyer Kathleen Zellner combs through every potential lead — including the personal life of victim Teresa Halbach — to find other possible perpetrators. She’s doing her job. But in front of the cameras, her work can feel tasteless, even reckless.
Making a Murderer is also muddied by the media frenzy it created. The filmmakers often interrupt Avery’s appeals process to show his onetime fiancée soliciting relationship advice on Dr. Phil, or the man who prosecuted Avery promoting his book on Dateline. “It all became a part of the story,” says Moira Demos, who co-created the documentary with Laura Ricciardi. “How do headlines compare to what’s really happening on the ground?” But these side plots distract from the very real obstacles Avery faces.
The visual nature of the medium doesn’t help. Cameras tend to linger on bloodstains. Though some podcasts indulge in lengthy descriptions of corpses, the audio format feels less prurient. And podcast hosts can establish an intimacy with the listener that filmmakers cannot: they can express skepticism or empathy during interviews. Some documentarians, in their determination to remain objective, run the risk of removing themselves from the narrative to their own detriment. Making a Murderer‘s creators use a montage of newscasters debating the ethics of their show, but they stop short of responding to that criticism themselves.
If there’s one thing weird and in my opinion, deceitful, about Making A Murderer, it’s this “distance” the filmmakers keep from their subject while tacitly asking the audience to fill in the vacuum with their imaginations.
Narratives are visual, there’s audio [argued here as more effective], but there’s also the classical version – the book. As an author I’m biased, but I’d say in something as rich in detail and information as true crime, the only medium that does it justice is effective written narrative. You need a lot of time to get into the texture of true crime. A ten-part documentary series covers a fraction of a 50 000 word narrative. It may convey more in a shorter time, but a book ultimately conveys the whole story, or it should.
And if audio does the job better of awakening the imagination of the reader, good writing trumps all. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books are proof positive that writing stokes the powers of the creative mind more than the best cinema or CGI.
I also believe the true crime writer, like someone writing about religion, has to be honest and lay his cards on the table. He has to take a position and be able to defend it, otherwise what’s he doing? So – where does he stand and why? If he’s going to deal personally with the accused or the victim, he must be prepared personalize the narrative otherwise all it amounts to is finger pointing. Knowing how and where to strike the balance between meaningful disclosure and indulgence is the secret that separates good true crime from the muddy manipulative stuff.
1. This is why we need True Crime Rocket Science. Because the mainstream media is clueless. Of course the 15-man hit on journalist Jamal Khashoggi was premeditated – answer the question WHY was it premeditated?
BREAKING: Erdogan says killing of Jamal Khashoggi was 'planned'
They commit crimes [or are accused of committing them], and all they want to do once acquitted is carry on with their lives. So what do they do with their criminal-themed celebrity? Casey Anthony moved in with the private detective who was hired to investigate her and worked for him as a professional lie detector, Raffaele Sollecito became a television crime “expert” – true crime is chock-full of prime suspects who’ve made hefty pots of gold out of the cottage industries that have sprung around their crimes and criminal trials. The same thing is happening around the Steven Avery case right now.
Former Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter is fighting a subpoena in a $750 million defamation suit arising from the JonBenet Ramsey case by arguing, in part, that it is an “annoyance” that would interfere with his annual relocation to Hawaii.
Annoyance?
So much for the vaunted ethics of a district attorney’s office that would stop at nothing in the pursuit of justice in the Ramsey case. What was that thing Hunter said on February. 13, 1997 about “the list of suspects narrows; soon there will be no one on the list but you”?
To fully appreciate the double standards and double dealing in how the district attorney favored the Ramseys way back in 2000, another Daily Camera article – Hunter answers attacks – is worth reviewing.
But back to the present the article.
Hunter’s arguments also assert that compliance with the subpoena could compromise an “open investigation and potential prosecution” of the person or persons responsible for JonBenet’s death.
Ongoing investigation?
Hunter is one of several parties targeted with subpoenas by both sides in the high stakes defamation claim made by Burke Ramsey — he was 9 [and 11 months] when 6-year-old JonBenet was killed — against the CBS Corp. and additional parties who produced the September 2016 docuseries “The Case of: JonBenet Ramsey,” which suggested Burke Ramsey was responsible for his sister’s death.
Hunter was the district attorney in office over the first four years of the beleaguered Ramsey investigation, but has been retired since 2001. Lawyers for CBS and its co-defendants are seeking a deposition and documents from Hunter as part of the discovery process underway in Burke Ramsey’s lawsuit, which was filed in December 2016 in the Circuit Court for Wayne County, Mich.
So more than a year after the lawsuit against CBS was filed, Hunter is still kicking the can that is the Ramsey case down the road.
In a reply to the subpoena filed there Friday, Hunter’s attorney states “Mr. Hunter is 81 years old, has been retired from the District Attorney’s Office for approximately 18 years, and he is a non-party to the underlying action.”
It also states that “Mr. Hunter normally spends November to May in Hawai’i and has plans to leave Colorado on November 5, 2018. Any deposition that does not have a strong basis upon which to take place is an undue burden to him, is oppressive, and is an absolute annoyance.”
You’d think Hunter would take some time out of his busy retirement schedule and finally deal with this case – the one he fucked up almost 20 years ago.
The filing adds that it’s “hard to imagine” CBS lawyers don’t already have every shred of information they need to defend themselves “without distressing a retired, elderly gentleman about statements that it already possesses.”
Attorney Dea Wheeler, on Hunter’s behalf, argues that CBS lawyers’ interest in Hunter centers on “two public statements” made by Hunter more than 18 years ago. One came in a news release in May 1999, while he was still in office, in which it was noted that then-Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner had said in a press conference that police were not looking at Burke Ramsey as a suspect, and that “To this day Burke Ramsey is not a suspect.”
Interesting, Hunter doesn’t wish to defend his statements made then on Burke Ramsey. Seems pretty simple to do. There are just two statements. Just provide reasons for why you made them. So why not do it?
Secondly, Hunter signed an affidavit in October 2000, shortly before leaving office, which stated in part, “From December 26th, 1996 to the date of this affidavit, no evidence has ever been developed in the investigation to justify elevating Burke Ramsey’s status from that of witness to suspect.”
The shortly before leaving office bit is interesting, isn’t it? Hunter made a grand gesture, one of the grandest in a case with few legal milestones, just before stepping off the plate and effectively scuppering the case. If Patsy was a suspect due to fibers found on the inside of the duct tape, why wasn’t Burke – even if only in lieu of his fingerprint on the pineapple bowl and glass tea found on the kitchen counter [given JonBenet had undigested pineapple fragments in her stomach].
Hunter’s recent filing argues that any information he might be able to offer now relating either to his 1999 statement or 2000 affidavit “is privileged and confidential because the Boulder Police Department investigation remains open.”
Really, the Ramsey investigation is still open. Who or what are they investigating now?
“…the list of suspects narrows; soon there will be no one on the list but you…”
Who is the you Hunter is referring to? Surely not Burke Ramsey?
3. In the Hannah Cornelius case, disturbing information emerges from the suspects about how and where the Stellenbosch student was raped and murdered. I’d always assumed the rape and murder had happened outside, in the bushes alongside a road. Now, if the accused are to be believed, it turns out she was raped in-turn inside the vehicle, and according to the suspects, was raped withing making a noise and without putting up a struggle.
She was stabbed twice in an upward motion by one of the gang members, because, as he put it, she was apparently taller than he was. The accused describes blood shooting out of her neck after stabbing her.
Although the release of the documents has been ordered, there’s no clarity on when that might happen. Why does it matter?
Adam Lanza proves the extent to which a severely humiliated child/young adult would seek sadistic revenge and retribution. His violent fantasies were developed over a long period of time, in terrifying detail.
I profiled Lanza in Slaughter, researching in-depth his notes, radio interview, therapy sessions and the online artifacts that are out there. Now those writing will be released in full.
State police searched the Lanza home and seized guns, ammunition and his belongings, including his personal journals.
Among the belongings were a spreadsheet ranking mass murders and a notebook titled “The Big Book of Granny.” The notebook contains a story that Lanza wrote in fifth grade about a woman who uses her “rifle cane” to kill people at a bank, hockey game and Marine boot camp.
The book also contains several chapters with the adventures of “Dora the Beserker,” influenced by a popular children’s television show. When Granny asks Dora to assassinate a soldier, she replies: “I like hurting people … Especially children.” In the same episode, Dora sends “Swiper the Raccoon” into a day care center to distract the children, then enters and says, “Let’s hurt children.”
The FBI files that are currently available, can be viewed at this link.
The excerpts below are from this excellent Daily Beastarticle.
3. Crime by social media? Both suspects caught on a dashcam executing two security guards in cold blood thirteen days ago have been shot dead. The footage was widely circulated on social media. Police took cellphone photos at the scene, showing the tattoos matched those on the dashcam. These too spread like wildfire on social media.
“When police tried to arrest the two suspects….they resisted‚ which resulted in both suspects being shot dead. There are no reports of any police officers being injured at this stage.”
Does anyone really believe the police made a real effort to arrest them so they could stand trial?
4. The state has completed its submissions in the Hannah Cornelius case. One the accused’s letters to Cornelius’ family was subsequently read into the record. It looks like the writing of a child, not a gangster/rapist/murder.
Ironically Hannah’s murderer can’t even spell her name right, scratches it it out [just as he scratches out her life], and then rewrites it, getting it wrong on his second attempt too.
In the letter he asks her parents for forgiveness, and says Hannah was like a friend to him, and he was scared of what the other accused would do to him. He doesn’t say anything about what he did to her.
This is the letter written by Eben van Niekerk to #HannahCornelius’ family.
"Herewith I write this letter to Henna's mom and dad. I am sorry for what I did and I ask if they can forgive me for what I have done… The girl was like a friend to me but the other accused, I was also scared of them." #HannahCorneliushttps://t.co/L8Xrlje4a6
Prosecutor Badenhorst asks Van Niekerk how he felt the day he was taken to hospital after being accused of such serious crimes. "I felt very bad", he says. Geraldo Parsons laughing from the accused bench. #HannahCornelius@TeamNews24
🎥By taking CCTV footage, accused confessions and witness testimonies, I was able to create a visual map of the moments leading up to Hannah Cornelius’ murder plus the crime spree which followed. #HannahCornelius
5. Strictly speaking, this isn’t news. But I was contemplating last night the elements involved in JonBenet Ramsey’s murder. There were four:
a) A garrote
b) She was smashed heavily on the head with a heavy object
c) She had three sets of burn-type wounds that were thought by some – like Detective Lou Smit – to have been inflicted by a stun gun. Detective Kolar, on the other hand, thought the abrasions were caused by the sharp ends of an electric railways track.
d) She suffered some sort of sexual assault at the time.
No one has been able to put together a scenario to date that arranges all of these elements in a cogent execution. I will be blogging in more detail about this particular aspect of the case in the near future.
4. How does history become myth? In the case of Van Gogh, an assumption – in this case Van Gogh’s mental illness – is hijacked and then adapted to suit a particular compelling narrative.
…the reason for Van Gogh being so tormented was that he was plagued by literal monsters; an extra-terrestrial element to Vincent’s gift. Could the monster not have taken his ear off or something? That would have made it more fun, right?…
In this retelling of the myth, the idea Van Gogh’s mental illness has been elevated to a given, a non-negotiable historical artifact used to illustrate other mentally titillating ideas in the fantasy-horror genre. Mental illness isn’t irrelevant when it comes to Van Gogh, but it’s hardly as foundational or fundamental as the popular mythology suggests. After all, Van Gogh continued to write lucid letters through his single year in the asylum [handwritten too], and he painted perhaps his most seminal work during his time in the madhouse. People who are truly mad or mentally compromised cannot consistently write sensibly or paint evocatively, and Van Gogh was nothing if not consistently. In the last months of his life he was painting a picture a day, each painting – literally – a masterpiece.
3. Making A Murderer II debuted on Netflix over the weekend. The filmmakers Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi were interviewed recently by People as part of the PR to promote their docuseries. Part of what they toldPeople included gems like this:
“Our focus is not on people having a better understanding of this case,” she says. “Our focus is on people having a better understanding of the criminal justice system.”
Why on earth would you make not one but two series about a crime and not attempt to get a better understanding of the so-called “wrongly-accused”? I dare say the filmmakers have failed in giving people a better understanding of the criminal justice system. They can be credited for boosting interest in true crime among the general public [the majority of whom seem quite ignorant about the nuances of true crime, especially regarding Avery and Dassey].
What they have done, instead, in my opinion is they’ve given a very biased view criticizing a case where justice did actually prevail, but under the pretense of politically correct neutrality and objectivity. Ultimately the filmmakers are pushing the law to favor the defense side more. Give suspected murderers and criminals more rights and give them more benefit of the doubt.
Notice the body double is wearing similar clothes, has a similar build and similar general appearance. No wonder the consulate were so brazen and adamant by insisting Khashoggi the consulate left alive. They’d intended it to look that way! It was part of the plan.
We’re often surprised by the lengths criminals go to to conceal their dirty deeds. The dirty the deed, the more devious it seems the deceit. People who aren’t criminals tend to find this treachery and trickery difficult to swallow at first. But if there’s one thing experience in true crime teaches, it’s often that the bad guy [in this case a hit squad of about 15 bad guys] is a lot worse than anyone suspected.
October 21st, 2018
1. 4 years ago today Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to just five months [effectively ten months] in jail for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp.
October 19th, 2018
1. Thus far Chris Watts’ defense has sat back and allowed the prosecutors to do all the work, in terms of holding back the media [who have been baying of the autopsy reports]. Well, today that’s changed.
2. Four new developments in the Khashoggi Case: Firstly, one of the 15-man hit squad apparently arrived at the consulate with a bone saw. That says something about intentions beyond a “botched interrogation” doesn’t it. Secondly, poor Khashoggi’s remains have likely been moved from the first burial spot to somewhere else. Turkish cops are not searching a nearby forest. Time to bring out the cadaver dogs.
Thirdly, a high-level intelligence official who masterminded the crime, who failed to commit “the perfect murder” will be taking the fall for the killing. But it’s not the same guy as the head of a forensic department in Saudi Arabia’s intelligence services.
According to the Guardian, the head of the Saudi Scientific Council of Forensics is this guy, Dr Salah Muhammed al-Tubaigy, who was trained in Britain.
Tubaigy studied at the University of Glasgow and he spent three months in Australia in 2015 as a visiting forensic pathologist at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine in Melbourne, its director confirmed.
He can allegedly be heard on an audio recording of Khashoggi’s death from the consulate telling others in the room that he likes to listen to music while he works to ease the pressure of the job, and encouraging others to do the same.
Four of the suspects Turkey has blamed for Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance belong to the security team that travels with Prince Mohammed. One of them, Maher Abdulaziz Mutreb, has been photographed or spotted near him during recent visits to at least five cities — Paris, Madrid, Houston, Boston and the New York headquarters of the United Nations.
On Thursday, a pro-government Turkish newspaper published a leaked, time-stamped photograph of Mr. Mutreb entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul just hours before Mr. Khashoggi entered. The photograph is one of the most striking pieces of evidence linking Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance to the crown prince.
Other photos published in the newspaper Sabah showed Mr. Mutreb outside the Saudi consul general’s home, leaving a Turkish hotel with a large suitcase, and leaving the country from Istanbul’s international airport — all later the same day.
Khashoggi criticized the tightening space for free speech in the kingdom, and recounted how he was fired from a newspaper and forced off Twitter for being too critical of government policies.
According to CNN National Security Analyst Peter Bergen, MBS has moved Saudi from a consensus based absolute monarchy — where criticism was limited but not unheard of — “toward a totalitarian dictatorship in which all aspects of society are controlled by him and all forms of dissent are stifled.”
This was a topic Khashoggi had written about as well. As a member of the Saudi elite and former adviser to the royal family who was still influential inside the Kingdom, Khashoggi was becoming more and more of a rarity under MBS, and his criticisms may have stung more than those of a regular, unconnected dissident, and sparked a more extreme reaction.
In his final column for the Post, he warned that the “Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power.”
Is the same thing not happening through identity politics and populism elsewhere in the world – the USA, Britain, Russia, South Africa?
Below is an extract from his final column published in the Washington Post:
Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression
I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.”
That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”
As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative.Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.
True crime also preoccupies itself with the false narrative. Very often large swaths of the population – even in an apparently free society – also falls victim to false narratives.
Especially where massive PR is the order of the day, such as the JonBenet Ramsey, Madeleine McCann, West Memphis 3, Steven Avery and the Amanda Knox cases, a large majority of the population falls victim to a false narrative.
In his last Post column before his disappearance, Jamal Khashoggi wrote about the Arab world’s need for a free press. Read it here. https://t.co/L80fitlJZT
Turkish officials had complained publicly in recent days that the Saudis were refusing to allow a search of the property. An agreement allowing the inspection came after Salman called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Sunday. Salman thanked him for welcoming the kingdom’s proposal to set up a “joint working group” to probe Khashoggi’s disappearance, a Saudi statement said.
But hours before the Turkish forensic team arrived, journalists photographed a cleaning crew entering the consulate, hauling buckets, mops and what appeared to be bottles of cleaning solution.When the Turkish investigators entered the consulate, some wearing white protective gear, they “smelled chemicals had been used,” according to two officials in contact with the investigators.
More on this topic, and how it relates to the Watts Investigation here.
Shaw was jailed in 2012 after investigators searching his laptop uncovered the largest collection of indecent images from the most extreme category ever.
The court heard he had fantasised about kidnapping toddler Madeleine McCann and downloaded thousands of horrific child sex abuse images, showing disturbing acts including between adults and children as well as bestiality and sadomasochism.
He has now moved to Southampton and was caught by officers again who discovered he downloaded an image of a teenage girl dressed in stockings and underwear before moving it to the recycle bin of his laptop.
Shaw was convicted at Southampton Crown Court after admitting one count of making an indecent photograph of a child.
Not only is Shaw completely unrelated to the McCann case, he hasn’t been convicted of an offence besides an addiction to pornography
Judge Gary Burrell QC gave Shaw a 24-month community order and ordered him to carry out 15 days of rehabilitation requirements.
What The Sun is trying to do here is link one offender with a famous high-profile crime to sell newspapers. They do it because it works, and what it does is create a false association between pedophiles and this particular case.
The large rock used to kill Hannah Cornelius. Above the numbers 1, 2 and 3 are the four murder and rape accused.
At about 6:30am the next day‚ Cornelius was lying by the borehole with her face in the ground. Her heart was pumping blood through two neck wounds‚ possibly from the swift penetrating thrust of a screwdriver‚ but this was not what killed her.
According to Dr Deirdre Abrahams‚ the forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy on Cornelius’s body‚ the fatal blows came when her murderers twice dropped the rock covering the borehole on the back of her head.
“The blunt force injuries to her head were very rapidly fatal‚” said Abrahams.
When Matthee and Booysen arrived at 8:20am‚ the area they had been working in the previous day was a mess. “I saw something that looked like a white bag. Then I saw it was a person‚” said Booysen. They left to find the foreman‚ who thought it was a doll lying on the ground. But they soon realised it was a young woman.
Cornelius’s jeans were pulled halfway down. There were bruises on her knees and legs‚ and bruising on her arms from the strong grip of the men who had killed her. On Sunday May 28‚ the crime scene was further explored by Ethan‚ a Labrador trained to detect bodily fluids‚ and handler Sergeant Jerome Timmy.
Timmy told the court that Ethan helped him to detect body fluids around the murder scene. They also found used condoms and condom wrappers.
1. Two months to the day after Chris Watts’ arrest, and with one month and three days to go to his next court appearance on November 19, the Weld County Coroner has decided to hold onto the crucial autopsy reports. Although completed on October 1st, they’ve been contested over the past two weeks.
The prosecutor and coroner want them to remain sealed while the defense doesn’t seem to mind either way. Colorado’s press are going nuts trying to find a way to force the court to hand over the public documents.
The coroner has until October 17 to field his response in court.
Audio and video evidence show journalist Jamal Khashoggi murdered and dismembered at Saudi consulate in Istanbu.
There’s a saying in true crime when prosecutors or the public are frustrated with a corrupt or disabled justice system: even a video of the crime couldn’t secure a conviction. Sometimes – disturbingly often – there are videos. Well, thanks to Turkish bugs and cameras in the Saudi consulate, there’s one here.
The Khashoggi case has been explained away as a “botched interrogation“. It reminds, frankly, of the Amanda Knox case [in terms of the interrogation claims] and the Durst case, in terms of the allegation that he was accidentally killed [and then accidentally dismembered, and his remains accidentally concealed somewhere else!]
Amanda Knox because she turned a few head slaps into police brutality and coercion. The opposite is the case here, they’re trying to imply he died of a casual hand slap. In Robert Durst’s case we’re meant to believe an accidental death would be followed by the gruesome job of dismemberment. A jury famously fell for that con job.
Khashoggi was an important journalist in that he was critical of the Saudi regime, so critical he left the country in fear for his life [ a fear that was well-founded as it turned out] and settled in America. He’s a modern Salman Rushdie – or at least, was. There hasn’t been any official confirmation that Khashoggi is dead. He remains currently, officially, missing. But it doesn’t look good. According to the Turkish media, Khashoggi was the target of a 15-man assassination squad. Someone very powerful wanted this guy dead very badly.
The Khashoggi crime matters because of what it says about America’s narrative regarding Saudi Arabia. Since the start of 2018, Saudi Arabia has devolved into the Wild West [well, the Wild Middle East], thanks in large part to President Trump’s gracious acquiescence.
CNN provides an excellent analysis of why Khashoggi matters to the West, and just how rogue Saudi Arabia have gone of late:
The mysterious disappearance of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi, raises important questions, not only about the nature of the Saudi regime, but also about the Trump administration’s uncritical embrace of its 33-year-old Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, a close alliance that was engineered by President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who was awarded the Middle East portfolio during the presidential transition.
Two weeks after Trump’s trip to Riyadh, the Saudis led an Arab blockade of gas-rich Qatar, closing all border crossings and cutting off air and sea travel. This was a long-term goal of the Saudis who have long found their enormously wealthy, tiny neighbor to be an irritant because it hosts the TV network, Al Jazeera, which is often critical of other Arab states, and because it is sympathetic to Islamist movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Trump cheered on the blockade, tweeting, “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding……extremism, and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to the horror of terrorism!”
This was the green light that the Saudis needed to keep up the blockade that continues to this day. In international law, a blockade is an act of war.
When Trump made his celebratory tweet about the blockade, he seemed to have no idea that Qatar housed the largest US base in the Middle East, which was also the most important base in the counter-ISIS fight, a base that is almost entirely paid for by the Qataris, according to a US diplomatic source.
Lately Trump’s been rallying to Saudi Arabia’s defense:
3. After her child is the target of bullying at the famous and prestigious Grey College, a mother sends her son back to school with a bodyguard. The school has refused to expel the bullies, and refused to allow the pupil to attend school with a bodyguard. The injury suffered appears to be quite serious: a ruptured eardrum.
Now the mother is threatening legal action. The school seems to be quite clear – if you don’t like to be here, go to another school. Who’s right?
4. Willem Dafoe – in the role of Vincent van Gogh – argues that 70 is the new 40. He makes a decent point that in Van Gogh’s era the average age of mortality was 70 years.
A gang of four were caught within 12 hours of committing rape, murder, robbery and abduction.
Sergeant Clifton Adams was on duty on May 27 last year when he became aware of a hijacked blue Citi Golf being pursued in the student town early that afternoon, he testified in the Western Cape High Court.
He and his partner spotted the car and gave chase, joining a convoy which had already been chasing the car as it headed toward the Devon Valley Road, eventually coming to a stop at Dwars-in-die-Weg Farm.
CCTV footage showed officers, including Adams, jumping out of their vehicles and chasing after two suspects who deserted the stolen car inside the venue and fled in different directions.
Adams estimated that the pursuit was over a distance less than a kilometre, snaking through the farm’s function venue, vineyards and towards the farmworkers’ homes. A fellow officer had shouted for the suspect to lie down, and he complied.
He pointed out Geraldo Parsons as the man he had cuffed that day before taking him to the holding cells of the Stellenbosch police station. Parsons, Vernon Witbooi, Eben van Niekerk and Nashville Julius face a string of charges including murder, aggravated robbery, kidnapping and rape.
The men allegedly accosted Cornelius and her friend Cheslin Marsh in her VW Citi Golf at the corner of Jan Celliers and Bird streets in the early hours of May 27, 2017…when her body was discovered, Cornelius had been lying on her stomach. One of her earrings was missing from her ear and a large rock was close to her remains.
The site where Hannah Cornelius was gang-raped and murdered.
Numerous condom wrappers were photographed at the scene of the rape.
He also photographed her car after it was deserted by the suspects. The photos show an Okapi knife, a screwdriver, drugs and drug paraphernalia, an empty cooldrink bottle and cigarette butts in the car.
It seems Dafoe’s biopic on Van Gogh is the true crime equivalent of Making A Murder [I & II] on Steven Avery. Thick on sentiment, thin on facts.
…attempts to mythologize the art icon with more mysteries: Did he really cut off his own ear because of frightening hallucinations, or was it to win back an old friend, painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac)? And did he actually shoot and kill himself, or was he attacked and murdered by teenage boys while painting outdoors?
If the above questions are worth asking about one of the world’s most beloved but misunderstood artists, aren’t they worth the effort of answering?
It also seems disingenuous to have a 63-year-old playing a 37-year-old, no matter how worn-out Van Gogh was said to have been at the end of his life.
October 14th, 2018
1. Is Killing Vincent, self-published on September 25, 2018, a rip-off of The Murder of Vincent van Gogh published on May 3, 2018?
The cover image of Arenberg’s book also uses the same self-portrait as its main image as the one used in The Murder of Vincent van Gogh. An overview of the content also suggests Arenberg has accidentally [or purposefully] stumbled on the same premeditated motive elucidated in The Murder of Vincent van Gogh.
Did van Gogh take his own life in a fit of madness? Or did something much more sinister happen to one of the world’s greatest visionaries?
“Everyone is fascinated and intrigued by the iconic Vincent,” said Arenberg. “But when you substitute premeditated murder and an elaborate cover-up, then add to that an intriguing romantic twist that could provide a motive for his murder—you will really have everyone’s attention!”
Killing Vincent also features interactive elements, including social media platforms as well as a website, allowing readers to interact on a dedicated forum and discuss various theories about van Gogh’s life and death. – Officer.com
Thanks to everyone for the amazing support in the Loving Vincent Oscar-campaign #Vincentdeservesthis!
The graphic below provides useful insight into the set-up inside Cornelius’ vehicle. Apparently there were condoms in the dashboard of her car.
There are a few inaccuracies worth pointing out:
The illustration represents a right-wheel drive Citi Golf.
Also, one of the 4 accused was wearing a hoodie during the attack. Were two of them wearing baseball caps as illustrated here? In CCTV footage none of the four appear to be wearing caps.
3. Two Security Guards Shot Point-Blank Outside Mall
[WARNING: GRUESOME AND EXPLICIT CONTENT]
The video clip below [which will likely be removed soon] provides a rare glimpse of the true horror of murder. It’s not only the terror of being killed that’s so disturbing, but the coldness and callousness of the killers.
A frightening reminder of the heartless scum we live amongst. They executed the two guards, leaned in over their bodies and stole handguns. Then left. That tattoo on the hand will certainly be his downfall. https://t.co/DX79PZvtc0
It takes a heartless, mindless second to extinguish a person’s life permanently, forever, and the perfunctory way in which it happens here shows why true crime investigations matter. It matters to know and remember how the lives of others were lost, to preserve not just the lives and legacies of the innocent, but to put on record what really happens in real life and real death, despite the efforts of criminals to distort reality in order to save themselves.
In our efforts to understand these horrors, we show our capacity to care about others in this world, and what happens to them. And in our capacity to care for others, others will care about us. At least, that’s the hope.
4. You’d think the folks behind a true crime documentary series ten-years-in-the-making would at least have an opinion about whether or not Steven Avery is guilty. But they don’t.
“…do we have an opinion about who might have killed Teresa Halbach? Absolutely not. We have no idea.” – Variety
And yet the public turns to them – the filmmakers and the documentaries – as their default setting for why they believe Steven Avery is innocent. As far as I’m concerned this isn’t only a cop-out from any authentic true crime investigation, it’s akin to cowardice. It’s pleading the the convicted murderer’s case, and then hiding behind semantics to argue that’s not what you’re doing.
October 13th, 2018
1. On this day 19 years ago, the JonBenet Ramsey grand jury is dismissed after 13 months of work with prosecutors. The official narrative at the time that jury was dismissed, was that there wasn’t enough evidence to charge anyone in the 6-year-old beauty queen’s 1996 slaying.
14 years later it turned out that the grand jury had voted to indict both parents on two separate charges each. According to the Denver Post on October 25th, 2013:
Count four of the indictment said the Ramseys [child abuse resulting in death] “did unlawfully, knowingly, recklessly and feloniously permit a child to be unreasonably placed in a situation which posed a threat of injury to the child’s life or health, which resulted in the death of JonBenét Ramsey, a child under the age of sixteen.”
Count seven of the indictment said the Ramseys [accessory to murder] did “unlawfully, knowingly and feloniously render assistance to a person, with intent to hinder, delay and prevent the discovery, detention, apprehension, prosecution, conviction and punishment of such person for the commission of a crime, knowing the person being assisted has committed and was suspected of the crime of murder in the first degree and child abuse resulting in death.”
Neither Hunter nor John Ramsey returned calls seeking comment on Friday.
October 12th, 2018
1. CCTV footage revealed in court shows the moment 4 men broke into Hannah Cornelius’ car and abducted her. Hours later she would be gang raped, tortured and murdered.
Although the initial incident is hidden slightly behind a white car parked in the upper right corner of the scene, what can be seen is the four suspects walking right past the CCTV camera and then circling back to Cornelius’ blue Citi Golf.
The Citi Golf can also be seen turning and parking, and the headlights turned off. The moment the car heads off, apparently mounting the curb, is also captured.
The incident occurred on May 27th at around 03:23 in the morning, clearly not the safest time to be out, especially for a young women.
2. The Making A Murderer II crew have clearly done their PR homework. Their trailer continues to make international news.
Once again this is an indictment of the Mainstream Media, who are too dumb and misinformed to know that the “news” they’re recycling is misinformed, biased and misleading.
There are rare exceptions. In 2016 the New York Times noted:
The prosecutor in the case, Ken Kratz, said viewers convinced of Mr. Avery’s innocence did not get to see important evidence that led a jury to convict him. The series “really presents misinformation,”Mr. Kratz said in an interview on Monday.
He portrayed the program as a tool of Mr. Avery’s defenseand accused the filmmakers of intentionally withholding facts that would lead viewers to see his guilt. Much less than a dispassionate portrayal of the case, the film is a result of the filmmakers’ “agenda” to portray Mr. Avery as innocent and stoke public outrage, Mr. Kratz said. “That is absolutely what they wanted to happen,” he added.
He portrayed the program as a tool of Mr. Avery’s defenseand accused the filmmakers of intentionally withholding facts that would lead viewers to see his guilt. Much less than a dispassionate portrayal of the case, the film is a result of the filmmakers’ “agenda” to portray Mr. Avery as innocent and stoke public outrage, Mr. Kratz said. “That is absolutely what they wanted to happen,” he added.
Making A Murderer portrays Steven Avery as a victim, an innocent victim. But is the junkyard prince really the pillar of his community that he’s portrayed to be?
Ms. Ricciardi, Ms. Demos and one of Mr. Avery’s lawyers, Dean Strang, disputed Mr. Kratz’s remarks in interviews on Monday, arguing that the documentary couldn’t have included every facet of the case. “Our opinion is that we included the state’s most compelling evidence,” Ms. Ricciardi said. Mr. Strang echoed that view. “No one’s going to watch a 600-hour movie of gavel-to-gavel, unedited coverage of a trial,” he said.
No one is asking a 10 part series to include EVERY titbit of information, just the most important aspects that support the prosecution’s case, as opposed to the most important aspects supporting the defense case minus the pillars of the state’s case.
1. Is Making a Murderer’s Steven Avery innocent? – BBC
The creators of the hit documentary series Making a Murderer say they believe they have “an educated opinion” on whether Steven Avery is innocent.
Talk about hedging your answer.
I have a serious problem with narrators and storytellers profiting from bogus narratives. Unfortunately it’s in the very nature of true crime that the defense side of a narrative involves exclusive interviews and exclusive access with the criminal-as-celebrity. It’s obviously in the criminal’s interest to participate as much as possible in a narrative that’s sympathetic to his cause, and stokes the idea of the criminal as the innocent victim.
It’s in the filmmaker’s interest to subtly press as many buttons as they can to support their side of the narrative. Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos have done an incredible job at deceiving the masses first with Making A Murderer, and now with their follow-up.
Prosecutors, judges and law enforcement are generally frowned on for talking to the media in the same way, and when they do they’re accused of leaking. As such it’s easy to see how much screentime is devoted to the defense players, and defense lawyers, and how much to the prosecutor side of a case.
In the Making A Murderer series, thanks to Ricciardi and Demos’ efforts, the defense lawyers became sex symbols while the prosecutor – Ken Krantz – has lost his job and become a pariah.
This tends to skew the narrative disproportionately towards the defense propaganda, and PR can be a powerful tool to control the narrative in the court of public opinion. PR played a decisive role in getting Damien Echols off death row, and delivered Amanda Knox from her original 28 year prison sentence.
Get the true story and the real Rocket Science behind the Avery story by reading FOOL’S GOLD, THE STATE VS STEVEN AVERY.
2. The Hannah Cornelius case is a relatively low-profile true crime case that played out in Stellenbosch, South Africa in late May 2017 in the same general area as the Van Breda axe murders, the Rohde suicide/murder case and the still unsolved Inge Lotz murder case.
The circumstances of the Cornelius case are heartbreaking.
Sidenote: At one point while in Cape Town covering the axe murder trial last year, I strongly considered approaching Cornelius’ family about writing a book on this disturbing case. In March 2018, Hannah’s mother drowned in the sea off Scarborough beach. It’s uncertain whether Anna’s death was accidental or suicide. She was 56 at the time. Hannah’s father is a retired magistrate based in Simonstown.
I still feel it’s a tragedy worth paying attention to, because in this one case is the beauty and holocaust of South Africa’s human condition rolled into a single story.
“Former Los Angeles detective Mark Fuhrman reveals private thoughts and analysis on criminal cases that have defined America this past half century in ‘The Fuhrman Diaries,’” Fox said in a press statement.
OJ’s Dream Time basically won the case for him by sinking the key detective on the case, Mark Fukrman. By casting Fuhrman as a racist, the msotly black jury felt comfortable in dismissing his testimony, which was great for Simpson, who was ultimately acquitted.
Although – racism aside – Fuhrman’s a decent detective, cops, lawyers, ex-FBI agents aren’t necessarily the best storytellers, either in books or in front of the camera.
In the clip below Fuhrman makes a fantastic point comparing the Scott Peterson case with its minimal evidence, and polished defendant, to the Casey Anthony case, with its truckloads of evidence and train wreck defendant.
Jurors however are less interested in evidence than they are in stories. Which story resonates with them? Which story, given the evidence, feels right?
In the early stages of a criminal investigation, before anyone is arrested or charged, the judge may seal the autopsy reports, Zansberg said. Law enforcement may be questioning suspects and want to keep certain details about the cause of death private, he said.
“But Mr. Watts was charged with these crimes. I’m not aware of any case where that concern has been recognized after charges have been filed,” he said.
I don’t believe holding back the autopsy evidence has got anything to do with preserving the prosecution’s case [or the defenses’ case]. It’s all about constraining publicity. It’s noteworthy that even defense counsel aren’t opposed in principle, to the release of the autopsy reports to the media.
Zanberg’s argument is new to Stan Garnett, the former district attorney for Boulder County. Garnett said he always felt the Colorado Criminal Justice Records Act trumped CORA through the end of criminal trials.
While he could understand why the media would go after the reports, he doesn’t know how the court will review the argument, though he isn’t hopeful it will succeed.
Garnett was district attorney in Boulder, responsible for investigating [or not investigating] the JonBenet Ramsey case, as well as for releasing [or not releasing] the police file to the media. 22 years after JonBenet’s death, the police file into her case remains under lock and key, partially thanks to Garnett, and the district attorneys [Mary Lacy and Alex Hunter] that preceded him. This dogmatic lack of transparency even in high-profile cases doesn’t bode well for for the notion of a proper trial, or of justice prevailing in Colorado, does it?
The defense attorneys for Watts are not opposing the release of the autopsy reports, according to a motion they also filed Oct. 4. His attorneys argue that the reasons offered by the prosecution to keep the reports from the public are contradictory to its previous positions.
The defense says they have no knowledge of witnesses who the prosecution have not yet interviewed. If the court makes its ruling based on this criteria, Watts’ attorneys have asked for a hearing to determine whether this position has any merit.
The defense also says the prosecution’s position that this could affect jurors and thus Watts’ rights is incongruous with its “indignant objection to investigating prejudicial media leaks.”
While the court denied their requests, Watts’ attorneys have requested an investigation into possible media leaks from law enforcement agencies. Watts’ right to a fair proceeding has “been so substantially damaged in this case,” his attorneys say, that the “narrow issue” of releasing the autopsy reports wouldn’t salvage anything. The reports will most likely be revealed at the preliminary hearing, ahead of any jury trial, they also point out.
The prosecution has an obligation to protect the integrity and right to a fair trial, according to Garnett, and will be focused on minimizing publicity throughout the case.
2. Netflix drops Making A Murderer II trailer – and yes, it starts off with baby photos of convicted murderer Steven Avery.
3. Rumors about Ben Affleck making a movie about Scott Peterson, and starring as Laci Peterson’s murderer now appear to be unfounded.
“Ben’s career has been on a downslide for the past few years while he battled personal demons and dealt with the failure of his marriage,” a so-called source said. “He’s convinced a psychological thriller about a seemingly normal, handsome young man who slaughtered his pretty wife and unborn son is a ticket to the top.”
The insider added Affleck wanted to go to San Quentin Prison to interview and pitch his idea to Scott. Jennifer Garner’s former husband is said to be “taking full control” of this alleged movie and aimed to write, direct, produce, and star the real-life film.
But there is no truth to this story at all. The supposed insider seemed to be suspicious. Affleck’s rep even told Gossip Cop that the source’s revelations are just “made-up.”
Shauna Sexton’s boyfriend has no plan to make a movie about Scott. The publication claimed the rumor might have a connection with Affleck’s resemblance with the convicted killer. – Business Times
4. Serial Killer Couple Identified in Mexico
When authorities searched their two houses, they found human remains in cement-filled buckets and wrapped in plastic bags inside a refrigerator, as well as articles of clothing apparently belonging to some of their victims.
The man told investigators that he and his wife lured their victims, many of whom were young mothers, with offers of discount clothing for their babies.
“They were single mothers and they needed someone who could help them find inexpensive baby clothes,” said Gomez. Investigators tracked down the couple by tracing cell phone calls the missing women had placed to them, he said. – AFP
October 9th, 2018
1. Chris Watts Keeps Bible & Photo of Slain Family in Cell, Source Says: ‘Nothing to Do but Reflect’ – People
“He doesn’t have much to do in jail,” says a source who has spoken to Chris. Chris, who occasionally speaks with guards and can talk to other prisoners, is keeping a low profile as he awaits his eventual trial. “He sleeps a lot,” the source says. “He can just sit there and look at the picture and read the Bible.”
What is going through his mind in those hours alone in his cell? Does he look at the bible and the family photo, or does he ignore them? What is echoing in that head of his, stuck day after day in the cell? What does he dream about, or are there nightmares?
The answer I think is straightforward: he’s got all day everyday to think about his defense, and fine-tune it. To play devil’s advocate, to find answers to inevitable questions, to come up with a defense case that will play well at trial. This is why, during the same period it’s useful to a true crime writer [ahem] to be thinking about the same thing, non-stop, and thus being able to second-guess the defense narrative not in a reactionary way, but from an educated, informed and intuitive perspective.
Incidentally, this is the job of the prosecutors as well, except they will have more than one case on their roster to attend to.
Also worth noting: People magazine has been the most consistent at providing ongoing coverage of the Watts case thus far. Just yesterday I posted a rhetorical question on Instagram – do tabloids hinder or help in true crime investigations?
2. Madeleine McCann ‘captive and alive’ theory picked apart by former editor – 9News Australia
…the recently retired editor of The Sunday Express, Martin Townsend, today described Edgar as being “wedded” to that theory since being hired by the McCanns in 2008.
Appearing on Channel Nine’s TODAY, Townsend was asked if there was any evidence which backed up Edgar’s belief. “No, none whatsoever,” he replied. “It is a theory that David Edgar, this detective, has actually expounded before. He is absolutely wedded to it,” Townsend added.
Edgar, now aged 61, worked for Kate and Gerry McCann from 2008 until 2011, which is when London’s Metropolitan Police launched Operation Grange to review and investigate Madeleine’s mysterious disappearance. Of all the British newspapers, it was The Express group, including Townsend’s The Sunday Express, which took the most aggressive stance on Madeleine’s case, and unproven theories about the possible involvement of her parents.
That’s Edgar on the right. His body language says it all: “Who knows?”
Additional Note: Australia’s Mark Saunokonoko [who wrote the above article] is also one of the few outspoken critics of the McCann and the investigation, but then I suppose you can be in the media safety zone Down Under [as opposed to doing that in the UK or Portugal].
As a result of Saunokonoko’s coverage, I made direct contact with him in April 2017, when I published DOUBT. Below is raw audio from one of our interviews.
This is no longer new news, but on the topic of Amanda Knox “celebrating” her freedom 7 years after being released from jail, it’s worth noting:
When Knox was originally sentenced, she was given the harshest and longest prison term of her co-accused, yes, longer than Rudy Guede and Raffaele Sollecito respectively. She was originally sentenced to 26 years in jail for the murder of her housemate, Meredith Kercher [this sentence was also longer than that of her co-accused]. During the third trial and conviction her sentences was raised to 28 years and 6 months.
Although she describes herself as innocent, and an “exoneree”, Knox spent 4 years in jail for slandering her boss [accusing him of the murder].
When Knox was “exonerated” she wasn’t able to claim compensation for unjust imprisonment because the Italian courts upheld her sentence for the slander of her boss.
1. Frank Rzucek to collect Shan’ann Watts’ Estate [CHRIS WATTS]
During a Weld County Court telephone hearing, Shannan’s father requested that he be appointed as the personal representative of her estate. That means he will collect all of her assets, but it doesn’t mean he’ll automatically receive them.
“Once that estate is collected and he’s figured out whether she owed any money or needs to pay any taxes — after that, then he’ll distribute to who is entitled to receive it,” said Dan McKenzie, an attorney with McKenzie Law Firm.
“It’s typically the spouse and that’s probably where the disagreement is going to arise depending on how the criminal prosecution of Mr. Watts goes.” – KDVR.com
We know the Watts family had plenty of debt, and also that Chris Watts didn’t object to her father being announced as executor of her estate.
2. The autopsy results in the Chris Watts case remain under seal.
The last time a Colorado judge ruled the release of autopsy reports would adversely affect the public was the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, 19 years ago. – Greeley Tribune
At the same time, Knox also posted a picture of a doormat to Instagram. She received it from the Arizona Justice Project. It reads, “Come Back With a Warrant.”
One aspect that’s interesting is the appointment of new legal counsel for Steven Avery. The first season of Making A Murderer made virtual celebrities of the defense duo Dean Strang and Jerry Buting. Some even went to far as to call them sex symbols. Will Kathleen Zellner, well-known for her work in overturning wrongful convictions, enjoy the same notoriety?
According to Zellner, Ryan Hillegas, Halbach’s boyfriend at the time, is the real murderer.
Hillegas reportedly snuck into Steven Avery’s trailer on November 3rd, 2005, found Avery’s blood (that was not cleaned up after an accident), planted it on Halbach’s vehicle, then snuck out without being caught. Yet, according to Officer Leslie Lemieux of Calumet County Sheriff’s Department, Hillegas had an airtight alibi , leading up to almost the time he’s accused of sneaking into the trailer.
So for all the Making a Murderer fans, in order to believe Avery didn’t kill Halbach, some else had to break into Avery’s trailer, steal Avery’s blood [because he knew blood would be in his trailer] and plant it on Halbach’s vehicle, then sneak away without being seen.
What this conspiracy leaves out isn’t how Avery might be innocent because someone else is guilty, but how, where and when Hillegas killed Halbach if he did? Did Hillegas also rape and kill Halbach in Avery’s junk yard?
3. “Killer paedophile Charles O’Neill had to be moved to a new jail in 2013 after prisoners plotted to murder him over fears he snatched Madeleine McCann in Portugal in 2007.” – The Sun
Leave it to the British tabloids to wring every drop out of the bogus pedophile narrative in the McCann case. The American press did the same with the JonBenet Ramsey case.
4. Does the world famous story of Vincent van Gogh qualify as true crime? It’s a popular misconception that it isn’t. His ear slicing, admission to the madhouse and suicide are all controversial. The tide is shifting significant right now on all three of these narratives.
The madhouse narrative has been studied in detail by Martin Bailey. Published today in the Daily Telegraph, there’s this:
[Bailey] found himself amazed by van Gogh’s extraordinary feat in producing almost one painting for every day of reasonable health he enjoyed during his year at the asylum.About 150 paintings from that period survive, while Bailey surmises that more than a dozen have been lost.
What is the pertinent insight to this? Van Gogh spent just one year in the asylum, admitting himself, and letting himself out when he was ready. If he painted over 150 paintings in a year, including arguably his best and most famous Starry Night, then his painting output was roughly one picture every second day. Not bad for a madman, is it?
5. Relatively new developments in the Chris Watts case. The location of where the phone was left has been established.
Besides this, a phone call to discuss Shan’ann’s estate took place on October 5th. Chris Watts and his two defense attorneys Kathryn Herold and John Walsh sat in on that call, along with Frank [Shan’ann’s father], Sandi [Shan’ann’s mother] and Frankie [Shan’ann’s younger brother] and presumably their lawyer. Weld County district attorney Michael Rourke unexpectedly also sat in on that conversation.
It’s likely certain aspects of the estate are complicated, one of them being the largest and most significant asset – the Watts home. If they were married in community of property, even if Watts did kill Shan’ann, he’s unlikely to lose his stake in the home. He may however have agreed to dispose of the house, as along as the parties agree to split the principal 50/50. If so, his defense attorneys would be very interested in brokering this particular aspect, because it would allow them to get paid, as well as to hire expensive experts.
October 6th, 2018
1.A BUSKER who sparked fury after singing about Madeleine McCann being “in his freezer” today slammed “snowflakes” for being offended by his lyrics. – The Sun
Proponents of the theory that Madeleine was killed as early as a week before her disappearance, believe her body was placed in freezer until it was moved elsewhere.
There’s definitely been an uptick in Madeleine McCann related coverage, no matter how asinine or irrelevant. The McCann has been a cash cow for the newspaper industry, and with a new documentary series coming, there’s more hay to be made. There’s something to be said though for how clueless the news media are, or, assuming they know the truth behind this saga, how cynically they pull the public’s strings while making a tidy profit.
2. Accused Murderer Chris Watts Could Inherit Slain Wife Shan’ann’s Estate – InTouch Weekly
This means there may well be another trial running parallel to the criminal trial. Whether he does or doesn’t inherit is contingent on the outcome of the criminal trial, and so any hearing dealing with inheritance issues will likely deal with freezing assets rather than making any available. This does raise the question, how will Watts pay for his defense? Could he hold up the Watts house as collateral?
Dave Edgar worked on the three-year-old’s disappearance from 2008 – 2011 after being hired by her parents Kate and Gerry McCann. Mr Edgar, who stopped working on the case when the Metropolitan Police took over, is optimistic detectives could still solve the case.Edgar has previously made several claims about Madeleine’s disappearance, including suggesting she was taken by a ‘gang of paedophiles’ and the culprit was being protected.
After 12 years, with no substantial clues, he’s optimistic? Deep Into Darkness [coming soon] deals with the merits of the pedophile narrative in the McCann case.
Missing Madeleine McCann is likely to be still in Portugal but unaware of who she is, says a former top detective who worked on the four-year-old’s disappearance for her family.
David Edgar believes Madeleine is still alive and well, 11 years after she disappeared from her family’s holiday villa in Portugal. “She could literally be anywhere in the world but my hunch is that she is in Portugal,” Edgar told The Sun.
Since she was 4 years old when she disappeared, the idea isn’t baloney. Taken in lieu of the evidence, including the cadaver traces, well, that’s another story. Edgar’s “expert-ise” makes him one of the critical characters that can shape public opinion, and thus control the true crime narrative. What do you think? Is he misleading the public, or informing them?
Making A Murderer: Part 2, will premiere on Oct. 19, 2018. A brief trailer for the new season says, “once somebody’s convicted, they have to move mountains to get out of prison. When you’re fighting for your innocence, you need to prove that and it takes time.”
I consider my efforts – two books dealing with the Steven Avery case – to be monumental failures. It’s not that the narratives lack merit, it’s just that these excellent documentaries have addled peoples minds, permanently. The same applies to the Paradise Lost apologia in the West Memphis Three case.
There’s a conspiracy theory out there that Damien Echols as a teenager was so deeply involved in the occult, the murder of the three eight-year-old boys in West Memphis was an expression of that – in other words it was a ritualistic killing. It was the shedding of their blood to magically bestow power on himself. This power would turn him into a god of some sort, and give him greater power of the world, and of men.
Of course, this theory is completely nuts. There was zero occult activity in the woods and abandoned bridges of West Memphis, wasn’t there?
You can laugh at that theory all you like. Today Damien Echols believes in the same MAGICKal transcendence stuff; so much so he’s just written a book about it.
It’s quite ironic – the satanic occult stuff is all a myth and had nothing to do with the murders. Cut to 2018, it’s still absolutely epicentral to who this guy thinks he is.
If Echols did murder and torture those boys, he must believe the voodoo has worked – he beat his death row conviction after all, and has emerged since then as a celebrity – way beyond the mold of true crime TV shows like murder made me famous. Echols has spawned a cottage industry of art works, bestsellers and MAGICK-themed workshops around his MAGICKal persona.
He has big media publications at his beck and call when it’s time for another PR blitz.
What’s weird about Echols is he presents this tough, cool, tattooed rock star type persona on camera, and yet whenever he talks it’s about his victimhood and how much he’s suffered and been hard done by [especially while on death row].
He can’t stop talking about how he pissed blood, forgot how to walk, had to learn how to use a fork again and almost went blind. That’s why Echols is often sporting those zany blue glasses, in the vein of movie stars like Robert Downey Junior and Johnny Depp and rock stars like Bono and John Lennon.
Who knew being accused of murder made you this cool?
It seems Echols is the only death row inmate to become such a pathetic specimen simply by virtue of being behind bars for an extended period.
Really? He had to learn how to use a fork? How hard or traumatizing is that?
He talks about triumphing over something, but he can’t quite extricate the murder that made him famous from his MAGICKal self. He never quite let’s it go although in every interview it’s all about putting the past behind him once and for all and going to live on happily ever after. Until the next book, or show or art exhibition.
Well, maybe he’s just a sensitive soul? An artist type. And how many artists commit murder?
Maybe.
But sensitive souls tend to have the capacity to think sensitively about other souls too. Does Echols have the capacity to think about others, and not just how these can be used to benefit him from through blood or money?
In an interview with Vice, he’s asked precisely this question.
Did you ever have time to feel pain or sympathy for all the other numerous victims involved in this horrible ordeal?
During it, the only thing you can focus on is trying to survive. It takes everything you have to put one foot in front of the other and make it through one day at a time. When you’re being beaten and starved and in misery and being abused every day, having to look out and make sure nobody is going to murder you the next minute, you don’t have a lot of time to sit around philosophizing and thinking about things in the outside world. When you’re in there it’s almost like a daydream or a fairy tale, something that may exist somewhere, that someone told you once that existed. You don’t have anything other than the cold, brutal reality that you’re spending every ounce of energy you have to get through.
So no, he doesn’t feel sympathy for the three dead children he was accused of murdering in this saga. Yet he can take the time to write books, several in fact, glorifying in his MAGICKal self.
Irrespective of whether you believe Echols is guilty or innocent, what’s beyond doubt is how much of a poser he is.
Given his standalone starpower, it’s easy to forget that Echols had two co-accused implicated in the three murders, and that one of them repeatedly confessed to the crimes of all three.
Echols was by far the most significant character of the trio. In King of Freaks, my book on Echols, I made the case that if it was a ritualistic killing, then the three killers and three victims made sense. If the boys were lured to their deaths, then potentially each of the three boys was matched to a murderer based on looks and the qualities the murderer wanted from his victim.
It must have touched a nerve, otherwise Echols wouldn’t have bothered with King of Freaks. In five years of true crime writing, he’s the only murder accused who’s left a review on a story about him and his alleged crimes.
On October 30th, the ironically named Big Think published a puff piece on Echols. Here’s an extract:
I see the good points of true crime and I see the bad points of true crime. For mepersonally I tend to stay away from it. I honestly have not even seen the Paradise Lost documentaries.
Do you believe the 3-part documentary that basically set the so-called exoneration ball rolling was too much trouble for the man at the center of it to watch? Do you believe that a preening peacock who’s so particular about his tats and his facts, didn’t bother to soak up the reflection of the camera’s hero worship?
I tried to watch them, I made it through 15 to 20 minutes of the first one, and I could understand why it had such a big impact on people because when I was watching it, it felt like being in the courtroom. It was like experiencing it again. And, for me, that was the last thing in the world that I wanted. That was—it ate up 20 years of my life, so the last thing I wanted to do was go back there. At the same time I’m grateful that so many other people did watch it and were affected by it and came to our aid, because it saved my life. But that doesn’t mean I want to watch it.
And then it’s back to the whinging and self-pity.
The hardest parts of being in prison, the worst parts to deal with were just the sheer brutality of it. You know, there were times when I was beaten so bad that I started to piss blood. They’re not going to spend a lot of time and money and energy taking care of someone they plan on killing. So it’s not like you’re going to see a real doctor or a real dentist. At one point I’d been hit in the face so many times by prison guards that it had caused a lot of nerve damage in my teeth, so I was in horrendous pain. Your choices are: live in pain, or let them pull your teeth out. I didn’t want them to pull my teeth out, so I had to find techniques that would allow me to cope with the physical pain. That was probably the biggest thing that kept pushing me forward to learn more and more and more about magick, because I had to find ways just to survive.
This though, is real pain, and real brutality, the true victims of WM3:
Magick, spelled with a K at the end, M – A – G – I – C – K, the reason it has a K is to differentiate it from sleight of hand, you know, sawing assistants in half, pulling rabbits out of a hat, things like that. The entire point of high magick it is a path that leads to the same things that Eastern traditions refer to as “enlightenment,” which is the dissolution of the self. The form that I practice derived, for the most part, from the late 1800s in London. You had a group of people, they called themselves the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn—some really intelligent people, the beloved poet W.B. Yeats was a member.
What Echols is selling now is no different to what he was saying during his murder trial and throughout his time on death row.
Echols, based on his twitter following, is at least three times more popular than Amanda Knox, another “innocent victim” accused of the brutal murder [using a knife to saw deep gouges in the throat] of her housemate Meredith Kercher.
In fact he’s so alluring, a woman fell in love with Echols while he was on death row, quit her job to move closer to the prison and ultimately marriage Echols – while he was on death row.
Since his release from death row, Echols has been courted by celebrities, from Johnny Depp to Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson, because he’s such a swell hard-done-by guy. Jackson even invited Echols and his wife to visit him at his home in New Zealand.
Officially, since the acquittal of Echols and the WM3, the murders of Steve “Stevie” Branch, Christopher Byers, and Michael Moore—from West Memphis, Arkansas—remains unsolved.
According to the Greeley Tribune, the hearing on the autopsy reports for Shan’ann and her two daughters will take place at 09:00 on December 21st before Weld District Court Judge Todd Taylor.
The criminal case picks up on November 19th with a status conference at 10:30 in Weld District Court.
A status conference is a court-ordered meeting with a judge where counsel decide the date of the trial and/or updated information on a defendant is entered into the record to argue for or against ongoing conditions.
It’s hard to believe – Shan’ann hinted at least three times in early to mid-May that she was pregnant. On June 11th she said knew she was six weeks pregnant and that her due date was February 1st. This means conception was approximately April 30th.
And yet, as is clear in the comments below, some of her friends felt Shan’ann had “fibbed” to them earlier, pretending she didn’t know she was pregnant [until early June] when she may well have known.
So, did she know?
It’s vital that we know the truth about this, because if Shan’ann misled her friends [and there was no reason to, was there?] then she may well have misled her husband too. If she did, why?
I have a theory, but before we get to that, let’s look at the three hints she dropped in May.
#1: May 8
#2 May 9
See it?
#3 May 15
These hints unleashed a torrent of comments and responses. By the time Shan’ann announced she was pregnant in her two videos posted on June 11 there was an avalanche of interest – literally hundreds of promoters – almost all her key Thrive target market, mothers – congratulating her.
Just two weeks after the announcement [and there were actually several announcements besides Shan’ann changing her profile picture to also make the announcement stick], there was the Thrive event in San Diego.
Where Chris Watts would have gone to that or not before everyone knew Shan’ann was pregnant is an open question.
Within the frenzied interactions were some mysterious responses from Shan’ann.
What did she mean by being nervous about being outnumbered?
She inferred a leopard [leopard print clothing?] had something to do with falling pregnant.
She was also concerned whether the third child would be as much of a handful as Ceecee was at the time.
It also appears the pregnancy was either a change of plan or unintended, given that Shan’ann had given away her maternity wear.
Within this bizarre period Shan’ann also posted an image of house in Mooresville North Carolina, and then posted it a second time.
The timeline between May and June is also busy with Chris Watts’ birthday and several odes from Shan’ann to her husband about what a great man, husband and father he is. During this period it’s also Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, ironic giving what was soon to devastate this family a few short weeks later.
Shan’ann also noted in one of the comments that she intended to have a Thrive pregnancy, meaning, using the patches, pills and formulas to control her mood and appetite until she gave birth. She also said she got pregnant as quickly as she did thanks to Thrive, almost without trying.
Of course, she could use the pregnancy to promote the patches in a way that would make her stand out compared to all the other female promoters jostling for social media support. And what do mothers like more than to talk about babies, baby clothes and the whole maternal narrative associated with the child birth fairy tale.
Did Chris Watts suffer side-effects from the Thrive vitamin patches? Did he have some sort of disorder or syndrome? Is he a narcissist and does that fully explain what happened? Is he a psychopath?
Some people have also noted that the GPS number identifying CERVI 319 includes the number 666.
Did the devil make him do it? Did pop music flick a switch in his brain?
Monster, devil, madman, psychopath, narcissist.
These are the stock answers and labels that float to the surface of social media whenever true crime jolts us out of our daily routines. They’re easy and soothing. We’re shocked by this crime and the label tells us we have it all under control, we understand it because we have a word that explains it.
The answer to Chris Watts’ state of mind is a critical indicator of our own ability to fathom not just the criminal mind and true crime, but ordinary everyday life, and even ourselves.
So what’s your call?
If he was a madman or devil or a psychopath, how was he able to convince everyone what a nice guy he was, including the woman closest to him?
If he’s not a madman or a monster it means he’s a normal guy just like you and me. Which one of those is the more terrifying? If it is the latter, then we have a very difficult job: we have to understand how and why someone just like us made a calm, calculated decision to do something monstrous. We also have to ask what’s going on in the world if this is happening every day to families somewhere in the world.
It’s a simple question with no easy answers.
WHY?
What does Chris Watts and this crime say about us, and the world we live in right now?
On August 10, 2018, just two days prior to the Watts Family Murder, Cheat Sheetpublished an authoritative list of the 15 most hated MLM companies in America.
The article opens with these ominous words:
If you have a social media account, then you’ve probably received a message from an old friend you haven’t spoken to in years. But usually that person isn’t reaching out because they miss you — they’re trying to rekindle your relationship so they can sell you something.
Multi-level marketing (MLM), also known as direct selling, is a strategy that some companies use to peddle their products. Consultants get paid by selling the product directly to friends and family in addition to recruiting new sellers into their “downline.” There are no physical store locations for this type of merchandise — if you want to order your leggings or anti-wrinkle cream, you have to call up your local sales rep.
Not all MLM companies are pyramid schemes — but many are universally reviled by both the people who work for them and the potential customers who are sick of constantly being pestered by friends to buy the products.Ahead, discover the most hated multi-level marking companies today — including the one with a billion dollar lawsuit pending (number 7).
Number 1 on Cheat Sheet’s list is LULAROE. Guess who sold LULAROE from home?
Number 12 on their list is YOUNIQUE. Guess who who was selling YOUNIQUE from her bathroom?
If you’ve seen someone wearing a curious looking sticker on their skin, you may have come in contact with a Le-Vel brand promoter. If you believe that vitamin nutrition patches are just what you’ve been missing in your life, then go ahead and strike up a conversation with them.
The company sells these patches to help with weight management, mental clarity, increased energy, improved circulation, and appetite control. Do they work? That’s for you to decide — but it won’t be cheap to find out.Like other MLM companies, the more people you recruit to sell magic vitamin patches, the more you earn.
Two other hated MLM companies worth noting on this list are AMWAY and HERBALIFE.
Here’s the Cheat Sheet lowdown on Amway:
The largest and oldest MLM also has some of the biggest critics. Amway reported sales of $8.6 billion in 2017, making it a bona fide direct sales success story. But not everyone is thrilled with what they’re selling — or how they’re selling it.
MLM companies often tout flexibility and the opportunity to get rich quick. But Amway distributors aren’t always successful. One former rep put it this way:
“The two years I was supposedly building my Amway business, I lost nearly $10,000 on tapes, seminars, books, gas, and travel expenses for out-of-town seminars. My earnings? Less than $500 total.Since I was unemployed — and pretty much unemployable for any nonburger-flipping job — those $10,000 came exclusively from my grandmother, who was also my biggest (and only) Amway customer, buying expensive, ‘concentrated’ Amway products she didn’t need, every month to support me.”
Now, Herbalife.
Want proof that people hate Herbalife? The Federal Trade Commission mailed checks to 350,000 people who lost money running Herbalife businesses. This is one of the largest settlements and distributions the agency has ever made.
While they were never officially called a pyramid scheme, the PR disaster forced the company to restructure and seriously rethink their marketing efforts. The majority of profits came from recruiting new sellers, not from selling product. And that is the very definition of a pyramid scheme — whether they admit it or not.
If Shan’ann Watts was in over her head with Le-Vel, the fact that she was also drinking the MLM Kool-Aid with at least two other companies shows just how deep into a debt-trap the Watts family must have been in the summer of 2018.
Chris Watts’ commute from Saratoga Trail to CERVI 319 I passes by a Ford dealerships right alongside the highway. Was this where he originally worked when he and Shan’ann moved to Frederick shortly after their marriage in 2012? I decided to find out.
A Daily Beast article identified Shan’ann Watts’ boss as Greg Alore. Initially Shan’ann worked with her husband at the dealership – him on the floor as a mechanic, her in internet sales.
It wasn’t difficult to find Alore’s work history, or the Ford dealership in question.
The Longmont dealership is less than 10 miles from the Watts home, about 14 minutes’ drive.
Not exactly the most Thrivin’ part of town is it?
In terms of his commute, when he approached the roundabout on Aggregate, he headed north and then west to Longmont. Once he changed jobs, to get to CERVI 319 he headed the opposite way: right and out the first roundabout exit, down Aggregate Boulevard and east to the oil and fracking fields.
Below is the dealership in Longmont where the Watts couple both worked.
It’s probably through Longmont that Watts got his Ford Super Duty truck. It appears to be a 2012 model; it would have been new around the time he started working there.
After about two years at Longmont Ford, Chris Watts quit his job to start as an operator at Anadarko in January 2015. 2015 was the same year as their bankruptcy filing.
It’s not clear when Shan’ann quit working at the dealership. We know from the bankruptcy filing that she was pregnant with her second child by then and intended working “fewer hours”. We also know at the time of the bankruptcy filing Shan’ann was earning virtually nothing, and by the following year when she started at Le-Vel she was broke.
It’s possible by the time Bella was born in December 2013, after just over a year at the dealership, Shan’ann started flirting with the idea of being a stay-at-home mom.
These humble work stations, and the patch selling deal in 2017 and midway through 2018, really puts into perspective just how far they were living beyond their means in that massive house on Saratoga Trail.
Nathaniel Trinastich is mentioned twice in Chris Watts’ arrest affidavit; once in the actual narrative and once as a witness. It was Trinastich who provided investigators with the gamechanging video surveillance that showed not only Chris Watts backing up his truck and leaving on the morning of the murders, but also that no one else left the Watts home that morning.
The semantics of the affidavit are worth noting: Nicole’s vehicle is shown leaving and Chris Watts’ truck is observed hours later backing into the driveway and leaving. But the Trinastich home isn’t opposite the Watts home, it’s adjacent on the right.
So how the heck did the surveillance camera see anything?
Google Maps is hinky when it comes to newly rising subdivisions. The satellite images above do show the Trinastich home at 2905 Saratoga Trail. Despite the odd numbering, 2905 is indeed next to 2825. But Street View doesn’t show either house at ground level. We’ll get to that it a moment.
Notice how the house on the left of the Watts home blocks out a view of #2825 because of the way the building extends forward onto the front lawn. So from the garage and front door on that neighbor’s side, there’s no direct line-of-sight to the Watts garage and front door.
The other house – Trinastich, on the right – has no such problem. In fact the garage is almost level, just slightly back from the Watts garage, which means a camera is set slightly behind the Watts driveway – an ideal position to spy on late night fumblings in and out of the garage.
In front of the Watts home and slightly to the left is a T-junction, which also means both houses opposite have limited line-of-sight of the front of the Watts home.
Those houses opposite on Steeple Rock Drive are oriented towards each other but away from the Watts house.
The foliage beside the Watts’ garage on the boundary with the Trinastich property also interrupts line-of-sight, but at night, a camera wouldn’t need to pick up anything more than the illumination of headlights as they move onto and off the driveway, and that’s what Trinastich’s did.
Now let’s orient ourselves on what Trinastich’s house looks like, as well as the neighboring houses on the ground.
The two houses on opposite shoulders of Steeple Rock Drive are familiar from the two hailstorm videos Shan’ann recorded on June 18 and 19.
Street View, as mentioned, got to Saratoga Trail before the Trinastich home went up and before the Watts home was built as well.
Fortunately there are a few images of the outside of the Trinastich home courtesy of Nathan Trinastich himself.
Below is a nocturnal view of the blue-walled house in front of the Watts and Trinastich homes taken during the candlelight vigil.
The Trinastich home was kitted out with the same garage door design as the Watts house, including the small square windows along the top of the doors. From the zoomed in image below, there doesn’t appear to be any doorbell camera fitted to the front door, at least not when this photo was taken.
If the Watts family were Steelers fans, the Trinastich’s were big Denver Broncos supporters.
I was able to trace the anonymous image of a couple paying their respects at front lawn of the Watts home to an orange Bronco’s cap in Trinastich’s home, posted on social media. More than likely the couple are the Trinastichs who’ve walked over from next door to inspect the toy memorial.
These neighbors [below] on the other hand are clearly not the Trinastichs.
Neighbors of #ShanannWatts just came by and hammered in a cross in front of the home where the missing mother lived. Police have just formally announced that Shanann's husband, Chris Watts, has been arrested in connection with the disappearance of her and their two daughters. pic.twitter.com/aEc8PSlqnN
One of the best views of the Trinastich’s home – which is dwarfed by the Watts mansion – is from this unusual view.
It’s still not evident where the surveillance camera was situated at the front of the Tristnatich home. It may be, like the Watts come, through the front door if the camera was installed later, perhaps even at the same time the Watts family installed theirs.
Perhaps Chris Watts didn’t see Trinastich’s camera or consider it because of the large leafy tree plumb in front of the house on the front lawn. That tree was obviously in full flourish in mid-summer when Shan’ann and the children were killed.
It may also be that the camera was a dashcam, but then the arrest affidavit has made an error. There is a censored section in the affidavit that may or may not refer to a dashcam.
In my opinion, the censored text refers to the Trinastich street number. A dashcam with the car parked facing the garage would also be unlikely to provide a rear view.
It’s also possible, since Trinastich’s an outdoors-man, that he used a camouflaged camera.
In POST TRUTH, the 100th True Crime Rocket Science [TCRS] title, the world’s most prolific true crime author Nick van der Leek demonstrates how much we still don’t know in the Watts case. In the final chapter of the SILVER FOX trilogy the author provides a sly twist in a tale that has spanned 12 TCRS books to date. The result may shock or leave you with even more questions.
SILVER FOX III available now in paperback!
“If you are at all curious about what really happened in the Watts case, then buy this book, buy every one he has written and you will get as close as humanly possible to understanding the killer and his victims.”- Kathleen Hewtson. Purchase the very highly rated and reviewed SILVER TRILOGY – POST TRUTH COMING SOON.
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Book 5 – ALL NEW! “I have thoroughly enjoyed this audiobook…” – Connie Lukens. Drilling Through Discovery Complete Audiobook
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Book 4 in the TWO FACE series, one of the best reviewed, is available now in paperback!
“Book 4 in the K9 series is a must read for those who enjoy well researched and detailed crime narratives. The author does a remarkable job of bringing to life the cold dark horror that is Chris Watts throughout the narrative but especially on the morning in the aftermath of the murders. Chris’s actions are connected by Nick van der Leek’s eloquent use of a timeline to reveal a motive.”
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