The True Crime Thread (tw: all)

I love the Dollop! They're hilarious. Definitely recommend, there's true crime and weird history and the tickling episode.

I don't really know why MFM hit me so wrong; I have a pretty high tolerance for irreverence and I love gallows humor and all that. Just one of those things, I guess. :/

 

im on and off with MFM but they did an episode of, i think it was "home" crimes? where they each talked about a crime that had been committed near their home area. it was pretty cool to get a sort of direct line of thought from someone who'd been around during a time of panic

also i remembered one of the murders they were talking about, it only happened a few years ago out here. christopher dorner made living in socal a real wild ride for a couple of..days? weeks? there.

 

Ooh, discussion topic: Crimes committed in your hometown/home state/a place you lived once, etc.

Personally, I hail from a state known mostly for lynchings (Leo Frank being a particularly infamous case) and the Atlanta child murders. Oh, and the Stocking Strangler. Haha we don't have problems with racism down here at all. /bitter sarcasm

(And of course we're also the state that gave you Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil and Furman v. Georgia.)

 

i grew up in what was quite possibly a sundown town way back when and you could really tell ):

 

My mom wants to write a musical about Dorithea Puente, who she lived in the same neighborhood as at the time of her killings.

 

Yeah. There's a lot of…national scarring, I guess, from Jim Crow and just racism in general. It's grim. :/

That is awesome. The musical, I mean, not being neighbors with a serial killer.

 

D: That is too many shootings to be in the proximity of.

 

oh jeez, it just occurred to me that I've also been six degrees of separation from a shooting. My mom actually knew one of the victims from work.

(That was kind of an inverse school shooting, come to think of it: the gunman was a professor but the crime was committed off campus…)

 

I live near Santa Cruz, California, and we once had three serial killers operating at once, IIRC. Back in the 70s, I think.

We also had a truly horrific murder case here just this summer--Madyson Middleton. Little 8-year-old girl was raped, murdered, and thrown in a dumpster at the art compound/apartment complex where she lived, and the person who admitted to the crime was a 15-year-old boy who lived in the same complex (and all evidence points towards his confession being true, from what I recall). I'm less than six degrees of separation from the murder myself--my mom has a friend whose daughter had a class with the probable killer.

What's terrifying there is that the kid hadn't gone anywhere dangerous; her mom had told her the areas to avoid while out riding her scooter (there are some areas nearby that have real issues with drugs and violent crime), and she did avoid them...and then she was brutally raped and killed by a boy she knew. It's sickening and tragic, and I just...I pass by the Tannery Arts Center, where Maddy lived and died, a lot. It's right near the local Costco. And every time I pass by there, I think about the fact that a teenager killed a little kid there.

(The whole incident really shook up the area at large. You know those "ALWAYS REMEMBER (person)" bumper stickers? There are tons around here that say "ALWAYS REMEMBER MADYSON." And you know, just from that first name, exactly who they're referring to. :( )

 

@Acey California is the state for serial killers, seems like. My mom grew up there during the heyday of Manson, the Zodiac, and the Night Stalker. :/

The Madyson Middleton case is really awful. The victim and the killer both being so young, augh.

 

There was a pretty horrific double-murder (with a side of arson) in my high school town when I was just about to graduate. It sticks in my mind because it was a kid from one of the biggest farm families, for a while the police weren't sure they could get the charges to stick, and the cousin of the murderer had been trying shit with my stepbrother all year.

Stepbrother was told to just drop the vehicle theft case against this kid because they weren't even sure if they could make murder stick with how influential the family was in the area.

edit: Link to an article about the actual sentencing/more details on the murders. I am nearly positive I went to school with this kid.

 

My friend Linda's mother was the next door neighbor of the Green River Killer for many years and met him a bunch of times; he was a bit odd but no clue he was capable of it.

 

Wow. It's so creepy to think you or someone you know could be that close to something absolutely awful happening.

 

A few years ago there was a case in my hometown where a couple of teenagers were convicted of manslaughter. They'd broken in to an abandoned building and set fire to some junk they found in there. When they left they thought the fire was out, but it was still smouldering and caught again. The whole place went up. What they didn't know was that there was a homeless guy sleeping in the basement, who ended up dying in the blaze.

The building in question is just off a main flyover, and I pass it semi regularly when we're driving to see my parents / friends. It's still a blackened ruin and it makes me shiver whenever we go past.

 

so i started listening to blurry photos and thank you for reccing them! their true crime is really interesting, and i've got more than a passing interest in the paranormal (and making-fun-of-the-paranormal) so these guys are really the perfect podcast for me :p

 

Another thing about it that just angered me. You know Polly Klaas, that kid who was abducted and killed from her own home? Well, her father became, in theory, an advocate for missing kids cases...except in this case he admonished Maddy's mother for "not paying close enough attention."

Like, dude. Your daughter was kidnapped from her house--your house. And Maddy didn't stray too far from her home; she was just riding her scooter on the grounds of the apartment complex, like kids there regularly do.

It just made me seethe, hearing someone who lost his own daughter turning around and blaming a kid's parent for something they never could've known would happen.

 

Yay! Blurry Photos miiiight be my favorite podcast ever, I'm glad to have spread the good word to new listeners :D

…wow. A+ advocacy dude, very sensitive and respectful.