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True Crime Thoughts
Oct. 24th, 2024 05:22 pmWhile I was sick I fell down the true crime YouTube rabbit hole particularly centered around three cases + YouTubers
1) Delphi murders (LawyerLee)
2) Apple River stabbings (Matt Orchard)
3) Jorge Torres Suitcase Murder (Dreading)
The Delphi murders are an enduring interest because it happened so closeby, and the jury was just picked here in my town last week. LawyerLee's fantastic; like me, she has a real bug up her ass about the lack of transparency in this case, so she's traveled up to Delphi and waits outside the courthouse from 2 a.m. every morning to make sure she can get inside, take notes, and share them. The judge in this trial is notorious in my town for her iffy decisions and bullying behavior toward defense attorneys, and she's ordered absolutely no video or audio recording of the case, and while select members of the media are allowed to view the exhibits, the general public is not.
Short overview of the Delphi murders: in February 2017, two middle schoolers named Abby and Libby went on a walk at a popular trail spot in Delphi, and were abducted and murdered, their bodies found the next day. One of the girls recorded a man approaching them on the trail and ordering them to go down the hill. 6 or 7 years later, a pharmacist named Richard Allen was arrested; he has no criminal history and law enforcement still hasn't shared why they arrested him, but they say he confessed 60+ times while in solitary confinement (which he was in for 4 straight months following his arrest, heavily dosed on Haldol). The defense argues that the confessions included totally false details, and that Allen also confessed to murdering his wife (who's still alive) and his grandchildren (who don't exist).
It's a highly bizarre case, and it seems destined for an appeal, assuming Allen is even found guilty (Mark doesn't think he will be).
Apple River stabbings: A couple years back, a seemingly random attack at Apple River in Wisconsin left several teens/young adults stabbed, and one dead. After reviewing the teens' cell phone footage, police discovered a video of them attacking a middle-aged man in the river, accusing him of being a pedophile. After being beat up, the man took out a knife and stabbed his attackers, then fled. This one was interesting to me because after seeing the video footage, I do 100% believe the defendant was scared for his life, but he seems to have been sentenced to a harsh(ish) sentence because he's not by any means a perfect victim: he could have walked away when the boys were calling him a pedophile, instead of turning to confront them; and he stabbed one of his attackers several seconds *after* the attack had concluded. It's impossible to say whether he started the physical confrontation or not; the teenage witnesses all swear he hit a girl in their group, which is why they attacked him; but this isn't caught on video, and all of the supposed witnesses hedged around what they had actually seen, saying they had no actual memory of him hitting her, but were positive it happened.
The boy who died is, surprisingly, the easiest stabbing to defend, as he was captured on video tackling and choking the defendant before he was stabbed. It wasn't until after this boy was stabbed that everyone realized the defendant had a knife and was fighting back, at which point they scattered.
Jorge Torres Suitcase Murder: aka the Sarah Boone case. 4 years ago, Boone called the cops saying she'd woken up and found her boyfriend dead ... inside a suitcase ... and that she didn't know how he died. She claimed that the night before, she and Jorge shared a bottle of wine, painted, did a puzzle, and then decided to play hide and seek. Which apparently involved him climbing into a suitcase, Sarah zipping it up, both of them laughing merrily about the fact that he was small enough to fit inside, and then ... she just left him there and went to sleep?
Not exactly a winning story, but it gets worse, because the autopsy revealed Jorge had been badly beaten, evidently with a baseball bat, resulting in a dislocated shoulder and several other wounds. And a search of Sarah's phone revealed that she had recorded Jorge inside the suitcase pleading for his life while Sarah mocked him. I watched the police interview, which was exhausting but sometimes darkly hilarious, like:
Detective: Have you ever done anything like this before?
Sarah: I'm a straight-A student! I'm a high achiever!
Ma'am... you're an unemployed 40-year-old who gets drop-dead drunk on the daily. And:
Sarah: I would do anything for Jorge.
Detective: Well, you wouldn't let him out of the suitcase.
This case is still in the news because 4 years later, Sarah still hasn't gone to trial. She's gone through 8 different lawyers (7 of which were court-appointed public defenders) who cited ethical dilemmas and irreconcilable differences with their client. The last I heard, the court had decided that Sarah waived her right to representation, yet recently she took the stand in her own hearing, with a lawyer defending her, so apparently that didn't last. The judge seemed convinced that Sarah was deliberately scaring off all her attorneys to postpone the trial, but after watching her interview and reading her letters to the judge, I think she's just truly so egotistical that she genuinely believes her lawyers must drop every other case they're working and visit her in person every day + allow her to build her own defense and access all records.
***
In general I really like the YouTube style of true crime more than the typical documentary shows you see on TV. There's a heavy focus on police interviews and trial footage, which makes them ten times more informative. Matt Orchard in particular seems to choose cases which will stimulate the viewer's critical thinking, and encourages them to question how he's presenting info and why; LawyerLee, in part because of the restrictions on the Delphi case, focuses on a non-graphic and factual story of the trial on a day-by-day basis and, while it's obvious she's far more sympathetic to Allen and his attorneys than the judge is, she still stays neutral and has said she won't give her own opinion until after the trial is over, because she doesn't want to sway her viewers. I think this style appeals to my ... more journalistic interest in crime and politics, if that makes sense. I don't want to hear the lurid details, I want to dig into a complex case and figure out what's at play, which now that I think about, really exemplifies the three cases above--
Apple River: Man is sentenced to 20 years for randomly stabbing teens; evidence shows he was actually attacked first. Trial footage provides viewers with a detailed play-by-play of each attack and why it does or doesn't qualify as self-defense.
Delphi: Super secretive investigation folds into super secretive trial, leading to questions about transparency in the justice system and possible corruption (for example, the FBI is on record saying they think the white nationalist group Odinists committed this murder; several members of the Delphi police force are Odinists, including one of the guards who was in charge of Allen when he confessed; jurors have been asking pointed questions about the police's transparency and chain of evidence in this case).
Sarah Boone: Man with long history of abusive behavior dies in what his girlfriend claims is an accident. Video evidence reveals it's very much not an accident, and witnesses claim they saw Boone attacking him just as much as he attacked her. Now Boone is using the self-defense defense in court, but is stuck with an awfully big hurdle to jump over -- she can't exactly claim she feared for her life when Jorge was locked in a suitcase begging to be let out. If he was actively beating her and she shot him, yeah. But when the facts show she beat him with a baseball bat and zipped him into a suitcase...uh...
1) Delphi murders (LawyerLee)
2) Apple River stabbings (Matt Orchard)
3) Jorge Torres Suitcase Murder (Dreading)
The Delphi murders are an enduring interest because it happened so closeby, and the jury was just picked here in my town last week. LawyerLee's fantastic; like me, she has a real bug up her ass about the lack of transparency in this case, so she's traveled up to Delphi and waits outside the courthouse from 2 a.m. every morning to make sure she can get inside, take notes, and share them. The judge in this trial is notorious in my town for her iffy decisions and bullying behavior toward defense attorneys, and she's ordered absolutely no video or audio recording of the case, and while select members of the media are allowed to view the exhibits, the general public is not.
Short overview of the Delphi murders: in February 2017, two middle schoolers named Abby and Libby went on a walk at a popular trail spot in Delphi, and were abducted and murdered, their bodies found the next day. One of the girls recorded a man approaching them on the trail and ordering them to go down the hill. 6 or 7 years later, a pharmacist named Richard Allen was arrested; he has no criminal history and law enforcement still hasn't shared why they arrested him, but they say he confessed 60+ times while in solitary confinement (which he was in for 4 straight months following his arrest, heavily dosed on Haldol). The defense argues that the confessions included totally false details, and that Allen also confessed to murdering his wife (who's still alive) and his grandchildren (who don't exist).
It's a highly bizarre case, and it seems destined for an appeal, assuming Allen is even found guilty (Mark doesn't think he will be).
Apple River stabbings: A couple years back, a seemingly random attack at Apple River in Wisconsin left several teens/young adults stabbed, and one dead. After reviewing the teens' cell phone footage, police discovered a video of them attacking a middle-aged man in the river, accusing him of being a pedophile. After being beat up, the man took out a knife and stabbed his attackers, then fled. This one was interesting to me because after seeing the video footage, I do 100% believe the defendant was scared for his life, but he seems to have been sentenced to a harsh(ish) sentence because he's not by any means a perfect victim: he could have walked away when the boys were calling him a pedophile, instead of turning to confront them; and he stabbed one of his attackers several seconds *after* the attack had concluded. It's impossible to say whether he started the physical confrontation or not; the teenage witnesses all swear he hit a girl in their group, which is why they attacked him; but this isn't caught on video, and all of the supposed witnesses hedged around what they had actually seen, saying they had no actual memory of him hitting her, but were positive it happened.
The boy who died is, surprisingly, the easiest stabbing to defend, as he was captured on video tackling and choking the defendant before he was stabbed. It wasn't until after this boy was stabbed that everyone realized the defendant had a knife and was fighting back, at which point they scattered.
Jorge Torres Suitcase Murder: aka the Sarah Boone case. 4 years ago, Boone called the cops saying she'd woken up and found her boyfriend dead ... inside a suitcase ... and that she didn't know how he died. She claimed that the night before, she and Jorge shared a bottle of wine, painted, did a puzzle, and then decided to play hide and seek. Which apparently involved him climbing into a suitcase, Sarah zipping it up, both of them laughing merrily about the fact that he was small enough to fit inside, and then ... she just left him there and went to sleep?
Not exactly a winning story, but it gets worse, because the autopsy revealed Jorge had been badly beaten, evidently with a baseball bat, resulting in a dislocated shoulder and several other wounds. And a search of Sarah's phone revealed that she had recorded Jorge inside the suitcase pleading for his life while Sarah mocked him. I watched the police interview, which was exhausting but sometimes darkly hilarious, like:
Detective: Have you ever done anything like this before?
Sarah: I'm a straight-A student! I'm a high achiever!
Ma'am... you're an unemployed 40-year-old who gets drop-dead drunk on the daily. And:
Sarah: I would do anything for Jorge.
Detective: Well, you wouldn't let him out of the suitcase.
This case is still in the news because 4 years later, Sarah still hasn't gone to trial. She's gone through 8 different lawyers (7 of which were court-appointed public defenders) who cited ethical dilemmas and irreconcilable differences with their client. The last I heard, the court had decided that Sarah waived her right to representation, yet recently she took the stand in her own hearing, with a lawyer defending her, so apparently that didn't last. The judge seemed convinced that Sarah was deliberately scaring off all her attorneys to postpone the trial, but after watching her interview and reading her letters to the judge, I think she's just truly so egotistical that she genuinely believes her lawyers must drop every other case they're working and visit her in person every day + allow her to build her own defense and access all records.
***
In general I really like the YouTube style of true crime more than the typical documentary shows you see on TV. There's a heavy focus on police interviews and trial footage, which makes them ten times more informative. Matt Orchard in particular seems to choose cases which will stimulate the viewer's critical thinking, and encourages them to question how he's presenting info and why; LawyerLee, in part because of the restrictions on the Delphi case, focuses on a non-graphic and factual story of the trial on a day-by-day basis and, while it's obvious she's far more sympathetic to Allen and his attorneys than the judge is, she still stays neutral and has said she won't give her own opinion until after the trial is over, because she doesn't want to sway her viewers. I think this style appeals to my ... more journalistic interest in crime and politics, if that makes sense. I don't want to hear the lurid details, I want to dig into a complex case and figure out what's at play, which now that I think about, really exemplifies the three cases above--
Apple River: Man is sentenced to 20 years for randomly stabbing teens; evidence shows he was actually attacked first. Trial footage provides viewers with a detailed play-by-play of each attack and why it does or doesn't qualify as self-defense.
Delphi: Super secretive investigation folds into super secretive trial, leading to questions about transparency in the justice system and possible corruption (for example, the FBI is on record saying they think the white nationalist group Odinists committed this murder; several members of the Delphi police force are Odinists, including one of the guards who was in charge of Allen when he confessed; jurors have been asking pointed questions about the police's transparency and chain of evidence in this case).
Sarah Boone: Man with long history of abusive behavior dies in what his girlfriend claims is an accident. Video evidence reveals it's very much not an accident, and witnesses claim they saw Boone attacking him just as much as he attacked her. Now Boone is using the self-defense defense in court, but is stuck with an awfully big hurdle to jump over -- she can't exactly claim she feared for her life when Jorge was locked in a suitcase begging to be let out. If he was actively beating her and she shot him, yeah. But when the facts show she beat him with a baseball bat and zipped him into a suitcase...uh...
