Recently I started watching TV shows like "Forensic files" and "Cold Case Files." I watch them a couple of times a week for an hour before going to bed. Most of the crimes are solved by the testimony of disgruntled ex-wives or by simple physical evidence like tennis shoe tracks left on a bloody floor. It's hard to believe, but an awful lot of murders are solved because the murderer can't bear to part with a pair of cool shoes that he got for 50% off list price.
What keeps me hooked are the really bizarre cases. The best one had to do with a hospital doctor who raped his women patients while they were sedated. None of the women saw him do it but they all deduced that it must have been him because no one else was in a position to do it. Police took blood samples from him a few times and the DNA never matched the rapist's. Finally one women insisted that the blood sample be taken with witnesses present and with a film camera running. To her astonishment, the blood still didn't match.
Years passed and the frustrated woman finally convinced the police to take yet another sample in front of witnesses. By this time the police thought the woman was crazy, and they warned her that no further tests would be made. Another doctor extracted the blood, and to everybody's surprise the syringe filled with rust-colored powder. What the heck!!!???
In the lab it was confirmed that the powder was dried blood. It turned out that the doctor had slipped little condiment-size packets of someone else's blood under his skin, and the blood taken through the years really belonged to an old patient of his. He refrigerated the blood so he'd always have a fresh sample for the tests, but over time the blood got old and turned to powder. Now THAT was a TV show worth watching!
After you see dozens of these shows you begin to get a sense of how tragic life is for some people, even for the murderers sometimes. Imagine that you're a nice guy, a good neighbor and all that, but you attempt to buy some marijuana and the seller deliberately gyps you. You can't complain to the police, so for a couple of days you entertain thoughts of violent revenge. For most people it wouldn't go any farther because most people can't stay mad very long, and because taking revenge would more than likely result in serious grief for the revenge taker. But what if....
What if you had an irresponsible friend who at the height of your anger kept saying, "You're not gonna let him get away with that, are ya? Man, if someone did that to me I'd take a baseball bat and..." Geez, maybe some of us are just lucky that nobody gave us that kind of stupid advice at the time of our lives when we were most vulnerable.
I'm also amazed at how many modern murders result in multiple plausible suspects. In older times you could assume that the seedy stalker who was seen to have followed the victim for weeks before the crime, was probably the killer. Nowadays seedy stalkers are in abundance, and any one of them could have done it. I just saw a show where a girl was killed and police managed to find surveillance tapes of the places she'd shopped at during the day. It turned out that two unrelated seedy guys followed her at different times, though neither one turned out to be the killer. The killer was a third seedy guy.
Aaaaargh! Okay, all this is creeping me out. Maybe I should lay off these shows for a while.
BTW: Sorry there's no attribution for the nifty pictures. I lost the name of the site I got them from.
20 comments:
If you have A&E check out First 48. The show follows real investigations as they happen. Being real the cases constantly take diversions that would never happen in a scripted crime drama. A GPS tracking bracelet says the eyewitness identified suspect in a daylight shooting with an AK-47 wasn't at the scene. The obvious suspect lawyers up and the case goes nowhere until the victim's car turns up a thousand miles away with a petty criminal. A man calls 911 to report he's been in an accident on the highway and when police arrive at the scene he's been shot dead. Detectives going to interview witnesses encounter an angry man with a gun who turns out to be a prison guard headed to his girlfriend's house to have a 'discussion' with her. He's unconnected to their case of course. It's great stuff.
I think everyone is capable of committing violent crimes. I bet everyone has fantasized about doing something horrible to another human. What really keeps most people from actually going through with it is they don't act on their impulse.
Some people lack the ability to step out of the moment and think, 'oh this is probably going to come back to me in a nasty way.'
Let's not kid ourselves, everyday people do horrible things to each other and they do them because they can get away with it. People lie and deceive and use each other all the time. It's just that most peoples' crimes are too nuanced or too common to be legislated.
In "The Name Above the Title" director Frank Capra freely admits he at one point fantasized about chopping studio head Harry Cohn to bits with an ax, a refreshing bit of truth in a Hollywood autobiography.
Okay Okay Eddie, I'll stop stalking you.
I saw that one with the guy who put someone else's blood in his arm! That was crazy...it sounded more like a TV show than real life. I remember the nurses talking about how the first time they drew blood from the guy, it was kind of coagulated and gross...but they didn't think much of it. Arrgh!!
Luke hates these true crime shows, but I eat them up, even though I get nightmares and weird scares during the day. Ever watch court TV on weekday mornings? They show live footage from real court hearings- very interesting!
Real quick I have to disagree with Adam on the idea that all people are capable of committing violence, or at least wanting to do it...I mean, I'm sure everyone is capable of hurting people out of self defense, but there's tons of evidence showing that humans as a rule don't LIKE hurting other humans, but can easily be swayed to do it. Of course, you've got the sociopaths and the other trouble weirdos who are on Forensic Files that make my claim look weak, but I'll stand by it...
Talk about a mystery!
Spotty: Thanks, I'll try it!
Adam: True!
Whit: Frank Capra!? Whoda thunk?
Vincent: Haw!
Katie: Are you referring to the famopus Milgram Experiment? I'm going to do a post about that sometime soon.
This is some of the creepiest stuff I've read on this blog. Right up there with the "woman in the wall" story.
I am obsessed with those type of shows. My TV is always stuck on Investigation Discovery channel cause every time I turn it on I'm hooked on the story. I especially love Dateline that can have a story on for 2 hours.
Though after I first started watching it for long periods of time it did give me a bad dream for choking a little girl to death and then trying to live with the guilt and what do I now? I hate dreams that feel real like that and make me feel guilty all the next day. I can't imagine what it would feel like to accidentally kill someone, that's a situation that seems the strangest because at some level it's too crazy but it does happen and that's scary.
If you want a whole different type of depressing watch hoarders. Being a child who grew up in hoarding, maybe not to the level of extreme on the shows but it was definitely not normal, I'm glad to see this issue addressed so publicly because I encounter way too many people who find it incomprehensible.
Ah man, I love these shows. I used to watch them all the time.
I remember one in particular where a woman, holding a grudge against her husband for having an affair, committed suicide but set it up so that it seemed that he did it. The plan worked at first, but the investigators looked closely and eventually deduced what really happened.
The reenactments are the best part. It makes you wonder if people actually behave like those characters in soap operas.
Yes Eddie, I was partially thinking about the Milgram Experiment! It's so horribly depressing to think about the results...but I felt slightly better after hearing some other tests that were run in a similar way- one test had the exact same setup, except that the person in charge left the room, leaving the "teacher" to complete the experiment without being watched. The result was that most of them cheated, and never upped the amount of pain given to the learner when they thought they would get away with it.
So...if an authority figure orders you to hurt another person, it's easy for some people to hand over the responsibility to them and do the pain-giving. But if no one is there, they will choose to not cause harm to others. Still scary that people are so susceptible to bad ideas...but at least most humans prefer to NOT hurt other humans.
Anyhow I look forward to your post about it! :)
Forensic TV creeps me out, too - especially the realistic forensic TV. The one show that would scare the bejeezus out of me was a show on HBO called Autopsy. That show actually displayed the dead and decomposing bodies (the real thing from police videos and photos - NO reenactments unless they were talking about a case before photography) as well as occasionally demonstrate a real autopsy.
I agree with Adam that everyone is capable of committing a violent crime but people in the "right" state of mind don't go through with it. Think about the cases of the people who have never committed a crime in their life except for the occasional parking and speeding ticket who are driven to murder, such as: people who are so battered and tortured by their partner that they truly believe that killing that person would save their lives (ex: Francine Hughes); parents whose children were molested by some pervert and the justice system either isn't working or isn't working fast enough, so they take justice into their own hands (ex: Ellie Nestler); people who have loved ones who are suffering so much from their debilitating, fatal diseases that they believe that killing would be a merciful thing to do (ex: Carol Carr and Dr. Kevorkian).
No, folks, I'm not a freak! :) I was a dual major in school (Information Management and Pre-Law), so I had to learn about some of these cases for my law classes.
Those Milgram experiments are shocking. I can't believe how easily people give in to authority. Most of the time "authority" is just some jagoff trying to prove his dick is bigger than yours (especially when it's a woman!)
There's a great article on this kind of stuff on Cracked.com
Btw, I also want to point out that I don't think I'M any less susceptible to that kind of manipulation than anyone else. That's what's so scary about Milgram; any of us might have done what the dude in the lab coat said just because he was "in charge." Now- imagine if he had been a cop or a CO in WWII. I mean, everyone knows cops are dicks, but most of us would probably do what the pigs said if we feared being arrested. That's one of the reasons I don't like going into the States.
My favorite show is "Snapped". They call it that because all the perps are women, but it's mostly cold-blooded, meticulously planned murders.
If we believe in authority, of course we would boost the voltage on that volunteer. Authority is simply the right to be obeyed.
That said, I agree with Katie. Altruism & sympathy are human nature too. Everyone seemed conflicted over electrocuting their peer.
In the late 80's to mid 90's there was a pop cult trend toward a fascination with serial killers, ie; Silence of the Lambs, Henry Portrait of a Serial Killer, in addition to the media fascination with non fictional killers, ie; Gacy, Dahmer, Gein, Bundy.
Don't really have any theory what it was about; the Gulf War maybe?
There are quite a few of these shows now. I'm suprised at how many crime scene photos they show, without the identity of the victims being obscured.
Then there's the fictional forensic shows with all the "digi-gore", ie; watching the path of a bullet rip through a body in detail, or a forensic tool scoop out a body part.
Don't really have any theories what its about. Gulf War 2 maybe?
Thomas: You might be right, but it could also have a more mundane origin: Cold Case Files, which I think started the TV forensic fad, was innovative for its day and expertly done.
Sage: Sounds interesting!
Brubaker: I saw that!
Katie: I agree with your conclusion that people don't want to hurt, but I think the Milgram experiment is seriously flawed. I'll write about it soon. See what you think!
jennifer, Pappy: Snapped? Autopsy? Never heard of them! I'll look out for them in case they pop up again.
I can imagine situations where killing would be necessary, but i'm glad most people have an aversion to it.
Jorge: I'll get back to you on this.
Hey, Eddie, you might want to check this out (then again, you may not):
http://www.crimescenecleaning.net/blog/2010/01/technicians-journal-2-my-very-first-job_25.html
A blog entry by a guy who works for a company that cleans up crime/suicide scenes. Man, this thing blows the creepometer right off the charts.
Buzz: I took a look. Creepy is right. I hate to think about what must have gone on in that room.
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