Crime Con 2019 in New Orleans Recap

Dateline

The Dateline reporters are some of the best storytellers in the business and part of our zeitgeist.

Josh Mankiewicz said the families are harder to be around than the murderers. He said he is astonished that people use murder as a solution over divorce. He asked someone why once and he replied, “I probably should have thought about that.”

Dennis Murphy doesn’t leave notes in his lap to ease interviews with the families. Mankiewicz says he tells interviewees they can start over again if need be.

Murphy said sometimes he wishes he could start with “the husband did it” and then tell the story.

#OrDidHe?

Mankiewicz joked that his brother said his first words were, “Mama, Dada, did you kill your wife for the insurance money?”

Sometimes a piece can be put together in 12 hours, Murphy said, and sometimes it takes 12 years, such as updating new developments in a case. Keith Morrison said he often stays in touch with the families featured on the show.

A case each would like to cover is Lizzie Borden for Murphy. “It reads exactly like a Dateline.” And the John F. Kennedy assassination for Mankiewicz. He covered the House assassination hearings. Morrison hasn’t thought much about it but chose Jack the Ripper.

A cold case Mankiewicz would like to cover is the West Mesa murders.

He said he was terrified of the Thomas and Jackie Hawks murder where they were bound and gagged and thrown overboard, tied to her yacht’s anchor. The yacht returned; they did not.

Murphy thought of a story from Walla Walla, Wash., with a man who had multiple personalities. He said he didn’t do it because one of his other personalities was at the wheel.

#DontWatchAlone

Liz Cole, executive producer, said the competition is tough for stories. “We keep our eye on the ball and do the best we can.” Her team is called the Smart Olympics.

Mankiewicz said one of the reasons fans like Dateline so much is because of the people you don’t see on the air. “All oars pull in the same direction.”

Cole said there is not much turnover, but she looks for employees who are resourceful, dogged, meticulous and who have an incredible attention to detail. Producers make sure the stories are clear, fair, accurate and bring the victims to life. The stories must have mystery, suspense and a twist.

Tidbits from the panel include that the FBI doesn’t test for gunshot residue any more. Drones and the M-Vac are becoming more important. The latter can get DNA out of porous surfaces.

#ButAllThingsArePossible

You can save yourself from being on Dateline by avoiding the following terms on bingo cards that were handed out. Words include burner phone, receipt for kill items, love triangle, affair, custody battle, money problems, life insurance, Google search, potty mouth, defense wounds, DNA, shells, missing murder weapon, poison, ignored red flags, abandoned car, hoarder house, hard drive or phone erased, tower pings, double life, hit man, staged robbery, acting weird at a hospital or funeral, bad side of town, splatter, no body, bottom of the stairs/tub, tats, piercings, no other man in town?, unsettling eyebrows, mullet/man bun, haunting facial hair, nosy neighbor, small town gossip, secret recording, lie detector and search party.

Also, prison glass, no one saw it coming, full of poop, smirks, hot cop, talking to yourself, family in denial, lawyers up, Keith’s Converse, Keith leans in, Manky’s hanky, Lester the Vester, airtight alibi, pillar of the community, loved life, childhood friend, TMI and 911.

I'm getting out my cards tonight.

Christopher Darden

Christopher Darden still thinks about Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman as June 12 marks the 25th anniversary of their murders. He said this is a profoundly sad time of year.

“Twenty-five years is a long time to be dead,” Darden said. “I don’t feel any better about it today than I did 25 years ago. It never leaves you. Her head was attached to her body by a string.”

He said he knew the case so well as if he felt like he was there when it happened.

Darden rolled through names of O.J. Simpson’s defense lawyers he was up against in the trial. “Say what you want to say, Johnnie Cochran was a brilliant lawyer,” adding that he learned from him.

Robert Kardashian left a legacy—“big booties,” Darden said.

Darden said F. Lee Bailey watches everything he does. “We used to call him The Flea,” Darden said. “He’s bitter. I don’t think he could practice law in a kindergarten class.” Darden said Bailey basically called him Marcia Clark’s slave. “We lose Johnnie and Kardashian and this man keeps on kicking,” Darden said.

He said Bob Shapiro is making money on LegalZoom and Alan Dershowitz “in his heart of hearts, he’s in love with me.”

Darden said there is no justice when everybody has a financial interest in the outcome of a case. He flashed a slide of the book Madam Foreman: A Rush to Judgment. “It was a 10-month trial,” Darden said. “That’s a slow, deliberate walk.” He said Fred and Kim Goldman are the only people who should have gotten to write a book, although he did. “My book sold more copies than yours,” he told Cochran, adding that he would smile if he was here.

It was always assumed Shapiro was trying to be first author on the case because he was always typing on a laptop. “(Judge) Ito is the only one who didn’t write a book although when I see him, I encourage him to,” Darden said.

He wishes he had never had Simpson try on the gloves. “I can’t walk it back.” He had seen Simpson wearing Bruno Magli shoes that left a print at the crime scene on the sidelines of NFL games.

Darden said it was hard to win a trial when the lead detective, Mark Fuhrman, who was known to have used racist language, took the Fifth regarding planting or manufacturing evidence.

Race is an issue in every case, Darden said. “I became an object of race hatred,” he said, being accused of being an apologist for Fuhrman. “If you are prosecutor in this room today, thinking about a high-profile case, you better think about race.”

He said he believes black lives matter. “It doesn’t mean white and brown don’t.”

Darden said he has learned that anybody is capable of killing anybody else if they feel properly motivated. Even if they are someone like Simpson who had a Heisman Trophy, was in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and had a family. He showed a slide of Simpson as a football player next to a regular picture of him. “I wonder what advice young O.J. would give to old O.J.”

Darden has also learned that the truth will eventually find its way to the light.

I also met Tom Lange, lead homicide detective.

Nancy Grace

Nancy Grace has dedicated her career to victim advocacy, giving a voice to those who can’t speak for themselves. In a new show, she will be re-examining cases that she feels just didn’t get it right—from the wrongly accused, to botched investigations, to unclear motives, to unjust sentences. In the premiere episode, they will cover the murder of Pamela Vitale, a beloved wife and mother found dead after a brutal attack, her body desecrated. Grace was very close to both the victim and her husband, having been with them both just hours before the murder.

When her own boyfriend was killed, Grace said she couldn’t eat or stand to see a clock on the wall. She mourned him from 1999 to 2007 and could not let go. She snapped out of it because she wanted her twins to have a normal mother. She knew he would not have wanted her to mourn. Her husband, David, has stuck with her, even through “Dancing With The Stars,” she said. He didn’t seem to have much personality whenever she pointed him out.

“Let me just say it. O.J. did it,” Grace said, after wrapping up the murdered boyfriend discussion.

She called the recent Casey Anthony show a mockumentary.

Someone asked about Missy Bevers, the unsolved case in Midlothian, Texas, that haunts me. She said the killer is not a man. This is the case where the killer is on camera dressed up in SWAT clothes. Grace said sex is involved as a motive. As are anger, cheating and resentment. No one stood to benefit financially and it was not a robbery, she said, adding that something turned bad.

Another participant asked, “Do you think the owl did it?” That was a prior presentation from a North Carolina case that used that as a defense. Grace said the victim’s husband once had a girlfriend in Germany who ended up at the foot of the stairs. He took custody of her children and brought them here.

Grace affirmed working hard. She doesn’t want to be pristine and hermetically sealed, but cut and bruised and exhausted at the end of her life, saying she used it all. She does not want to just slide into heaven.

Grace said her 87-year-old mother lives with her.

Cannibal Cop

Gil Valle said his meet and greet at Crime Con was scheduled at 1:30 p.m. so organizers made sure he was fed at lunch and wouldn’t be hungry.

He is known as the Cannibal Cop after his wife found evidence of his fetish chatroom and his looking up human recipes for possible kidnapping victims. He denied using a New York Police Department database to collect addresses and said he had no giant oven or chloroform.

Valle had been an honor student in high school and his parents did no wrong in raising him though they divorced when he was 5, he said. He does recall seeing a TV show with women being tied up when he was 13 or 14.

“People are aroused by certain things,” he said. “Fantasies run the gamut,” he added, mentioning dendrophilia and being tortured to death.

Valle did not testify in his trial for conspiracy to kidnap and said the jury based its decision on what he might do in the future. He said he never missed work during his fantasies.

The judge overturned the verdict 16 months later and Valle wrote a book named “Raw Deal.”

The New York Post knew within three hours that he joined match.com and did such headlines as Hungry for Love. “I’d rather they laugh at me than be afraid of me,” he said.

There is not a pill he can take to help him, but he said therapy has. “I still look at porn, but don’t engage in chats or role playing.”

He now has a job at a construction company. He has not seen his daughter.

Black Dahlia

Don’t believe any account that this famous case has been solved, said Anne Redding, who has studied Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, for 30 years. She is a professor and department chair of Justice Studies at Santa Barbara City College and a police academy instructor.

The facts are that Short was in a pinwheel of being alone, homeless, poor and trusting in 1947 when her body was found in a park in Los Angeles, Redding said. It looked like a mannequin. The psychological autopsy for Short is that of loss and separation and difficulty in being affectionate, she added.

The facts also include that she was bisected and posed and emptied of blood. Her mouth was sliced. A piece of her thigh, where she had a rose tattoo, was in her vagina, her pubic hair was rolled into her rectum and she was bathed with a bristled brush. The bisection enabled better concealment and transport, Redding said.

As a child, Short suffered from asthma and toggled between Boston to family friends in Florida in the winter months at 16. Her father abandoned the family and was the first owner of a mini golf course. He moved to California and Short relocated there years later. She often worked as a waitress.

Customers in a drug store came up with her moniker, which originated from a movie called “Blue Dahlia.”

She had a fiancée, who she called darling, who was killed in World War II and she carried his obituary in what was called her belongings package, which also held her birth certificate.

Redding called this a lust murder, or piquerism. Sometimes the dragon wins, Redding said.

Owl Theory

Attorney Larry Pollard, next door neighbor to Michael Peterson, said he is practicing the Golden Rule as he presents the Owl Theory.

Peterson’s wife, Kathleen, was found at the bottom of the staircase after they were out by the pool. But he believes there was a colossal rush to judgment on Peterson’s guilt. As a sportsman and deer hunter, Pollard says he has a “smoking feather” instead of a blow poke which law enforcement believed the husband used.

She had 38 hairs in her left hand and 25 strands in the right, perhaps after grabbing her head after an owl attacked, Pollard said. He said owls always strike from behind and “attack the color white for some reason.” It ignites their hunting instinct.

He said red neurons indicated Kathleen was in shock and fainted, but had no cracked skull or brain damage. He said she had Flexeril, Valium and alcohol in her system.

Serial Killers

John White, a former police officer and now psychologist, said he can’t understand how serial killers treat people the way they do, but much of it dates back to childhood. And Danny Rolling, who murdered the Grissom family in Southern Hills, was one of them. He was beaten by his father and had a suspected head injury. He shot his father. He set up camp outside universities. He sang about his murders and left a tape there. He posed and washed victims. He put victim Christa's decapitated head on a shelf. 

How many of you are wearing something from your husband? Were you with him when he bought it? See the receipt! There could be a speck of blood on the necklace. Forty-seven percent of serial killers take trophies. Twelve percent take hair or body parts. Sixteen percent of serial killers want a sex slave.

White talked about one case where the killer had an IQ of 152. He hated women so they had to be dead for him to have intercourse with them. Some criminals will just want to watch people die by spraying cyanide to see what it will do.

There are cult types such as Richard Ramiriz who extracted eyes from people because there is a poem about eating eyes to know the soul. A woman married him while he was in prison. You think men are strange?

Robin Gecht of Chicago used piano wire to sever breasts and eat them.

John Robinson, “Slavemaster,” was in the International Council of Masters, a secret cult. He was married with five children and killed eight. He met women online and lured them to his house. His wife sought a divorce after 41 years.

Scorecard Killer Randy Kraft killed 16 men, mostly teens. He had a head injury as child, suffering chronic headaches. He emasculated the victims, stuck a sock in their anus and used a cigarette lighter on their nipples.   

Keith Jesperson, 35, (1990-95) is the Happy Face Killer. He was a truck driver who murdered prostitutes. He urinated on an electric fence at age 6. He was made to pay rent. He almost drowned at 8. He got erections from hearing Vietnam war stories. He played the “Death Game” with a victim. A hitchhiker was with him during a bad storm. She wanted to keep moving; he wanted to rest. He raped and strangled then resuscitated her five times before taking a nap beside her lifeless body. He strapped her to the underside of his semi. He wrote happy faces on walls in restrooms and in letters.

David Parker Ray, "Toy-Box," had a soundproof truck with gynecological tables and objects for sexual torture. He played tapes of the incidents for the naked victims to watch. No bodies were found. His daughter was an accomplice.

Lonnie Franklin stuffed shirts in mouths of victims and raped them and took pictures.

Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, was 33. He generally killed others around his age and some on his father’s business route. He chose prostitutes because his mother was abusive to his father and he walked away from her. Ridgway considered his mother a whore.

Bobby Joe Long used dog collars. He watched his parents being tied up in robbery once.

Robert Yates buried victims outside of his bedroom window after he shot them. He was a helicopter pilot and said to be a good worker.

Gerard Schaefer, went to graves of the victims for 30 days.

Last few tidbits: The National Law Enforcement Museum in Washington, D.C., shows visitors the critical thinking and forensic science skills law enforcement uses to analyze clues. Visitors can immerse in 911 Emergency Ops or the training simulator for stressful decision making situations. I promised to mention this in writings because they gave me a challenge coin.

Tidbits and paraphernalia I picked up: Talk Murder to Me sticker and an Only You Can Prevent Serial Killers pin. I loved the hidden PSST! Cards that said "nice sleuthing. You caught me." If you found one, you put it on social media to try to win a prize. #JusticeforDJ bracelets were distributed. This was the perfect venue to alert attendees of unsolved crimes.

I want to know Who Killed Sister Cathy? The murder of Catherine Cesnik is featured in "Keepers" on Netflix.

Dr. Henry Lee and CeCe Moore

Forensic scientist Dr. Henry Lee has worked for 58 years. He wanted to be a basketball star (he is only 5 feet, 8 inches tall), but was a police captain in Taiwan. He lost his dad at 7 and was one of 13 children. He taught kung fu and has waited tables.

He looks at evidence and lets the chips fall, not trying to prove guilt or innocence. He has investigated 300 police shooting cases. Jon Benet Ramsey’s family got mad at him. Other cases were Kobe Bryant, Chandra Levy, King Tut, Pocahontas, who was 16 years old on a peace mission and never got back.

He has investigated JFK and the magic bullet and Vince Foster, whose thumb was in the trigger, but most suicides are not done like that.

He said you can bring the lab to the scene nowadays.

CeCe Moore, genetic genealogist, made 56 successful IDs in the first year she used public database GEDmatch to identify a distant relative and work backwards through their family tree to narrow suspects in crimes.

Alina Burroughs on Crime Scenes

Alina Burroughs said the Casey Anthony case made her famous. She was cleaning brains and skulls as a crime scene investigator and worked that case, which changed her life. 

The jury seemed to be falling asleep, she said. She wished she could have brought the trunk liner in the courtroom with the smell of a corpse or any odor technology or air samples.

She said those on the stand owe jurors a way to convey factual information in a way they understand. The average juror has a high school education, she said. Fifty-eight percent want to see evidence, 42 percent want DNA evidence and 56 percent want fingerprint evidence.

She spoke of Disaster Mortuaries. DMorts. It’s an operational response team.

Burroughs also explained that crime scene investigators used to have measuring wheels and can now do scales virtually. Blueprints are old school. A 3-D laser scanner creates models of crime scenes accurate within a millimeter. A blood splatter analysis can be done in four minutes now.

Columbine—Is there a manual now for mass shootings?

Crystal Miller, a Columbine survivor, said district officials are considering a proposal to tear down and rebuild the school. A new school would keep its name, mascot and colors. The school principal is the glue of the community, Miller said. She said some try to sneak in out of morbid curiosity. She is on the fence, but more for razing the building than not. She shared her faith on this Sunday session. Faith says that I don't have the capacity, but I know someone who does, she said. She wished she could have avoided the incident, but it taught her how to live. She has a platform to bring hope to people. She wondered if she would die quickly or suffer slowly. She wanted and needed sleep, but knew closing her eyes would relive the scene. She wanted comfort, but touch would make her recoil. She chose forgiveness within a month. Because it made her angry and bitter and hating life not to and "that is not who I am." She said she is no better and has failed herself. Miller said it wasn't easy and she had to forgive over and over again until she really lived out of the place of forgiveness. She asked: Are you a buffalo or cow?  Cows turn and take flight from storms, but the storm catches up. Buffalo see it and prepare to fight. They charge into the eye, willing to go right through it.

Lagniappe:

They have a Crime Con podcast row. That is where I learned about Who Killed Sister Cathy? I watched the show on Netflix.

You can be an HQ member to be able to do Zooms. They have been held about once a week. I listened to one with Jackee Taylor of Montana earlier this year. Her father was in the Witness Protection Program in Shreveport. I ended up writing a story on her for Forum and she came to speak to Downtown Rotary.

They have Crime Con cruises. I first heard about Crime Con too late when it was held in Nashville in 2018. I believe the first one was in Indianapolis in 2017. The one in 2020 in Orlando got canceled due to COVID, I believe. I knew I wasn’t going to go, so not sure.

There are many books for sale and a Crime Con store. I have some “Basically A Detective” stuff.

These is also an annual JFK Assassination Conference.