Tuesday, October 29, 2019

The Best Alternative-Sources Series: Roberta Glass’s True Crime Reports

Posted by The Machine


1. Pro-Justice V Anti-Justice Media Trends

Increasingly common these days is for pro-truth, pro-victim and pro-justice sources to stake out the high ground.

Malcolm Gladwell, subject here of an ongoing series, really is a throwback, part of a trend that is losing traction and that may already have peaked.

Taking the side of the dwindling band of fabricators, inciters, stalkers, defamers, blood-money-grubbers, media-bashers, and foreigner-bashers, and the most unsavory crime elements seeking to undermine justice, now takes major chutzpah and unawareness.

Just before Gladwell’s rant against Italian justice surfaced, we had launched a new series to highlight the large number of objective sources on Meredith’s case and many others where justice is in question.

Documentaries, films and podcasts about people who have been convicted of murders they allegedly didn’t commit have been hugely popular.

TV documentaries such as American Girl, Italian Nightmare, Paradise Lost, West of Memphis, Making a Murderer and The Case Against Adnan Syed have all been watched by millions of people.

The Serial podcast about the Adnan Syed/Hae Min Lee case has been downloaded over 175 million times

When They See Us - the Netflix drama about the Central Park Five case - has been watched by 23 million Netflix accounts worldwide.

TV producers, filmmakers and podcast-makers know full well that a tale about a supposedly innocent person being railroaded by corrupt or incompetent cops and rogue prosecutors is a far more exciting and melodramatic story than cases where the juries convicted the right people.

They are not always concerned about truth and justice - they want a product that is a moneyspinner and will guarantee them an audience of millions, bucketloads of publicity, newspaper headlines and media interviews. Pesky facts that undermine their narrative that an innocent person was railroaded invariably get ignored.

They literally create fairytales where prosecutors and police officers are presented as evil villains intent on imprisoning innocent victims who are as pure and innocent as Snow White. Unfortunately, Joe Public and the likes of Kim Kardashian are stupid and they unquestiongly believe everything they see and read in the media without bothering to do any fact-checking.

Over 300 online reviewers gave the Netflix hoax Amanda Knox high marks. Gladwell quoted it. Celebrity Kim Kardashian watched the faux documentary on Netflix and said she thinks Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito are innocent on Twitter.

“Just finished the Amanda Knox doc. I don’t think they did it. I really want a Natalie Halloway doc & they need to solve that crime. So sad!”

She recently tweeted her support for Netflix darling Brendan Dassey - who along with Steven Avery was convicted of raping and murdering Teresa Halbach.

Whenever a new true crime documentary or drama about alleged miscarriage of justice lands on Netflix, I immediately wonder what inconvenient facts have been brushed under the carpet and what lies and disinformation have been presented as fact.

I know I definitely can’t rely on The Guardian for reliable information because it has a long history of supporting people who have been convicted of murder or casting doubt on their convictions e.g. Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, the West Memphis Three, Adnan Syed, Jeremy Bamber, James Hanratty and Simon Hall.

2. Roberta Glass’s True Crime Reports

Roberta has the right approach to ascertaining the truth with regard to high-profile cases i.e. she relies on the official court documents - not on misinformation and propaganda.  Her explanation of where she is coming from on her YouTube Channel:

”Tired of the misinformation and propaganda in current True Crime reporting, podcasts and documentaries; Roberta Glass set out in 2018 to create a True Crime Report sourced directly from the court records and case files. Her drive and curiosity to look deeper into the true crime stories she covers has also taken her to the courthouse where she has covered the NXIVM trial and Jeffrey Epstein related hearings. “

Roberta has interviewed Ken Kratz who prosecuted Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey and Lyn Hartman who was engaged to Steven Avery.

It’s fascinating to listen to the stories of people like Lyn Hartman and Alexa who were fooled by the PR campaigns to free convicted killers and how they eventually realised they had been manipulated and misinformed. They give the listener an insight to what Rabia Chaudry and Kathleen Zellner are really like and how they mislead people.

I also recommend listening to the interview with former policeman and author Martin Preib. He explains how innocence activists from Northwestern’s Innocence Project - who included Paul Ciolino - framed Alstory Simon.

3. Podcasts Recommended For First Listening

I’ve listed some of the most interesting podcasts below.

Roberta Glass True Crime Report can also be listened to on Google Podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker and Castbo

Posted by The Machine on 10/29/19 at 11:00 PM in

Comments

Interesting list. Very few of those “framed” and made into a cause have actually been sprung.

The Central Park 5 were released after the real perp confessed. Avery and Syed are still inside. The WM3 were released because of new DNA evidence the prosecution helped bring forward. In Knox’s case the inflammatory PR didnt matter a damn; it’s now an albatross around her neck, Knox can thank her dad for that.

Not too many cases in Italy of course - in fact, zero, and the lawyers of the Innocence Project there expecting the usual windfalls from wrongful imprisonment awards dont have even one yet. Knox being there recently was to encourage them, but that really misfired.

We posted on some of these US cases when they seemed relevant. The framing of Alstory Simon in Chicago was described in this post below because the framer Paul Ciolino of CBS was one of the more rabid Italy-bashers - even Knox’s Italian lawyers objected to him.

Click for Post:  Paul Ciolino Hit With A $40 Million Suit For Real Railroad Job From Hell

Posted by Peter Quennell on 10/30/19 at 05:27 PM | #

Cheers to TJMK, Roberta Glass and all truth seekers - beacons of light in the swamp of lies that constitutes this case.

Posted by DavidB on 10/30/19 at 06:26 PM | #

It would be great if Roberta Glass interviewed Malcolm Gladwell. He can pull the wool over the eyes of gullible journalists who haven’t read a single page of any of the official court reports and court transcripts, but he wouldn’t be able to fool her. She would expose him for the fraud that he is. Unfortunately, I don’t think he would ever leave his ivory tower to be interviewed by someone who is well-informed about the case and who would ask him some tough questions.

Posted by The Machine on 10/31/19 at 05:20 AM | #

Barbie Nadeau has written an excellent article about Amanda Knox launching an advice column on the anniversary of Meredith’s murder:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/amanda-knox-to-pen-advice-column-on-life-love-and-suffering-on-anniversary-of-meredith-kerchers-murder

Posted by The Machine on 10/31/19 at 08:21 AM | #

Ken Kratz does a good job demolishing the shenanigans in the Netflix “documentary” “Making a Murderer”.

It never ceases to amaze me how conspiracy theorists think they can get away with it.

The answer is, of course, that they appeal to those (and they are many) who lack any sort of critical faculty, are mainly emotionally responsive, and hence are easily persuaded.

The conspiracy theory rests entirely on the fact that when Teresa Halbach was murdered Avery had a multi million dollar lawsuit filed against the police over his conviction for rape which conviction was subsequently set aside when the real culprit was identified. Thus there is apparently a motive for the police “to stitch him up again” however bizarre and outlandish that might seem.

This stitch up obviously involves the police depositing Halbach’s car and bodily remains at the site where Avery lived and worked but beyond that the theorists are not particularly helpful, which is not surprising. But for the theory to go beyond a theory, and thus be credible, then they have to do so.That’s where it all becomes complete nonsense.

How did the police get hold of Halbach’s body in the first place, and where? Did they kill her? Had someone else, only for the police to stumble on the body before anybody else had? Had she died in a road accident only for there to be no evidence of this as far as her car was concerned? Short of her death occurring at Avery’s, and even if they were able to identify her quickly, how would they know that she had a convenient connection to Avery : that she had an appointment to meet with Avery at his place, or is that just a coincidence, because without that - and to make any sense it would have to play into the decision to “stitch him up” in the first place -  what reason had they got to go and investigate Avery’s house and scrap yard?

And finally how did the police think that they could get away with all this planting of evidence without being noticed?

The theory gets ever more bizarre and absurd.

Posted by James Raper on 10/31/19 at 11:40 AM | #

@JamesRaper It was the ex-boyfriend what done it.  The ex-boyfriend. :/

Posted by KrissyG on 11/01/19 at 03:56 AM | #

The conspiracy nuts who think there were huge sinister plots to frame the likes of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito, Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey and Adnan Syed aren’t crazies wearing tin foil hats in the same lunatic asylum Jim Lovering was locked up in. Some of them are well-meaning and well-educated professionals, including lawyers and journalists from mainstream media organisations.

Apart from being mainly emotionally responsive and lacking critical thinking skills, they tend to be arrogant, opinionated and completely inflexible. Once their minds are made up, they flatly refuse to consider the possibility they might be wrong even when they are presented with clear and compelling evidence that they are.

Susan Simpson is a lawyer and one of Adnan Syed’s most ardent supporters. She claims the police made tapping noises when they were interviewing Jay Wilds to prompt him into giving them the answers they wanted. It clearly makes no sense. Were the police using Morse code to tell Jay Wilds what to say?

She also believes the police planted Sollecito’s DNA on Meredith’s bra clasp.

Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t offer any proof to substantiate her ridiculously far-fetched claims.

Posted by The Machine on 11/01/19 at 08:15 AM | #

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