Category: Flotsam-and-Jetsam

The Wildly Popular TV Host Accused of Killing People to Boost His Ratings

When it comes to true-crime series, the more bizarre and perplexing, the better. And few have fit that bill quite as ably as Killer Ratings, a jaw-dropping new non-fiction effort with a story that would barely be believable as a tawdry B-movie, much less as reality, if not for the conclusive evidence that it actually took place.

The true-crime series ‘Killer Ratings,’ currently streaming on Netflix, probes the life of Wallace Souza, a No. 1-rated TV host in Brazil accused of offing people to up ratings.

LINK: https://www.thedailybeast.com/netflix-killer-ratings-true-crime-saga-of-wallace-souza-tv-host-accused-of-killing-people-to-boost-ratings

‘Krugersdorp Killers’: Four articles you need to read

From demon cleansing to a love for knives and cult-like behaviour, the Krugersdorp murder trial is again in the spotlight.

This after the court appeal of Marcel Steyn, the youngest alleged member of the so-called “Krugersdorp Killers”, was heard on Tuesday.

Here are four articles on the case: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2019-05-16-krugersdorp-killers-four-articles-you-need-to-read/

“Uncover: The Village”: A Serial Killer, Toronto’s Gay Community, and a Podcast That Transcends True Crime

“Uncover: The Village,” a podcast about a series of murders in Toronto’s gay community, focusses on the victims, their loved ones, the police, and the community, not on the perpetrator or the crimes.

Early in the first episode of the new podcast “Uncover: The Village,” from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, we visit the garden of a woman named Karen Fraser, at her house, on a quiet side street in Toronto. It’s August, 2018, and Fraser is showing the podcast’s reporter and host, Justin Ling, her flower beds, or what’s left of them; she describes “tulips and daffodils along here, lots of periwinkle.” All of this, Ling says, “was designed and maintained by her faithful gardener, Bruce.” For the past decade, Fraser allowed a family acquaintance, Bruce McArthur, to use space in her garage to store equipment for his landscaping business. In exchange, he tended to her yard. In early 2018, Toronto police told Fraser and her partner that they would need to leave the property—the police needed to excavate. In what became the largest forensic investigation in Toronto police history, officers found the remains of eight men in Fraser’s planters and a nearby ravine.

LINK: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/podcast-dept/uncover-the-village-a-serial-killer-torontos-gay-community-and-a-podcast-that-transcends-true-crime

This Week in True-Crime Podcasts: NPR Digs Into a ’60s Civil-Rights Case

The true-crime podcast universe is ever expanding. We’re here to make it a bit smaller and a bit more manageable. There are a lot of great shows, and each has a lot of great episodes, so we want to highlight the noteworthy and the exceptional. Each week, our crack team of podcast enthusiasts and specialists will pick their favorites. To read the last edition, click here.

At last, an honest true crime podcast

The new season of the true crime parody ‘A Very Fatal Murder’ goes out of its way to remind the listener that every narrative podcast is ultimately about its host’s ego.

The difference between parody and withering critique is that of depth. It’s one thing to lampoon a genre or work by exaggerating its tropes and tics to show how ridiculous they are, but too much of what passes for “satire” these days simply stops there, sometimes out of an abundance of caution (after all, there’s nothing less funny than a failed attempt at humor), and sometimes simply out of self-satisfaction. You see this in pop culture all the time. HBO’s Silicon Valley and IFC’s Portlandia might goof on the tech industry and Portland in painstaking detail, but when the moment presents itself to really turn the screws on their targets, to point out the privilege and elitism to each of these cultures’ worldview, they always take the easy way out. And why wouldn’t they? Part of Silicon Valley’s verisimilitude has to do with a carefully cultivated whisper network of industry sources, while many of the Portlandia cast members are actual Portland residents. For those shows’ creators, it’s probably not worth it.

LINK: https://theoutline.com/post/7460/at-last-an-honest-true-crime-podcast?zd=1&zi=tpi6wlcr

Criminal History of Mankind

Colin Wilson tells the story of human violence from Peking Man to the Mafia – taking into account the calculated sadism of the Assyrians, the opportunism of the Greek pirates, the brutality that made Rome the ‘razor king of the Mediterranean’, the mindless destruction of the Vandals, the mass slaughter of Genghis Khan, Tamurlane, Ivan the Terrible, Vlad the Impaler and more. Each age has a unique characteristic pattern of crime. In the past three centuries crime has changed and evolved until the sex killer and the mass murderer have become symbols of all that is worst about our civilization. But this is not just a study in human depravity; it is an attempt to place crime in perspective against human discovery, exploration and invention. The result is a completely new approach to the history and psychology of human violence.

Download: http://booksdescr.org/item/index.php?md5=B27F8A0F84E680C51AC5AAA830C4A929