Hi Crime Story Friends,
In our third week we enjoyed intense reader interest and growth in traffic to the site. We truly appreciate your readership, support and willingness to subscribe to our communications.
Early in the week, there was a lot of activity and engagement around a few stories that we published at the end of the prior week including Molly Miller’s A Chair and a Killing, my piece Wait, What? A Closing Statement, and Leland Hall’s Off the Path of Self-Destruction – our second of three pieces about our writers’ experiences at a Defy Ventures event offering entrepreneurial and work-force training to recently incarcerated men. We also saw robust downloading of Part 1 of my Podcast conversation with Breaking Bad collaborators Vince Gilligan and Michelle MacLaren, exploring their values and aesthetics as artists, as well as details of the creation of the show.
On Monday, we followed up with Part 2 of the Breaking Bad conversation and we published Shawn Boursiquot’s troubling Shattered Arguments piece that explores the tension between a righteous prosecutors case against an alleged domestic abuser and a defense attorney’s appeal to juror’s concerns about prosecutorial overreach.
On Tuesday, we released Sean Smith’s The McDonald’s Uniform and the Scalded Child, an account of a morning he spent observing the proceedings in arraignment court, which culminates in the wrenching story of a woman who was arrested for alleged child neglect on her way to work, and appeared before the court – in custody – wearing her McDonald’s employee uniform. We followed that up with a mini-podcast of Sean reading his story.
On Wednesday, we uploaded Part 1 of my podcast interview with the charming, hilarious and insightful Criminal Minds Executive Producer and founding showrunner, Ed Bernero. We also published an incredibly important and insightful piece by superstar investigative journalist Michele McPhee about how President Trump’s inciting rhetoric around immgration and crime and his political opponents’ resistance to engaging in any dialogue related to Trump’s narrative have actually empowered the international criminal/terrorist organization known as MS-13 and endangered immigrant communities.
On Thursday we presented What Are the Odds?, Molly Miller’s meditation on the dehumanizing impact of statistical categories and the humanizing experience of focusing on one homicide victim who was also a gang member and visiting the scene of his murder.
And on Friday we published Shawn Boursiquot’s touching account of a man trying to find justice for an allegedly racially-motivated assault that occurred while he “dumpster diving” and Wesley Yiin’s Solitary Time, the last of our three articles about a Defy Ventures event offering entrepreneurial and work-force training to recently de-carcerated men.
Also, on Tuesday, through the graciousness of my old friend Andy Serwer, I made an appearance on Yahoo! Finance’s Final Round show and had the chance to talk about Crime Story.
If you are interested in reading previous update emails, I have included links to each of them at the bottom of this missive.
Next week we have a piece in which Molly Miller explores the thoughts and emotions stirred by a trial involving a particularly brutal murder. We have a new piece from Amanda Knox with Christopher Robinson. We have Part 2 of my interview with Ed Bernero, and we have the first two articles from Owen Smith, about an appeal for commutation and about something called The California Collaborative Courts.
Thank you again for your continued interest in Crime Story. We hope you have terrific Labor Day Weekend, and please do not hesitate to email us with suggestions, feedback and questions.
Kary Antholis
Publisher/Editor, Crime Story
editor@crimestory.com
