Didn't Intend To Post This Till I Saw The Video

I HAPPENED ACROSS this 2011 video from the Canadian Fifth Estate program newly posted on Youtube.  It's about an aspiring serial killer who tried to kill one person he lured to a garage he rented through an online dating app, only to have the guy escape but who then killed another man he lured there the same way a week later.  

He was led to try to live out his his fantasy through his obsession with the cable-TV series Dexter.   Luckily for everyone except his victims,  the man he murdered had done what the first one hadn't, he'd shared the details of his anticipated blind date with friends, including the directions he'd been given to the location of their meeting, at that same garage.   As one of the detectives who solved the case said,  if the victim hadn't done that they likely wouldn't have caught him as quickly as they did.  No doubt he'd have been encouraged to try to live out the cable-TV fantasy of becoming a successful serial killer.   

Watching it reminded me of this piece I wrote almost nineteen years ago.  I know I said that the last rerun was the other day but we've still got one more day before Labor day so I'm going to repost that piece.   No one has yet addressed what I brought up then, which concentrated on the lurid and putrid cable TV "true crime" series that lovingly went over the details of how horrific crimes were committed and how the police caught the killers - no doubt instructing the would-be murderers hiding in the audience share how they might do it and get away with it.   I doubt any writer, director or producer of such entertainment much bothered to wonder about the instructional nature of their videos,  and if they didn't you can be sure that the executives putting it on didn't care about that.   No doubt they'd be happy to have those look at it as a how-to show up in the numbers they could show the advertisers.    If someone sued them I'm sure the "civil liberties" lawyers and the scumbags on the Supreme Court would say that all of that was beside the point due to the First Amendment.   I know their moves and know that they're all goddamned liars and frauds. *

Note:  I was still using a pseudonym online back then.  

Saturday, October 07, 2006

The Murderers Hiding In The Audience Share

Posted by olvlzl

In the news coverage of the murders of the school girls in Pennsylvania there was talk about the similarities between the actions of the murderer and those of the man who took hostages and murdered a school girl in Colorado the week before. One report I heard went into quite a lot of detail about the similarities, a lot more detail than could have been useful to their audience. They’ve got to fill those 24 hours with something. I guess. But, considering what they were saying about copy-cat crime, you would think that it might have occurred to them that a particular segment of their audience might have found their descriptions very useful. I wonder why none of them seemed to think it was possible that some murderer of the near or distant future might have found their information quite instructive.

What is the use of crime reporting? It shouldn’t be useful for the trial, that’s certainly not the role of reporters but of police and prosecutors. Nancy Grace might be confused about that but real reporters shouldn’t be. Ideally jurors wouldn’t have heard any news reporting that could prejudice their decision about the evidence presented in trial. The right to a fair trial, both for the accused and the public, is clearly more important than whatever right the casual observer has to know most of the details as soon as possible.

There is some public interest served in reporting some facts of these crimes. The public needs to know that crimes are being committed and the nature of those crimes especially if the criminal is still at large. But there is a level of detail that goes past what is needed and risks becoming prurient or even dangerous.

Most people can listen to the sordid details and speculations generated by the cabloids with only their character damaged but pretending they are the only ones who could be listening is willful ignorance. The old justification for allowing pornography was true, most people who consume it don’t imitate it. But a study of the effects on the general population wouldn’t show much that was useful. It is the people who do commit horrible crimes who need to be studied. Where did they get the ideas for their crimes, especially those that don’t seem to be original ideas. What is the copy-cat effect of the crime shows on TV?

Is there a significant effect? Are there people susceptible to imitating the crimes spelled out in such loving detail on A&E and Discovery? On the cabloid news stations? And if there is an effect proven beyond a preponderance of the evidence what use should be made of that fact? I don’t know.

But since they are the ones who are always talking about copy-cat murderers don’t they have a responsibility to take that into account when they are structuring their dramatic recitations of these crimes? They certainly do write the shows for dramatic effect, to follow a saleable narrative. Can they make them profitable and responsible at the same time? Maybe they need to look for a good model of responsible reporting. They won’t find much of that on American TV outside of Bill Moyers.

*  Anticipating the "First Amendmenty" types response to this I looked to see if there had been other admirers of Dexter who had killed and found this list at Wikipedia, with links.  Notice that the case in the video is among those listed. 

Association with real crimes

Several comparisons and connections to the TV show and its protagonist have been drawn during criminal prosecutions. In 2009, 17-year-old Andrew Conley said the show inspired him to strangle his ten-year-old brother.[46] In an affidavit filed in Ohio County court, in Indiana, police said Conley confessed that he "watches a show called Dexter on Showtime, about a serial killer, and he stated, 'I feel just like him.'"[47]

In Spain, on July 25, 2009, a man and his girlfriend killed his brother and pregnant partner. The man owned the complete Dexter series DVD collection and the methods used to avoid leaving blood traces were inspired by the show.[48]

On November 4, 2010, in Sweden, a 21-year-old woman known as Dexter-mördaren ("The Dexter killer") or Dexter-kvinnan ("The Dexter woman") killed her 49-year-old father by stabbing him in the heart.[49] During questioning, the woman compared herself to Dexter Morgan, and a picture of the character would appear on her phone when her father called her. In July 2011, she was sentenced to seven years in prison.[50]

In Norway, Shamrez Khan hired Håvard Nyfløt to kill Faiza Ashraf. Nyfløt claimed that Dexter inspired him, and he wanted to kill Khan in front of Faiza, similar to the television series, to "stop evil".[51]

Association was established between Mark Twitchell, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, during his first-degree murder trial, and the character of Dexter Morgan. After weeks of testimony and gruesome evidence presented in court, Twitchell was found guilty of the planned and deliberate murder of 38-year-old Johnny Altinger on April 12, 2011.[52]

British teenager Steven Miles, 17, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on October 2, 2014, for stabbing and dismembering his girlfriend Elizabeth Rose Thomas, 17, in Oxted, Surrey. Police discovered Thomas' body on January 24, 2014, and determined the cause of death to be a stab wound to the back. Miles was arrested on suspicion of murder. Miles pled guilty to the crime on September 9. According to Surrey Police, Miles had dismembered Thomas' body following her death, wrapping up limbs in plastic wrap, and had attempted to clean up the crime scene before he was found by a family member. Miles had been reported to be obsessed with the television series Dexter. Miles reportedly had an alter ego named Ed, whom Miles claims made him carry out the murder.[53][54][55]

On January 11, 2022, in New Orleans, Louisiana, 34-year-old Benjamin Beale was arrested after police discovered a decapitated body inside a freezer in a painted bus.[56] The body was confirmed, over a week later, to be that of Julia Dardar, a missing mother of two children.[57] Investigators soon discovered a Dexter profile painting with guns and knives.[58]