True Crime Genre News: MyCase.com

On November 7, 2007 at 10:30 p.m. ET, Court TV will air a fascinating new true crime special :

MyCase.com (link: MyCaseDotCom.com).

I will be your guide for some portions of the show. We'll explore how the clues to a crime can sometimes be found on the Web. We'll follow a digital pathway littered with broken relationships, obsessions, lies, and alibis. We will follow a cyber-trail of evidence that led to a tragic conclusion: murder.

Check out this link: "Upcoming Series on Court TV."

At the bottom of that page is the following:

MyCase.com - NEW!

Premieres Wednesday, November 7 at 10:30pm E/P

The internet provides a startling new look into the mind of a criminal. Profiles are posted on personal web sites, motives revealed in online blogs, and premeditated plans detailed on email. There’s a new type of investigator following the trail: the Cyber-sleuth. They will show us that, online, we are closer than we realize to clues and insight into criminal minds. TV-14

Optomen's blurb for the show (working title: Crime.com) says it well: "The clues to crimes of passion are embedded in a vast digital matrix." (Emphasis added.)

I can't be cool about this anymore.

I'm as excited as I've been about anything I've done since I began crime-blogging! (Yes, that's an exclamation point, and I meant it. Here's another -->!)

I first chatted with folks from Optomen's home office in the United Kingdom back in 2005, but only learned of the concept for this show in 2006. I've been sitting on it and everything to do with it ever since. Funny enough, when it was finally cool for me tell everyone, I was initially stuck as to what to say.

The best thing to say is watch it. I turn 40 just 4 days before the special airs, so if you watch it and get the word out, you can consider that your "Lordy, lordy, Steve is 40" b-day present.

I don't want to give too much away, but these links might give you a few hints about the story explored in the premiere of MyCase.com: link 1, link 2.

And yes, I will be posting reminders, and perhaps more links, in days to come.

*****

One of Optomen's recent true-crime-related productions was Most Evil.

Most Evil is one of the most original, visually stunning documentary-style productions I've ever seen. It explores Dr. Michael Stone's "Scale of Evil," and killers Stone felt ranked near the top of his scale.

When I realized I was working with the same company and some of the same people responsible for a series as brilliant as Most Evil, it became harder than ever to keep quiet about MyCase.com. But for a blabbermouth like me, I did OK. Close friends and family knew, but that was about it.

*****

While I'm at it, I have to refer you to some awesome news for a fellow crime blogger, Laura James of CLEWS, The Historic True Crime Blog.

Sarah Weinman mentions Laura's news here at her own site, Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind. Laura has been too modest to say much about it outside of telling fellow bloggers and authors. Just go read.

It was early 2005 when this lawyer-lady from Michigan e-mailed me wondering if we were the only two people on the Web calling ourselves crime bloggers, and I wrote back saying I didn't know, but she was the first person to write me with a clue as to what "crime-blogging" was. The Trenchcoat was actually doing it well ahead of the rest of us, but he wasn't calling it a "crime blog."

Since then, Laura's blog has become a favorite for anyone with a deep and intellectual interest in the history of crime. It remains one of the classiest destinations on the Web for true crime aficionados. Congratulations, Laura.

*****

I'm now a contributor (along with Jules Hammer and Michelle Gray) at The True Crime Blogroll. If you want regular updates about events involving true crime authors who also blog, like Gregg Olsen, Ron Franscell, and Corey Mitchell, owner of In Cold Blog (where some of your favorite crime bloggers are contributors along with some the brightest stars in the genre as a whole), then you need to check out The True Crime Blogroll every chance you get.

*****

I'm recording a segment today that will be aired Sunday night, October 27, 2007 at 10:00 p.m. ET on The Lineup on Fox News, hosted by Kimberly Guilfoyle. We'll be talking about signal true crime cases from the past, like the Manson Family murders. Also on the panel will be Dr. William July. Be sure to check it out.

*****

One more time, with gusto:

• WHAT: MyCase.com
• WHEN: 10:30 p.m. Eastern Time, November 7, 2007
• WHERE: Court TV
• WHO: produced by Optomen TV (USA)

Thank you in advance for watching, setting your DVRs, sending a link to this entry out to friends. Thanks also for reading this entry even if you already received a MySpace bulletin about this or got an e-mail I sent out to a number of people.

And seriously -- thanks for reading my various blog incarnations over the last 2+ years and sticking around even when blog A went kerflooey and blog B didn't get an update for months. I'm never able to adequately express my gratitude to people who read my writing, especially the many screen names that pop up in comments over and over with their own insights, ideas, tips, and tricks. I've been this close to not doing this anymore many times, and you all have always kept me at it. Your patience with your peripatetic host is greatly appreciated.

Gallows Love, by Laura James

(It is a pleasure for me to introduce the first guest entry here at CrimeBlog.US, by the gifted Laura James. Laura writes CLEWS, the Historic True Crime Weblog; her URL is:

http://laurajames.typepad.com/clews/

-- Bookmark it, you know you want to.

Let Laura tell you a little about herself:

I have a degree in history and journalism, and a law degree, and I was a lawyer for U-Haul and other deep pocket corporations (...) but that got old so I started a singles hiking club to meet men http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bshiking/ but then graduated with a husband and now I'm a stay-at-home [mom] with two babies and write Clews to entertain myself and keep my brain from rotting.

I hope she doesn't mind that I quoted from an off-the-cuff e-mail, but e-mail sometimes shows a slightly different side of Laura -- she can be wickedly funny.

To me, Laura James is one of the strangely unsung talents writing in the blogosphere. Her writing at CLEWS (the old-fashioned newsie's spelling of "clues") is elegant, restrained, and several notches above the usual blog-born ramblings and discursions found in the blogosphere at large. She appears to be one of the crimebloggers many established true-crime authors, like Burl Barer, like to read.

Here's how Laura described the blog entry you are about to read:

True crime doesn't have to be entirely dark. Sometimes an interplay of light and shadow makes for a great story.

If however this is too long, too old, too esoteric, or doesn't fit what you're doing by all means tell me to do something else.

In fact, Laura will be happy to know that her submission was perfect for what I intend this blog to be about, at least in part: about the best crime-writing you can find on the web -- best in the literary sense of the word. Laura James is, to me, virtually the definition of a crimeblogger oriented towards the literary and intellectual. Is that the sort of thing that brings 10,000 hits in a day? No. But it does bring some of the same readers back, over and over. And that matters a great deal, to me.

Now, I proudly direct you to read on, to learn of a very old tale of criminals and the rough love between them. Laura James leads you back into the dusty folds of time, to England circa 1747, and a story of "Gallows Love...")

Gallows Love

by: Laura James

When Oscar Wilde allegedly gestured at the garish wallpaper in his cheap Parisian hotel room and announced with his dying breath, "Either it goes or I go," he was exhibiting something beyond an irrepressibly brilliant wit. Freud, you see, wasn't whistling "Edelweiss" when he wrote that gallows humor is indicative of "a greatness of soul." The quips of the condemned prisoner or dying patient tower dramatically above, say, sallies on TV sitcoms by reason of their gloriously inappropriate refusal, even at life's most acute moment, to surrender to despair.

--Tom Robbins, "In Defiance of Gravity"

The Ordinary’s Accounts are some of the earliest true crime stories written in English. Their popularity came at the same time the masses learned to read, and some think there was a cause-and-effect relationship there -- Englishmen learned their letters when there were some bloody good murder stories that made the exercise worthwhile.

The Accounts were, in essence, press releases issued by the Newgate prison in London after each execution to give lessons to posterity and to stimulate respect for the criminal laws. Those from the 1740s-1750s are online at:

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/...html.

The authors of these accounts were required to speak to the condemned every day for the weeks between the conviction and execution. They chronicled the confessions and behavior of men and women doomed to die, focusing largely on the personal history of each criminal, their crimes, and questions of faith.

In 1747, an Ordinary recorded the extraordinary story of a shoplifter named Mary Allen and a highwayman named Henry Simms, whose love was born in gaol and lasted to the gallows:

http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/... /oa17470617.html

Mary Allen was 26 years old and through shoplifting had “gathered together a large Quantity of Goods of various Kinds, very near sufficient to have furnished a Shop, which it seems was her Intent; which Goods were found in a Room in Park-street.”

The Ordinary did not like Mary. She didn’t want to talk to him because she would have no speeches made about her when she was dead. He thought she was surly, obstinate. She also said it was grief enough to her parents that she was being executed, and she didn’t want to add to their afflictions with her dying quotes. The Ordinary thought it a pity she didn’t think of her parents before she embarked on her criminal career.

Since she wouldn’t speak to him, the Ordinary was forced to record his observations of her. He noted that she was of –

[A] turbulent Spirit, and frequently quarrelled with her Fellow-Prisoners, and being the weaker Vessel, frequently came off damaged. When she was tried she had two black Eyes, which she got in a Quarrel; and when she went to the Place of Execution, she had a black Eye, received but a few Days before in another Skirmish. During her Confinement she contracted a great Fondness for Gentleman Harry…

Henry “Gentleman Harry” Simms, aged 30, was an orphan turned highwayman and pimp, known for his large Cutlass and his dandy clothes, and in the Ordinary’s words he was --

[As] famous a Thief as ever yet adorn'd the Gallows. The Money he gain'd by Robbing he generally spent among the Whores about Covent-Garden, and as he generally wear very genteely dress'd, they gave him the Title of Gentleman Harry… While under Sentence of Death, his fertile Brain was continually contriving Schemes in hopes to save his Life. He wrote several Letters to the Secretaries of State, and even to his Majesty himself…

While under Sentence he … still seemed found of the gay Part of Life, having a Number of Ladies coming frequently to see him, and did not appear so much concerned as one in his Circumstances should be…

What occupied Gentleman Harry in his last days was his fellow sufferer Mary Allen. They fell in love and spent their last days in intimacy (though the Ordinary also noted that “they sometimes fell out, when Simms generally beat her.”)

And on the final day, Mary Allen and Gentleman Harry indulged in hugs and kisses and hand-holding until their last moments on earth and met death with a defiant embrace.

THE ORDINARY of NEWGATE'S ACCOUNT of the Behaviour, Confession, & Dying Words of [...] MALEFACTORS Who were executed at TYBURN On Wednesday the 17th of JUNE, 1747.

At the PLACE of EXECUTION.

THE Morning of their Execution, after going up to Chappel, where they all behaved very devoutly, they were brought down into the Press-Yard, had their Fetters knock'd off, and was then convey'd to Tyburn…. Simms was cleanly dress'd in a White Fustian Frock, White Stockings, and White Drawers; and just as he got into the Cart at Newgate, threw off his Shoes. Being arrived at the Place of Execution, some Time was spent in Devotion, in which they all most heartily joined.

SIMMS … owned the Robbery of Mr. Smith in the Borough.

ALLEN Wept a good deal, and own'd the Robbery for which she died.

And they all went off the Stage calling to the Lord to have Mercy on their Souls.

Just before they were turn'd off, Simms and Allen saluted each other; and then joyning Hands, went off, taking hold of each other.

This is all the Account given by me, JOHN TAYLOR , Ordinary of Newgate.