It’s a case that has gripped New England crime sleuths for over a decade. Twelve years ago today, Maura Murray mysteriously disappeared after a one-vehicle car accident on Route 112 in Haverhill, New Hampshire.
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Author: jj
Steven Avery Transcripts and Court Documents
This post contains the complete transcripts for Steven Avery’s jury trial in 2007. I have also come across a number of other court documents, police memos, and transcripts that I have posted here.
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Brendan Dassey “Confession” and Trial Transcripts
I am still going through all these documents (there is a LOT here), but I figured I would post them all in one place for anyone who is interested in reading them as well. What stands out to you the most? For me, it is clear that Brendan is completely guessing the answer to every question he is asked. To call it a confession is pathetic.
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What did Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” leave out?
If you’re anything like me, you finished watching Netflix’s hot new true crime documentary, Making a Murderer, and immediately scoured the internet for every piece of evidence you could find that was left out in an attempt to form your own opinion of what happened. In this post, I’ll pull together all the evidence I could find and break it down for you so you can determine for yourself what to believe.
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Did Netflix’s new documentary “Making a Murderer” get you fired up?
Unless you’ve been living under a rock this holiday season, you have probably watched (or know someone who has recently watched) Netflix’s newest documentary on Steven Avery, Making a Murderer. I can’t recall a time when a true crime documentary has ignited the country this quickly and so furiously. If you don’t already know, Making a Murderer is documentary created by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, filmmakers following the case of Steven Avery, a man who was wrongly convicted of beating and raping a woman in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, in 1985. He served 18 years in prison before new DNA evidence tested by the Wisconsin Innocence Project exonerated him, proving the assailant was another man already in prison for similar crimes, Gregory Allen. Easy, right? Well, that’s just the first episode. Things begin to get complicated after that. Of course, Steven Avery filed a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County and several officials that had a hand in convicting him, as any man who’d just spent 18 years of his adult life wasting away in prison for a brutal crime he did not commit. Just as depositions were getting underway for that civil suit, a local photographer by the name of Teresa Halbach was reported missing on November 3, 2005. She was last seen on Steven Avery’s property on October 31, where he had arranged for her to take photographs of a van the family was putting up for sale. A full investigation began to unfold, and when search parties located Teresa’s green RAV 4 on the Avery property, all hell breaks loose. If you haven’t watched the series, I will warn you to stop reading here. Really, I think it’s much better to watch it with a fresh perspective and allow the creators of the documentary to lead you though the case piece by piece. So if you haven’t watched, stop reading now and go watch! Then come back here and leave me a comment below this post. I want to know what you think! If you have finished the series and are looking for more information, as well as what I think about the case, keep reading.
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Patty Vaughan has been missing for 19 years
For most families, Christmas day is a time to gather with the entire family and celebrate life, love, and togetherness. For one family in La Vernia, Texas, Christmas day is a painful memory. It is the day their beloved daughter, sister, and mother, Patty Inez Brightwell Vaughan, mysteriously disappeared nineteen years ago. Those close to the investigation have long suspected Patty’s then-husband, J.R. Vaughan, in her disappearance. You might recall this particular case from my first book, Missing Wives, Missing Lives. Each Christmas, I say a silent prayer for Patty and her family, in hopes that one Christmas, they will have the answers to their questions and justice will have been served.
If you have information about this case, please think of Patty’s family on Christmas day and call 210-335-TIPS.
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“Her name was Bella Bond.”
A few weeks ago, I posted about Baby Doe, a young girl whose body was found wrapped in a blanket and a trash bag, discarded on Deer Island in Boston. For several months, we all wondered who this child could be–how no one could notice a sweet, innocent girl had gone missing. Today, we know who she was, and two arrests have been made in the case.
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Who Is Baby Doe?
On June 25, 2015, a woman walking her dog along the beaches of Deer Island discovered a trash bag that contained the body of a young child. Three weeks later, a computer-generated image of the young girl, dubbed “Baby Doe” has been viewed millions of times and we still don’t know who she is. Baby Doe was approximately 4 years old when she died. She weighed just thirty pounds and stood at three-and-a-half feet tall. She had brown eyes and brown hair.
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Backseat Tragedies: Hot Car Deaths is now available!
Now available on Amazon!
It’s a topic no one wants to talk about. No parent ever thinks they could be capable of forgetting his or her own child in a hot car, but the sad truth is it happens dozens of times every year in the U.S. And those are just the fatal cases. There are many more unreported “close calls” each year. Experts believe the number of hot car deaths began to skyrocket in the 1990s, when states began requiring children to be placed in the backseats of vehicles (to avoid airbag deployment accidents) and car manufacturers began promoting rear-facing car seats for infants. While this is widely believed to be the safest place in a vehicle for an infant, it also puts the child in a vulnerable position–out of sight to the driver.
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Since everyone is talking about Robert Durst…
Since everyone is talking about Robert Durst, I thought I’d throw my two cents into the mix. I’ve been following the Durst case for years. I even wrote about his missing wife, Kathie, and the decades that followed in which his family and friends began to suspect that he had something to do with her 1982 disappearance. You can read about Kathie and Robert’s case, along with the cases of twenty-nine other missing women, in my book, Missing Wives, Missing Lives. When Robert’s longtime companion, Susan Berman, was shot execution style in her Los Angeles home in 2000, and then his Galveston, Texas neighbor turned up dismembered in 2001, the coincidences became too large to ignore. I think it’s clear to most people who have followed the case for decades that Mr. Durst has been a murderer walking free for years. If it wasn’t, the HBO documentary, “The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” has made it abundantly clear.
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JJ Slate 