True Crime Stories

You have often heard me say that it is not always the aspect of the true crime that fantasizes me, but the law itself and how things are conducted. Sometimes guilty people go free because either the evidence is not there to obtain a conviction or because the prosecutors did not do all that it took to get the conviction. Then are the times in which the prosecutor or the state witnesses did whatever it took, legal or illegal, to get their man. While in those cases, at least those that are caught, justice is not served for the family or families of the victims, it should prevent injustice being brought to innocent people. For people in Oklahoma City it seems it took decades. If you do a search on Curtis McCarty you will find him on websites for The Innocence Project and those claiming he was exonerated. You will also see on those sites multiple references to the fact that he was convicted of a “crime he did not commit.” Police and prosecutors have argued against t...

There not very people who will argue that the Kananen children did not have a hard life, at least when their father was around. While no one, except those who live it, knows exactly what goes on behind closed doors there always seem to be little things that stick out to others. For the Kananen family it seemed odd to others how they moved from state to state so often and many times in the middle of the night like they were sneaking away or evading someone or something. Some have said that this happened when Richard Kananen Sr. thought that things going on inside the home were leaking out and people were getting curious. The family, that consisted of Richard, his wife Marilyn and their three children, Richard Jr., Cheryl and Stacey, lived in California, Maine, Minnesota, and Arkansas before settling down near Orlando Florida in 1978. I should note, to put things in perspective that Richard Jr. was at least ten years older than his next sibling, Cheryl and thirteen years o...

Today, being blog day for me, started out different than most days that I plan to sit down and research a case.  More often than not I do not have a case in mind and rack my brain to find one to catch my attention on any particular day. Today was not like that.  I knew going in I wanted to research two cases as my next two blogs.  The biggest issue I had to decide was which one I wanted to do first. Both cases were ones that I had heard about on different crime shows this week and both peaked my interests very much.  Ultimately I decided to do the Bob McClancy murder case first because, for one, it had so many twists and turns in it that it nearly seems impossible to be true and secondly, part of the case involves the issue of fraud and bilking the government of benefits.   On May 15, 2006 9-1-1 dispatchers in Monroe County Tennessee received a call from a man named Charles "Chuck" Kaczmarczyk.  They were told that Chuck had gone to the home of his friend...

I spent this week as I often do watching True Crime shows and jotting down the names associated with cases to do further research.  I admit that quite often while in the middle of an episode that I find particularly interesting I find myself doing a quick search. This was just such a case and at the time I had to literally stop myself from looking too much further until I was ready to sit down and do legitimate research.  Of course, as I said one of my true crime shows had brought me to this story, and as we all know they tend to be at least slightly bias in their telling of stories.  It really just depends on what angle the show is portraying to determine which way they are leaning.  The particular show I watched leaned towards the fact that Eugene Christopher "Chris" Wright may have been framed for the murder of Kenneth Dolezsar and ultimately not responsible.   I have said many times that I go into researching a story on the idea that the pol...