True Crime Stories

Victoria Rickman I tend to not blog about cases until they have at least some sort of finality. Of course I many, if not most, of the cases here obviously involve cases in which there have been convictions and the defendant is in the appeals process. This case has finally, after over four years, gotten to that point. It has sat near, or at the top, of my list of cases for quite some time but the trial against Victoria Rickman has been delayed many times. A few weeks ago the television show 48 Hours did an update on this case and showed that the trial had finally commenced and concluded, but the show was about much more. I suspect that many of the readers here watch television shows like 48 Hours and Dateline , but also watch the Investigation Discovery channel with their multitude of reality television shows based on crimes. Over the years there have been several different shows following crimes. The show The Shift was always particularly interesting to me because it...

I have talked a few times about the show Cold Justice. It was originally a TNT television show but despite their apparently good ratings was canceled in early 2016. It was recently announced that the network, Oxygen, is picking the show up but there has not been a release date set. While it seemed rather hush, hush about why the cancellation occurred I gander to guess it had to do with the criticism it received as well as because of at least one lawsuit filed against the show. Wikipedia says that as of January 2015, which was after only two seasons had aired of the show they had twenty-one arrests, eleven indictments, four confessions, three guilty pleas and three conviction had been obtained due to the show. While on the surface this all sounds wonderful but despite the fact that I enjoyed the show, if for no other reason to learn about cases I had not heard of, I was one that often criticized things. It seemed almost unbelievable how this crew would go to a town and work ...

This case was once featured on the show Cold Justice  on TNT.  When I first started watching that television show I really enjoyed it.  As time went on I became frustrated with it.  I noticed that several cases on the show would end with the arrest of the suspect that had been "decided on."  Nearly every episode had a few suspects in the case when the show started and it was narrowed down.  There were a few episodes in which it ended with the main investigators openly saying there was not enough evidence to support an arrest but those were few.  Many times when the episode ended the notice of an arrest was added at the very end, so between the filming of the episode and the airing on television.  I started doing research on several of the cases and I discovered that not only did many of the cases see arrests on evidence that even I did not feel was enough to secure a conviction, many of the defendants were claiming that pressure had been put on la...

The fact that I write a blog based on true crimes obviously indicates that I try to keep up with the news and televisions shows based on true crimes are generally my favorite and I watch little else.  My DVR is set to watch a few shows that my husband and I will watch together but aside from that it is generally filled with shows like 48 Hours  and Dateline .  It used to be filled with the show Cold Justice  on TNT but I have to admit that I stopped watching that one.  I was so excited when it first began to air because I am a fan of Kelly Siegler, the former Texas prosecutor, who was involved in the Susan Wright case.  I continued to like the show to learn about more cases that I had not heard of before, but over time I became disappointed in it.  I often felt that in more than a few cases the evidence "found" by Sigler and her team was rather flimsy and was so surprised when at the end of the episode it would show that someone had be arrested and cha...