True Crime Stories

I came across this case several times while I was researching the Alan Canty case. The cases were similar in several areas although Alan Canty's murder occurred in 1985 and Jane Bashara would be murdered in 2012. Both crimes not only took place in Detroit Michigan but both victims lived in the upscale community of Grosse Pointe Park. The similarities did not end there. In both cases sex and sexual appetite seemingly played in big role. Fifty-six year old Jane Bashara was last seen on the afternoon of January 24, 2012 by her co-workers. About 11:30 that night her husband of twenty-six years, Bob, filed a missing persons report on her. The following morning around seven a tow truck driver was patrolling one of the more seedier areas of Detroit for stolen vehicles when he found Jane's Mercedes-Benz SUV in an alley. Inside the vehicle, in the backseat, lay the body of Jane Bashara. Her official cause of death would be listed as strangulation. Investi...

I am currently reading the book Masquerade by Lowell Cauffiel. If you have not read any of his books you should check him out. I am not sure how many books he has written but this is his second that I have read and they are very good. What I did not know or realized after reading my first book of his, House of Secrets , was that he was previously a newspaper journalist. That in and of itself is not odd, nor is it unusual for them to write books about cases they covered in their job as a journalist. This is just such a case for Cauffiel. He was a journalist for a local newspaper in Detroit in 1985 when psychologist, Alan Canty was murdered and the people responsible were put on trial. This story is the one that authors and screenwriters dream about. It had everything, a rich, respected victim who was hiding a dark secret; then there was the prostitute and her pimp who not only used him, ultimately murdered him. And, let us not forget the wife who was as shocked as any...

I am the mother of now two grown boys. My oldest never gave me much trouble growing up, which was just fine considering the younger one seemed sometimes to be a trouble magnet. Now, I am not one of those mothers who believed her child was always innocent, I knew better. But also learned that with the growing reputation every time something happened in the neighborhood it seemed as if the police were at my door. Most of it was petty things but it was still aggravating. This had come about because he done something more serious that had garnered him probation when he was fourteen, the same age Davontae Sanford was when he was charged with four counts of murder. With the incident with my son, first the officer lied as to why they asked my husband and I to bring our son to the police station. On the way there my son confession to breaking into the garage of a nearby summer home and taking some things. Once at the station the officer took my husband and I aside and admit...

I am a bit torn on this case. I am not so much torn on the guilt or innocence of Lowell Amos in the crime in which he was convicted, but more so on the legalities that were allowed in the courtroom that procured his conviction. I do not have an issue with a jury knowing that a defendant is a bad person and had committed crimes previously. I do believe in the instances in which a defendant has been convicted of other crimes, similar or not that the jury has the right to know, but in most jurisdictions that is only allowed into the courtroom after the person has been convicted for the current crime they are facing and a sentence is being considered. That however was not the case in Michigan when Lowell Amos was convicted in 1996 in the murder of his third wife. The prosecutors were allowed to tell the jury about the “suspicious” deaths of both his two previous wives as well as the death of his mother. The issue I have with this is that it was not until he was suspected of mur...