True Crime Stories

I am unsure I have ever said this, but there is no other way to put this, Jessie Dotson is simply put, not a good person and by all accounts he never really as been. In 1990, when he was fifteen years old he was charged with disorderly conduct after he threatened his mother when she tried to discipline him. A month later he was charged with assault after he hit a thirteen year old boy in the fact and threatened “to put him in the hospital if he didn't bring him $25 the next day.” The following year he was arrested again for disorderly conduct after he came home and wanted to fight his brother, he had punched several holes in the wall and once again threatened to kill his mother. When the police arrived he was still refusing to calm down and was still attempting to fight his brother. A few months later a car he was riding in was pulled over and two guns were found on the floorboards of the vehicle. Again the next year was another disorderly charge when he got into...

This case is quite interesting at not just a crime level but also at a legal level. One of the problems I came across researching the case was getting a lot of details of the crime itself as well as what was presented at trial. I think this is because there has been so much about the case since that time through appeals and yet the appeals that I read also gave few details. In general an appeal is the best place to get the details. News articles are often not just skewed but also it is not unusual to find inaccuracies. An appeal often will not only go through the story of what happened in the crime but also presents things that were given to the jury. If give you an idea as to how the jury likely came to their decision but also keep in mind that only really occurs when the jury has found the defendant guilty. It is “rarer than rare” to find a case where a jury has acquitted someone and the prosecution has appealed. More often then not in severe cases you will find ...

This is such a tragic and yet odd case. It is one of those cases in which I am sure that the right person is behind bars for murder, but I found the behavior of some of the other characters in the story a little “off.” Emily Branch was thirteen years old in 2000. It was said that she lived with an aunt on her father's side but she apparently visited with both of her parents, who all lived in Memphis Tennessee. It is not completely clear how close she lived with her aunt but both of her parents, living separately, lived within walking distance. Emily's mother, Tracie, was married to a man named Charles Rice but the relationship seemed to rather volatile. It appears that the couple lived with Charles' stepfather. On June 6 th the couple had separated and Tracie had moved in with her brother. They had separated many times during their short relationship. Tracie would claim that Charles used drugs, specifically crack cocaine and after this separat...

I was surprised with so many participants in this crime, as well as several different court proceedings that I found so little about this case in my research. This is allegedly one of the biggest cases in Memphis Tennessee's history and yet there seemed so few details. I will admit that the one appeal that I read was extremely long and I did little more than skim through it. On June 29, 1977 William Groseclose went to the police department to report his twenty-four year old wife, Deborah, missing. The couple had a one year old son together and it appears that both William, and his wife Deborah each had a daughter from previous relationships. Five days later, on July 4 th , Deborah's car was found abandoned in what has been described as a parking lot of a former library. Deborah's body would be found in the trunk of the vehicle. Now, I have read a lot of true crime books; I have seen the documentaries; I have even watched all the “forensic” shows like CSI ...