It’s wedding and graduation season, and you know what that means…yeah, bright futures, love in the air, all that good stuff. Also It means a lot of waiting for things to start and a lot of C-plus speeches. If you have something to read, you’ll finish it quicker. (And you’ll need to have a flask in your bag, but…) all.
Now, while the bride is being congratulated, while the nervous valedictorian is getting her 34th minute, or while the parade master of ceremonies is fixing the flat tire on the pride float two cars ahead of you, you have something to read.
Hollywood Headlines
Murder in Paradise: The murder of a VFX legend // Nina Burley, The Hollywood Reporter
VFX pioneer and Academy Award winner Daniel Langlois and his partner Dominique Marchand disappeared on the Caribbean island of Dominica last December. (Technically, the physical evidence suggests they were murdered and burned beyond recognition, although the lead suspect’s lawyers are trying to spin the story that they simply fled a renowned eco-resort they’d been working on for years.)
Burleigh’s descriptions of their alleged cause of death, the possible motives and mysterious, perhaps sketchy, past of their neighbor and suspected killer, Jonathan Lehrer, and the island government’s almost certainly corrupt citizen investment practices are the stuff of first-rate genre journalism. The article was published over a month ago, but a quick Google search turned up no updates on the case.
Serious crime is rare on the island. Police, reportedly ill-equipped to carry out basic forensic analysis and forced to send the body to a lab in the United States or Canada, have asked the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to help investigate Langlois’ death, while residents of the nearby village of Soufrière have publicly vowed to face vigilante justice if Lehrer is released.
Murder in Paradise
Matthew Perry’s death under investigation in connection to ketamine levels found in actor’s blood // AP
Perry’s death last October (…are you kidding, was it that long ago already?) was “ruled as an accident with no suspected criminal intent” in an autopsy released last December. The report also noted that Perry had been undergoing ketamine therapy, which to this layman appeared to be under the supervision of a certified physician, but the coroner believes “Perry’s last treatment a week and a half prior cannot explain the levels of ketamine in his blood, as the drug is typically metabolized within a few hours.”
Master of the Imagination // Evan Osnos New Yorker
The real crime here was a Ponzi scheme, for which Zach Horowitz (stage name “Zach Avery”) has already served decades in prison, but if that’s what you’re after, note Osnos’ gleeful implication that Horowitz’s performance was a crime, too.
But even in Hollywood, where professional jealousy is as ubiquitous as dental veneers, those around Zach were unusually perplexed by the disconnect between his success and his talent. “He’s the worst actor I’ve ever worked with,” a former colleague told me. Doing scenes with Zach was like doing scenes with bananas, he said. Michelle Civetta, a director who worked with Zach, told me she was forced to come up with ways to help Zach release his emotions; otherwise it was like “fighting a dead horse.” … Audiences who’d seen another of his films said, “Zach Avery’s acting was like a cancer to this movie. It died a little bit every time he was on screen. My God, how did he get through the audition?”
Master of Imagination
Well, he signed up for the role, but Osnos quickly returns to the shenanigans that caused it to happen. In the process, Horowitz’s path from student-athlete big talker to contrived “everyman” who regularly writes checks — the kind of guy who could sell a Ponzi scheme but not get much attention — is carefully charted, as is the film industry’s “ambivalent relationship with fact” that both makes Hollywood covetable and enables frauds like Horowitz’s.
A documentary about the incident is due to be released soon. Bad actor (Sarcasm) premiered at TriBeCa last week, but I’d recommend not looking it up – I’ll likely forget all the meta twists by the time I review it, but I don’t want to give away any spoilers.
Tri-State Tales
The NYPD solves 39% of crimes in New York City, but many more on Staten Island. // Bahar Ostadan and Charles Lane Gothamist
I’m cringing at the number of sarcastic responses to this headline mocking Staten Island, but the real story isn’t about which borough has the highest arrest rate, but rather the NYPD’s surprising unwillingness to share useful data, at least when it comes to Gothamist.
According to NYPD Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence Tarik Sheppard, the NYPD switched its crime reporting process to a more robust National Incident-Based Reporting System in 2023. However, the NYPD has so far refused to share raw numbers with Gothamist, making it impossible to compare 2023 to previous years and accurately gauge the police department’s progress.
NYPD Says/Staten Island
The men who stole my phone texted me to get me to unlock it // Veronica de Souza, Gothamist reporter
The phone, which de Souza believes was stolen while he was waiting for the F train, now provides good information from afar about how phone scams work, and de Souza is providing consumers a real service by tracking the phone.
There was something oddly comforting about being in contact with the people who had stolen my phone. Instead of it just disappearing somewhere, I had a general idea of where it was. And thanks to these texts, I understood what a stressful experience it must have been for the people who had gotten hold of it. As the texts got more complicated and angry, I sympathized with their plight. That is, not enough to unlock my phone. But we’ve all been there: You get stuck on a difficult project at work.
Men’s Stuff/Unlock
Hehe, de Souza can kick back with his metaphorical popcorn and plague thieves while his old phone takes him on a free trip around the world. Awesome.
Gilgo Beach suspect charged with additional murders, new evidence called murder ‘blueprint’ // Cybel Mays Osterman and Christopher Kang USA Today
As many of you may know, Rex Heuerman has been indicted, accused of murdering four sex workers and abandoning their bodies in Gilgo Beach, Long Island, New York. [last] “On Thursday, he murdered two more women.” The new indictment is notable for two reasons. First, according to criminologist experts who spoke to NBC News, one in particular suggests that Heuerman may have started killing years before we think and may have committed many more victims.
Another shocking piece of information may not be “noteworthy” to many, but our esteemed reader Claire myself “Heuerman is not only interested in several works by profiler John Douglas and Douglas’s co-author Mark Olshaker, but he also appears to be doing a good job of studying them,” the store’s Instagram account said recently.
The NBC News article ends with, “According to the indictment, police found a copy of the book ‘The Case That Had Us,’ by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker in his office.” USA TodayAccording to the report, “Documents on the hard drive recovered from Heuerman’s basement [police] “We believe he was planning the murder,” he added.
According to court documents, some of the notes in the document were taken from “Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crimes Unit,” a book about psychological profiling of serial and mass murderers by former FBI agent John E. Douglas and author Mark Olshaker. For example, prosecutors say the note in the document, “Look at the painting,” references a passage in the book that reads, “If you want to understand the artist (the perpetrator), you must look at the painting (the victim).”
[Suffolk County District Attorney Ray] Tierney said Heuerman consulted the book “not to gain insight into or to modify or change his own behavior, but rather as a means to improve his methodology and avoid arrest by the authorities.”
Gilgo Beach suspect charged with additional murders
No, you were not the only one who tweeted that “there must have been a lot of preparation and research required for the authorities to escape.” The first thought I had after that unkind thought was… another unkind thought. of course Douglas is The incidents that trouble us Any reader who thinks they can use this book as a guideline for jamming their profile’s signals is sure to fail.
I looked it up and sure enough, midway through the chapter on the Lindbergh kidnapping, after commenting that whoever disposed of Charles Jr.’s body was clearly careless, Douglas writes:
While you may think I am revealing trade secrets here — that I am telling parents how to avoid suspicion by murdering their children and disposing of the body in a particular way — I can assure you that anyone who thinks they can circumvent the law in this way will make so many behavioral errors and leave so many other inadvertent behavioral clues during the commission of their crime and in its aftermath that it will make it easier, not harder, for us to solve the case. (154)
The incidents that trouble us1st ed. H.C.
I think Douglas has a point. I think he was referring to the narrow scope of children killed by family members or guardians, and as far as I know he was not personally called into the Gilgo murders. Obviously none of this is “his fault.” But what if this was “easy”?
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