After centuries of older men dumping their older wives in favor of newer, sleeker models, I cheered the “cougar” phenomenon when it hit the national consciousness a few years ago. Thanks, Demi. But now it seems there’s a dark underside. Lately, the news has been abuzz with stories of accomplished older women being killed by their dashing younger husbands or boyfriends. [Read more…]
Is your drink safe?
An Israeli company claims to have invented a device that can detect date-rape drugs in drinks. The device looks like a regular cocktail stirrer, but it is supposed to light up when placed in a drink that contains GHB, rohypnol (aka “roofies”) or ketamine.
If this is true, it would be a benefit to clubbers – but it also raises some red flags. The stirrers might give women a false sense of security. If she plops the stick it in her drink and it doesn’t light up, everything must be fine, right? Nope.
To begin, the device only tests for three substances. While GHB, rohypnol and ketamine are the major pharmaceuticals used in substance-facilitated date rapes, there are hundreds of other drugs that can be used for the same purpose – and new drugs are being invented by would-be rapists every day. Just because the stick doesn’t light up doesn’t mean someone hasn’t slipped something into your drink.
Second, we’ll have to wait and see how effective these sticks really are. [Read more…]
Every cloud has a silver lining
The scandal occasioned by Congressman Anthony Weiner tweeting nude pictures of himself has caused terrible heartbreak for the politician’s pretty wife, the Representative himself, and the Democratic party in general. At least local gyms are benefiting from it. I had to giggle at this poster in the Washington Sports Club:
I’ll be back with a full blog next week. Right now, I’m on vacation in Bethany Beach. I wish I could tell you I’m enjoying a week of sand and sun, but I’m actually in a coffee shop every day, trying to knock out the last pages of my next novel (the sequel to Law of Attraction) ahead of a tight deadline. Wish me luck!
A Hard Month for Parents
As a former sex-crimes prosecutor who is also the mother of two small children, I struggle to be a laid-back parent. I want my kids to grow up thinking the world is generally a good place. I don’t want to frighten them with dire warnings. On the other hand, I’ve seen the terrible things that people do to each other. I worry.
I can usually strike a reasonable balance between caution and chilling out. But July was a hard month.
First, there was the death of little Leiby Kletzky. On July 11th, the parents of the eight-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy allowed him to walk home alone from day camp for the first time. It was only seven blocks, and they’d practiced with a dry run. But Leiby got lost in his close-knit Brooklyn neighborhood and asked a stranger for directions. That stranger took the child home, killed him, and dismembered him, police say. Most of Leiby’s body was found in a dumpster. His feet were found in the man’s freezer.
Then there was the attempted kidnapping, on July 15th, of the two-year-old boy from a Best Buy – while his father watched. The child was playing by the shopping carts when a 23-year-old stranger, high on PCP, grabbed him and ran. The father chased frantically, and the would-be kidnapper threw the toddler into a glass door with such force that it caused a web of cracks, say police.
Finally, Jaycee Dugard released her book, “A Stolen Life,” in mid-July. It is an amazing book, written simply and compellingly by Jaycee herself. You know the story: when she was eleven years old, Jaycee walked to her school bus stop. A convicted sex offender, Joseph Garrido, drove up, tazed her with a stun-gun, snatched her and drove away. His wife helped. Garrido handcuffed the girl in a backyard shed and repeatedly raped her. She eventually bore two baby daughters by him. After 18 years in captivity, she was found, along with her now-adolescent daughters.
The most stunning part of the story to me is that Garrido was on probation for his earlier rape, and was being supervised by the feds the whole time. Dozens of probation officers visited his house – and no one found the girl or the two babies living in the shed in the backyard. Jaycee’s story is one of survival and courage, a shy, intelligent girl who deserved so much better, and a man who was as evil as evil gets. I could not put the book down, although it chilled me to the bone.
How, as parents, do we balance these stories with rearing kids who have a sunny outlook on life – but are also safe? In mulling this, I looked at the statistics. Despite alarming stories that dominate the news, the crime rate is actually going down. For example, there were 479 murders in D.C. in 1991, but only 132 last year. All around the country, violent crime rates are plummeting. And stories like the ones above are very rare. Just over 1% of child abductions are perpetrated by strangers. Most danger to our children comes from people they know: caregivers, relatives, friends of the family. I saw this in my work: most of my cases with child victims involved someone who was close to the child. If we’re diligent about knowing the people our kids hang out with, we can reduce their risk.
I’ve also put on my reading list the book “Free Range Kids,” the bestseller by Lenore Skenazy, who argues that childreen need freedom in order to grow, and that the world is actually safer than we fear. Maybe that will counterbalance some of the darkness.
Meanwhile, if you’ve got thoughts on how to strike the right balance, I’d love to hear them!
They weren’t safe in their own homes
In 12 years as a prosecutor, you get used to hearing stories of crime and horror. But every once in a while, you see a case that really gives you shivers. I watched a trial like that last week: United States v. Jason Scott.
Jason Scott was a student at the University of Maryland’s University College and an employee at UPS. He was smart – and evil. He used UPS databases to research homes. Then he dressed like a ninja, armed himself, and went out with his buddies to invade those homes, while the owners were home. His MO was to use a cinder block to break a window, then go inside, beat up the home owners and demand their valuables. He said this was “the new way” of doing things. Why wait for your target to go on vacation? It was so much easier to find their valuables if you broke in when they were home and you could threaten them with a gun.
In one home, he stole the cell phone of a 17-year-old girl. He looked at the pictures on her phone, and saw her friend, another 17-year-old girl who he thought was cute. He then tracked down the girl in the picture. One night, he dressed himself in his ninja outfit and broke into the girl’s home. She was home with her mother. He locked Mom up in a different room. Then he put a pillowcase on the girl’s head, tied her up, and sexually assaulted her. He videotaped the whole thing.
Luckily, he let this girl live. Others were allegedly not so lucky. He’s also being charged by the State of Maryland for killing several people during his other home invasions. (The feds generally don’t prosecute homicide.) He’s admitted to over 60 crimes.
In the case I watched, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Maryland charged Scott with carjacking, use of a firearm in a crime of violence, and the production of child pornography, among other things. The lawyering was terrific, including the U.S. Attorney, Rod Rosenstein, himself doing much of the heavy lifting. A jury came back with the verdict this afternoon: Guilty on all charges.
Sigh of relief.
Casey Anthony and the death penalty
Do prosecutors try too hard in high-profile cases?
I wonder if the Casey Anthony verdict would have been different if the prosecutors hadn’t made it a death penalty case — because of the effect the ultimate punishment had on Casey’s mother.
Mom was cooperative with the police at first, and seemed to believe that her daughter killed Caley. But how can a mother help put her own daughter to death?
In a surprise twist at trial, Mom took the blame for some of the most incriminating evidence in the case. A bunch of Internet searches had been run on Casey’s home computer, looking into killing with chloroform. Mom testified that she – not Casey – was the one who ran those searches, because her dogs were eating the yard plants and Mom was concerned about them ingesting chlorophyl. So Mom looked it up on the home computer.
Over eighty times.
While Mom was at work.
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you. That testimony was clearly a mother’s last ditch attempt to save her daughter’s life.
I wonder if Mom would’ve testified to such an obvious lie if her daughter’s life wasn’t on the line. I think prosecutors pushed her toward that testimony by threatening Casey with the penalty of death.
Personally, I don’t believe in capital punishment for many reasons (the subject of another post). But even pro-death-penalty prosecutors would be wise to consider the psychological effect that the prospect of the electric chair will have on jurors and witnesses alike.
Violence in Movies and TV – a guest blog by Thomas Kaufman
Hope you had a great 4th of July! I’m excited to introduce today’s guest-blogger: Thomas Kaufman, an Emmy-winning director/cameraman who also writes mysteries. His first book, DRINK THE TEA, won the PWA/St Martin’s Press Competition for Best First Novel. It’s a fantastic mystery featuring one of the funniest sleuths I’ve ever read. I stayed up late to find out whodunnit and laughed out loud throughout. Tom’s second book, STEAL THE SHOW, comes out this week. I can’t wait to read it! Tom’s blog tour continues this week at International Thriller Writers, Murderati, and Gelati’s Scoop. Meanwhile, enjoy his guest blog here with us! — Allison
I work in the film business, have done for longer than I might care to admit. And when I’m filming something, an event, there are many ways to depict it. For example, a guy falling down the stairs. One way to film him would be to place the camera at the bottom, and in one take (that is, without cutting the camera and editing in another shot) we see Joe fall down the stairs. This kind of shooting is called a continuous take – the space and timing of the event are in tact.
Another way would be to shoot more than one angle, so we see Joe falling from the bottom, cut to an overhead shot as he passes through frame, then a close shot of his face in agony as it rushes past, then his body hitting the floor at the bottom. This kind of shooting is often called montage.
Given this second technique, you could even create what we call a motion continuum — you could actually edit a sequence of shots that would be much longer than the event itself. Say it takes five seconds to fall down this particular flight of stairs. I could shoot and edit a sequence that would take two minutes, or three minutes, or fifteen minutes. I could stretch out the event as long as I wanted. True, it would get boring pretty quickly. The point is, a filmmaker can stretch out an event, or let it stay whole, in real time.
You can also fragment an event, make it shorter than it is. Say, Joe (this is before he had that nasty accident on the stairs) is getting into his car and driving away. He’s chasing someone, so he has to move fast.
So he runs to his car, opens the door gets in, closes the door, puts the key in the ignition, turns the key…are we having fun yet? Hey, it ‘s a chase scene, okay? Not a driver’s ed film. So the director would fragment the action, using jump cuts.
As the name implies, a jump cut takes just a section of one action, then cuts further down the time line. You don’t see every blessed second of what’s going on because you don’t need to. So after Joe flings open the car door, we cut to the key turning, then a low angle shot of Joe’s car speeding away. 1-2-3, and it’s chase time, baby.
Now, let’s talk about violence on the screen. Let’s take an event, say, someone getting riddled with bullets. How would we show something like that?
In the 1960’s, Arthur Penn directed Bonnie and Clyde. I hope I’m not ruining your day when I tell you they don’t get away clean. In fact, Clyde gets shot multiple times in slow motion. An event that would’ve taken a two seconds gets prolonged to about thirty, though the use of exploding squibs and slow motion.
The use of slow motion in violence may give it the quality of dance, as the actor’s body shudders and flails as the squibs get fired. John Woo, who directed many action films in Honk Kong before coming to America to direct FACE OFF and MISSION IMPOSSIBLE likes to intercut slow-motion with regular speeds when filming a shoot-em-up, as you can see in this clip from HARD BOILED:
This five minute clip (no, you don’t have to watch all of it) gives you the idea. Lots of bullets flying, lots of squibs exploding, lots of slow motion, lots of action. But what’s the result? Do we know any of the people involved?
A writing teacher of mine once told me, if you’re going to kill somebody, first you have to go to the trouble of bringing them to life.
Now, a second clip, from Howard Hawk’s adaption of Raymond Chandler’s THE BIG SLEEP, with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. In this clip, private eye Phillip Marlowe has it out with racketeer Eddie Mars, whom the audience has seen before:
Since the audience has gotten to know Mars, and that Mars is one of the antagonists, gives this scene major impact.
Could these two clips be more different? Woo is constantly cutting, but Hawks frames his shots in an almost documentary way, and lets shots run for relatively long durations, then accelerates towards the end. And the thing about the Hawks clip? The violence is sudden, it happens quickly. And it is that very suddenness that makes violence so terrifying, because there is no way to prepare yourself for it – by the time you know what’s happened, it’s finished.
There you have it –two directors with different visions and temperaments. So let me ask you – which scene affects you more?
Sea Change in the DSK Case
The case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn appears to be cratering. Check out the breaking news in the New York Times. Or check out my first appearance as a talking head, discussing how this affects the case.