A History Channel mailer informed me that the Achille Lauro hijacking came to an end 36 years ago last Sunday. Two TV-movie projects got made in 1989-90 about the hijacking, one with Burt Lancaster and one with Karl Malden, which seems like about three too many, but that event seemed to dwell in everyone’s minds for years…and then it dropped below the horizon. The Franklin case, same thing, I think; it was everywhere, every talk show, every longform magazine, and then for whatever reason — OJ; the Starr report; who knows — it stopped being a thing people just knew and discussed, and started being more of a footnote.
So many of the cases from 25-30 years ago have gotten multiple miniseries and docuseries — but so many haven’t. What’s a case from a generation ago that burned bright and then disappeared, and should get another look today? — SDB
I don’t know how ubiquitous it was outside of Southeastern PA, but the Main Line schoolteacher murder that Wambaugh wrote about in Echoes in the Darkness is so bats**t insane that I really need a docuseries on it. It’s got something for everyone: sexual affairs, financial grift, a pervert school principal, the most outrageous lies that you can’t believe anyone ever fell for, and the murder, which is almost anticlimactic compared to all the scheming and fabulism. That book is gripping!
Though I was sick of it at the time, I feel like the Chandra Levy case is due for a new examination. It’s still technically unsolved, raises lots of questions about young women in DC and Congressional corruption, and has the advantage of everyone remembering it happened, and having no idea what the resolution was.
I just realized I forgot to note mine: Laurie "Bambi" Bembenek. Not least because the books about the case are uniformly disastrous as reading experiences. - SDB
What once-ubiquitous case needs a current re-examination?
Leona Helmsley, unless there's something in the works I don't know about
I don’t know how ubiquitous it was outside of Southeastern PA, but the Main Line schoolteacher murder that Wambaugh wrote about in Echoes in the Darkness is so bats**t insane that I really need a docuseries on it. It’s got something for everyone: sexual affairs, financial grift, a pervert school principal, the most outrageous lies that you can’t believe anyone ever fell for, and the murder, which is almost anticlimactic compared to all the scheming and fabulism. That book is gripping!
Though I was sick of it at the time, I feel like the Chandra Levy case is due for a new examination. It’s still technically unsolved, raises lots of questions about young women in DC and Congressional corruption, and has the advantage of everyone remembering it happened, and having no idea what the resolution was.
I just realized I forgot to note mine: Laurie "Bambi" Bembenek. Not least because the books about the case are uniformly disastrous as reading experiences. - SDB