A South African Forensic Files fan tweeted last week to say he couldn’t watch the show in his country anymore.
CBS Reality, a network that broadcasts in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, had stopped airing the shows in South Africa.
Deprived of Forensic Files?Now there’s a crime.
I can relate. My access to the show seemed severely limited after I cut the cord about a year ago.
Along with the monthly cable bill of $125.51 to $172.59 (depending on whatever deal Time Warner was offering or yanking away), I also had to say farewell to the HLN TV network — the Forensic Files mother lode.
HLN has daily Forensic Files marathons anywhere from 4 to 12 hours long.
No. 1: HLN is a jackpot for Forensic Files watchers
If you have basic cable in the U.S., chances are you can bask in all the chromatography and rifling impressions patterns you like via HLN’s generous schedule of back-to back Forensic Files. I miss HLN.
Fortunately, there are also many other sources of the show.
Update:Forensic Files exited Netflix on Jan. 1, 2022.
But you can still stream episodes on Pluto, Discovery +, HBO MAX, Hulu, Amazon Prime, and Tubi.
You can also find many of the episodes on the internet. Just enter “Forensic Files” and the name of the episode or even just the name of the perpetrator in a browser window, and the right one should materialize.
The producers made a deal to distribute the show on YouTube via a company called FilmRise. So if you see “FilmRise,” you’re watching a legally procured episode.
No. 3: Logo means the online episode wasn’t boot-legged
I’m not sure how the picture quality on YouTube rates next to what you see on TV or a streaming service, but I’m happy with it.
Of course, you’ll need a broadband or otherwise expensive internet subscription to watch online. I use Spectrum, which used to be Time Warner Cable. I have nothing nice to say about either of them. Right now, I’m paying $54.88 a month.
The least expensive way to enjoy Forensic Files is via an over-the-air TV station — the kind you get for free, no cable subscription required.
An over-the-air TV station called Escape (Channel No. 33-4 in New York and available in other cities) broadcasts a couple Forensic Files episodes a day.
All you need is an antenna. I use a $29.99 RCA digital one.
It gives pretty much crystal clear reception on Escape and all the other free stations, including the major networks. It was a surprise.
No. 4: My RCA antenna (Best Buy)
I was expecting the same kind of static and the other types of interference from the old days of rabbit ears.
Most of my quest for Forensic Files has taken place in NYC. If anyone has advice or experience to share about finding Forensic Files elsewhere or via another route, please leave a reader comment and share the wealth.
Someone in the world is sure to appreciate any clues you have to offer.
This Oklahoma Tale Is No Musical (“Sunday School Ambush,” Forensic Files)
Updated with information from January 2025
Who can resist a story about a Sunday School teacher gone homicidal?
And we’re not talking about someone who suffers from psychosis and snaps one day.
Brenda Andrew was a sane, high-functioning mother of two who nonetheless formulated at least two plots to murder her husband, Rob Andrew.
Rob, Tricity, Parker, and Brenda Andrew
Try, try again. The first was staged in such a way that it could have killed not just him but also any number of incidental motorists and pedestrians.
Fortunately, that attempt on Rob Andrew’s life failed. But her second try succeeded. She devised both murder plans with the help of boyfriend and fellow Sunday School teacher James Pavatt.
The case is intriguing because it involves two killers who most certainly believed in God.
Even people who doubt the existence of a divine entity worry a little bit that someone is up there watching when they throw a recyclable container into the regular garbage.
Forging their way. Do avid worshippers like Brenda and James persuade themselves that the intended victim is so horrible that God has deputized them to banish him from this earth?
Or maybe they think God is distracted by March Madness or The Bachelor: After the Final Rose while they’re practicing the victim’s signature for the insurance paperwork.
Whatever the case, here’s a recap of the episode along with an epilogue and additional intelligence culled from online sources:
The pretty, petite Brenda Evers was born in 1963 and grew up in a conservative family in Enid, Oklahoma, where she enrolled in baton-twirling class, was known for being quiet, and “always buttoned her clothes all the way up,” according to a former classmate interviewed by Ken Raymond for The Oklahoman.
Likable victim. It’s not clear what kind of work she did after high school, but she married before turning 21, to Rob Andrew, a tall young man who would go on to snag a high-paying job with Jordan Advertising, which counts Oklahoma State University and energy giant OneOK among its clients.
Rob sounded like a sweet guy. As another Oklahoman story by Ken Raymond noted:
No one would’ve described Rob Andrew as crazy, although he did do fun things like bringing slushes to everyone at work because he’d decided July 11 should be 7-Eleven day. Or like naming his daughter Tricity because if she ever ran for public office, her slogan could be “Elect Tricity.”
He also was a church deacon and did missionary work in South America. At the time of the murder, the couple had a son, Parker, 7, as well as Tricity, 11. Rob, 39, remained smitten with Brenda, 38, even as she grew more dissatisfied with him.
Perhaps she felt resentful about hitching up at such a young age or about having parents who made sure she always conformed. At some point after marrying Rob, Brenda began to wear alluring clothing. And she embarked on a series of affairs.
She and Rob separated and got back together at least once during this time.
Rob was an optimist and didn’t believe in divorce.
Still, the abuse Brenda dished out must have tested his forgiving nature. “Sunday School Ambush,” the Forensic Files episode about the case, plays a rehearsed, insulting message that Brenda left on Rob’s answering machine during their troubled relationship. She called him a “half dad.”
By 2001, Brenda had taken up with Pavatt, who served as a deacon as well as a Sunday School teacher at the North Pointe Baptist Church. The two lovebirds went on a vacation to Mexico along with Brenda’s kids.
Sign here. The church gently suggested that the home-wrecking Prudential salesman and the erring wife step away from their teaching posts.
But at some point before everything blew up, Rob had trusted Pavatt enough to purchase from him an $800,000 life insurance policy with Brenda named as the beneficiary.
Brenda and Pavatt hoped to collect that payout via a plot so clichéed it belongs in a made-for-TV movie. They cut the brakelines of Rob’s car and arranged for a fake “your wife has been in an accident” call summoning him to the hospital immediately.
But Rob realized right away that someone had tampered with his Nissan, and he reported the entire incident to the authorities. Forensic Files played the recording of Rob telling police he thought a murder plot was afoot. It’s not clear whether authorities did any kind of investigation as a result.
Pilot-light ploy. On her next try, Brenda lured Rob, from whom she was then separated, into the garage of their Oklahoma City house when he came to pick up their kids for a visit on November 20, 2001.
She asked him to relight the furnace. When he knelt down to do so, Pavatt sneaked up and shot him in the abdomen with a 16-gauge shotgun. According to Forensic Files, Rob grabbed a bag of metal cans from the garage floor to shield himself before Brenda fired a second, fatal bullet.
Then, more cliché. She had Pavatt shoot her in the proverbial fleshy part of a limb (an arm in this case) to make it look as though a couple of robbers had attacked both Andrews.
Scene of the crime
To ensure no one saw him dashing from the crime scene, Pavatt hid out in the house of the Andrews’ neighbors, the Gigstads, for a couple days. They were out of town and Judy Gigstad had given Brenda their spare key for safekeeping.
Brenda called 911 and reported that two armed robbers wearing masks shot Rob and her.
The Forensic Files episodes suggests that Brenda’s voice sounds too calm on the 911 tape to be genuine. I don’t necessarily agree with that, because other episodes have pegged 911 calls as suspicious because the voice is overdramatic.
Fugitives. Regardless, investigators got a strong hint when Brenda and Pavatt gathered up Tricity and Parker and fled to Mexico right around the time of Rob’s funeral.
Authorities distributed Wanted posters with the couple’s pictures, and they were caught a few months later as they tried to cross the border into Texas.
Pavatt’s defense lawyer subsequently pointed out that investigators had no DNA or fingerprints, only circumstantial evidence.
But there was plenty of it. First off, everyone knew about the extramarital affair.
Pre-Airbnb. And Gigstad and her husband reported signs that someone had been in their house during their absence. There was a spent shell casing in the bedroom and a damaged shoe rack hidden under a bed.
Police theorized that Pavatt had accidentally stepped on the shoe rack and then left behind the shell casing when the Gigstads’ son stopped in to collect their mail; Pavatt was ready to shoot him if confronted. Fortunately, the son didn’t see him, and departed unharmed.
There was lots more. Brenda’s wound appeared to have come from a gun held just inches away from her arm, which conflicted with the story she gave police.
A handwriting expert determined that Rob’s signature had been forged on insurance papers that renamed Brenda as beneficiary.
Doctored docs. In later years, Rob had begun signing his name with an ichthus — the Christian fish symbol — as a flourish. It was missing from the papers that Pavatt claimed as genuine.
(On the valid documents, Rob had changed the beneficiary designation to Tricity and Parker.)
James Pavatt in custody. One of his ex-wives testified that he would do anything for love
The 2004 trials each ended with Brenda and Pavatt found guilty of first-degree murder and given a death sentence. Forensic Files shows them shuffling around in chains and orange uniforms.
It was a sad sight to behold but also a little refreshing to see that upper middle class defendants can’t always buy their way out of justice.
Epilogue to date. So, where are they today?
Brenda hasn’t made a lot of waves inside the Mabel Bass Correctional Facility in McLoud, Oklahoma. As of this writing, she’s on death row, with no execution date specified.
Pavatt has created some rumblings from his cell in Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester — the same prison that spurred headlines by botching the 2014 execution of Clayton Lockett.
Mike Arnett, Pavatt’s attorney, has campaigned to have the prison’s three-drug execution procedure declared cruel and unusual punishment.
Oklahoma resumed executions in June 2015, when the state put to death child murderer Charles Frederick Warner.
In an odd turn, an accused killer named Zjaiton Tyrone Wood confessed to the shooting of Rob Andrew.
Arnett contends Pavatt didn’t receive a fair trial, in part because jurors didn’t see Wood’s confession letter.
No appointment. But Wood’s letter was no bombshell. It contained information about the crime that was already known to the public, and it failed to impress a judge.
Still, Pavatt’s sentence was commuted to life.
No such luck for Brenda, but the last time an attractive white woman was facing the execution chamber — two decades ago — it caused a national uproar, with Jerry Falwell, Pat Buchanan, and other public figures arguing against carrying out Karla Faye Tucker’s death sentence. After stating that he had thought and prayed about it, then-Texas Governor George W. Bush refused to commute Tucker’s death sentence, and it was carried out on February 3, 1998.
Brenda Andrew in a circa 2013 photo.
I had a feeling Brenda would be luckier — but didn’t imagine just how much. On January 21, 2025, the Supreme Court ruled that Brenda had cause for challenging her conviction because her sexual history had been used to impugn her character. In court, the prosecution team had brought up other extramarital affairs Brenda had, and one prosecutor even held up a pair of her thong underwear for the jury to see.
Let’s hope the powers that be, divine or secular, settle on the most appropriate punishment for the murder of Rob Andrew, a nice man gone too soon.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Epilogues for the Cast (“Pinned by the Evidence,” Forensic Files)
After doing some elementary research on California self-defense laws, I’m starting to understand how two juries found David Genzler guilty of charges related to his struggle with Dusty Harless.
Dusty Harless was only 5-foot-8 but an incredible athlete
Last week’s post told the story of how Genzler ended up in jail for his actions during a 1996 street fight in San Diego that was doubtlessly initiated by Harless.
Two on one. Offended that Genzler offered his girlfriend, Sky Flanders, a ride and called her “baby” — or some other slightly inappropriate term — the former college wrestling champion straightened out the non-issue by pinning him to the ground.
Scott Davis, a Harless associate, joined the fray by kicking Genzler, who pulled a knife from his pocket and stabbed Harless.
During the first trial, blood evidence seemed to support the theory that Harless and Genzler, both 25 years old, were face to face when the knife wound happened, although the defense maintained Harless had Genzler pinned face to the ground.
The law gives the right to defend yourself when you reasonably believe you’re in “imminent danger of being killed, hurt, or molested, believe immediate force is necessary, and use no more force than necessary.”
Sharp outcome. I tend to think anyone violent enough to pin a stranger to the ground over a minor provocation is also dangerous enough to kill someone whether intentionally or not.
But that’s me. (I’m also the person who still stands far from the edges of subway platforms because a mentally ill man pushed a woman onto the tracks in 1985.)
California state law — and unwritten guy code — probably assumes no one is likely to die from a weaponless street fight, hence pulling out a knife during such a struggle constitutes more force than necessary.
Face to face, it’s more likely Genzler intended to inflict a deadly wound, which explains the second-degree murder conviction at the first trial.
Cathy Harless after her son’s death
Newer laws. The jury at the second trial believed Genzler’s contention that Harless had him pinned face to the ground, meaning Genzler reached backward with his knife without necessarily intending to hit a major artery, hence the manslaughter conviction.
Either way, Genzler might have fared better under the Stand Your Ground laws that states started passing in 2005. They specify that as long as the victim didn’t make the first strike, he doesn’t necessarily have to retreat or run away when he feels threatened.
A defense lawyer today could make a case that brandishing a knife is simply standing your ground.
Fortunately, manslaughter verdict notwithstanding, the second judge sentenced Genzler to time served and set him free.
Legal recourse. Still, Genzler, a finance student who had no criminal history prior to the Harless tragedy, had to spend at least three years in prison, presumably with hardened criminals.
Genzler did get some satisfaction in the matter when he sued Deputy District Attorney Peter Longanbach for prosecutorial misconduct related to false testimony from Sky Flanders. (It’s not clear whether it applied to both trials or just the first one.)
According to the suit, the night of the Harless stabbing, Flanders told police that Harless “flip[ped] Genzler to the ground, and Genzler stabbed Harless while Harless held Genzler on the ground.” She also admitted to police that Harless had engaged in other street fights.
After meeting with Longanbach and his investigator, Jeffrey O’Brien, however, Flanders changed her story. She said she “remembered little of the actual fight.” She also failed to repeat her earlier statement that Harless had a history of fighting both on and off the wrestling mat.
Alternate facts. She also stated that she thought Davis had pulled Genzler off Harless after the stabbing — when, in fact, Genzler was still beneath Harless.
The amount of the settlement, reached in 2006, wasn’t disclosed.
A bit more consolation for Genzler: Longanbach’s law license was suspended for two years.
The Forensic Files episode mentioned Genzler himself was considering a career as a lawyer. I did a little poking around to find out whether that happened or to at least discover some kind of epilogue for him.
There wasn’t any confirmation on whether or not he went to law school, but he did complete his finance degree by 2006.
No information came up about him for the last decade or so. I didn’t look very hard because he probably prefers to not be found.
Sky Flanders during her appearance on Forensic Files
Sky Flanders appears to be alive and well and to have a son. She was never prosecuted for perjury relating to the legal actions against Genzler.
Flanders has stated that she prefers not to talk about the tragedy.
Car accident. After the trial, Dusty’s mother, Cathy Harless, who appeared in “Pinned by the Evidence,” moved to Butte, Montana, and then to San Diego.
She worked as a caretaker for ranch owners’ properties and also had two dogs and two horses of her own.
Her relationship with Sky Flanders ultimately turned sour. A 2006 story in the San Diego Union-Tribune contained the following quote from Cathy Harless:
“I consider [Flanders] really part of the problem, and I think she should be so ashamed for ruining Pete Longanbach’s life and career,” she said. “It turned from a trial about murder into a trial about lawyer misconduct.”
Sadly, Cathy Harless died at age 63 when a drunk driver hit her pickup truck in Alpine, California, in 2010. Two daughters survived her.
That’s all for this post. Until next week, cheers. — RR
Alcohol, Adrenaline, a Knife (“Pinned by the Evidence,” Forensic Files)
The last two posts told of murders that were horrible, but made some sense just the same. Howard Elkins killed his pregnant girlfriend because she threatened his marriage and social standing.
Dusty Harless wrestled for Palomar College
Sharee Miller enticed her boyfriend to shoot her husband because she wanted all his assets.
XY doings. For Dustin “Dusty” Harless, on the other hand, there were no high stakes. He overreacted to a comment. The ensuing fight caused the end of his own life and the incarceration of another man for years.
Harless’ actions on April 18, 1996 were senseless, but that’s part of what makes them interesting.
The crime and its immediate aftermath demonstrate how an unwritten code on fair parameters for a man-on-man fight — no matter how unwarranted — can spill over into legal judgment.
Rain of terror. Here’s a recap of the Forensic Files episode about the case, “Pinned by the Evidence,” along with some extra information from internet research:
A couple consisting of Sky Flanders and surfboard salesman boyfriend Dusty Harless, age 25, exited a San Diego bar on a rainy night in 1996. She ran ahead of him to get under an awning.
Harless “tried to protect fiancée from attacker’s lewd comments”
Motorist David Genzler, also 25, spotted her and offered a ride. Although the episode never gives a definitive account of his verbiage, it probably fell somewhere between “Ma’am, do you need a ride?” and “Climb in, baby.”
She declined, citing the existence of a boyfriend.
Appalled to learn that a man had spoken to his girlfriend while she was standing alone, the legally intoxicated Harless walked to the passenger side of Genzler’s car to confront him.
The pin man. Twelve minutes later, Harless lay bleeding from a 4-inch knife wound to his aorta. Genzler fled the scene. So did another motorist, Scott Davis, a Naval officer and bouncer who knew and apparently liked Harless enough to get out of his car to help him grapple with Genzler.
The part I forgot to mention is that Harless was a former AAU national wrestling champion who had a huge advantage over the eyeglass-wearing Genzler.
A chess club match was probably the closest the slender San Diego State University finance student ever got to beating anybody.
But Genzler was carrying a knife and he stabbed Harless during their struggle. Flanders made note of his license plate number, and police traced it to Genzler’s mother. He then turned himself in.
Blood evidence. Genzler said that Harless dragged him out of his car and pinned him so that he was facing the ground. Genzler defended himself, he said, by grabbing the knife from his pocket, reaching backward, and blindly trying to hit Harless in the shoulder.
But investigators found Harless’ blood on the front of Genzler’s shirt. That, according to the prosecution, proved the two were face to face when the knife pierced Harless’ body — and that Genzler intended to deliver a fatal wound.
David Genzler in court
Whichever the real scenario, it still sounds as though Genzler did nothing illegal. I don’t believe he willingly exited his car to confront a riled-up boyfriend in the first place.
Genzler had nothing at stake; the woman at the center of the conflict had already rebuffed him. And no one, except Sky Flanders, had heard the exchange between her and Genzler. It’s not as though she embarrassed Genzler in front of a group of people.
Waves of friends. And if a nationally recognized wrestler is attacking an unwilling opponent, doesn’t that give the latter the right to do anything he can to defend himself?
The jury didn’t think so, and convicted Genzler of second-degree murder. He received 20 years to life, and Forensic Files shows Flanders in cathartic joy upon hearing the verdict.
It’s possible Harless’ popularity in the community ultimately contributed to the guilty verdict. He was outgoing, belonged to a competitive surfing team, and had hundreds of friends. A number of them paddled into the Pacific Ocean to lay commemorative wreaths in his honor.
A post honoring Harless on the Parents of Murdered Children website places all the blame for his death on Genzler:
“…Dustin was on his way home with his girlfriend. Dustin was stabbed by David Genzler in cold blood. David jumped out of his car, hit Dustin in the temple and Dustin fell to the pavement. David jumped on top and stabbed Dustin with a 4″ knife, putting it in all the way to the hilt.”
Flanders reacting to the first guilty verdict
A paid obituary for Harless that appeared in the Montana Standard referred to the killing as “a tragic act of a demented individual.”
Genzler served his sentence in Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, until he won a new trial on the basis of having been denied his counsel of choice at the first one. (Sources vary on how much time Genzler served; it was at least three years and possibly as many as six.)
Rhythm to it. This time, Genzler’s attorneys brought in Wrestling Hall of Fame member Ned Blass to refute the most damning forensic evidence against him: Harless’ blood on the front of Genzler’s shirt.
Blass showed a common wrestling hold that would have forced Genzler to face the pavement before he stabbed Harless. The defense team also used forensic animation to show how Genzler might have flipped over right after the stabbing.
An expert testified that, because the aorta spurts at a cadence, it’s possible Harless wasn’t bleeding in the split second before Genzler turned face up.
Also, the defense found witnesses who said Dusty made a habit out of starting physical fights with other men, including one he incited after another man allegedly made an insulting comment to his girlfriend at a bar.
Justice not done. The defense also found discrepancies between the story Flanders gave to police on the night of the accident and the one she offered on the witness stand. In her first account, she admitted that Harless had Genzler on the ground and wouldn’t let him up before the stabbing.
Flanders conceded on camera during her Forensic Files appearance that she wasn’t entirely “truthful” during the first trial because she didn’t want to help the defense lawyers. (She later claimed the prosecutor had coached her to withhold information during the first trial.)
The jury found Genzler guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter. The judge sentenced him to time served and set him free.
I still think Genzler was railroaded. Another unfair contention was that, because Genzler carried a knife in his pocket, he must have been looking for trouble.
Feckless fight. My brothers own and sometimes carry sporting knives, and they have never gotten into any fights (except the battles we all got into as kids, but we didn’t use weapons).
Harless worked for Innovative Manufacturing Ventures in San Diego
In fact, all of Genzler’s actions to end the fight seem justifiable. Evidence suggested that Harless, on the other hand, enjoyed conflict for conflict’s sake.
In the Genzler case, Harless more than likely defended honor that no one had attacked. He let adrenaline and testosterone coax him into his own demise.
That’s all for this week. For next time, I’ll dig up some research on what does and doesn’t qualify as self-defense under California law as it applies to this case. Until then, cheers. — RR
A Murder Made for Basic Cable (“Web of Seduction,” Forensic Files)
I’m always up for a good Lifetime channel movie.
The real deal: Sharee Miller in court
I know, made-for-TV dramas are formulaic and manipulative. But they’re also highly watchable.
Case in point is Fatal Desire, based on a real-life murder case — as written about in the paperback Fatal Error by Mark Morris — starring Anne Heche as a beguiling young woman who used the internet to prey upon lonely men. She manages to persuade one of them to kill her husband. Eric Roberts plays the poor sap manipulated into a role as trigger man.
Heche and Roberts did a great job and the movie was absorbing, so naturally I went online to find out what the real parties looked like. It turned out Forensic Files had done an episode about the case, “Web of Seduction.”
Anne Heche in Fatal Desire on Lifetime TV
Narrator Peter Thomas said the story “had everything: sex, lies, and a video tape.”
May-December Union. It did, except that I probably should have watched the Forensic Files version before seeing the Lifetime movie. It was a lot easier to buy Anne Heche as an irresistible femme fatale than the real woman who inspired Fatal Desire.
Here are the facts of the actual case, courtesy of the Forensic Files episode “Web of Seduction” plus some internet research.
On Nov. 8, 1999, Bruce Miller’s brother found him dead in the office of B&D Auto Parts, a junkyard Bruce owned in Flint, Michigan.
It looked like a robbery. Someone had taken around $2,000 in cash from the 48-year-old.
Just a few months before, Miller had married a woman, Sharee Kitley, who was around 20 years younger. (Couldn’t he hear the FF theme’s guitar notes in his head?)
Cut to video. Sharee tried to blame her husband’s murder on an ex-boyfriend of hers named Bruce Hutchinson. He melted down during a subsequent polygraph test, but police didn’t find any forensic evidence linking him to the murder.
Detectives got a break a few months later, when a man named Jerry Cassaday, himself a former homicide investigator, committed suicide inside his Kansas City, Missouri, house (which looked like something of a mini-McMansion from the photo).
They found in the trash a videotape of Sharee Miller “dancing seductively.” Forensic Files showed a few seconds of her performance. It looked none-too-sexy to me (not that I was the intended audience).
Virtually true. And as evidenced from a recording of her police interrogation, Sharee’s flat, ungrammatical manner of speaking lacked the feminine charm with which Anne Heche portrayed her. Sharee sounded like a Rust Belt 7-Eleven and gas pumps attendant.
Confronted with the videotape, Sharee said that she had never met Cassaday in person and they had a strictly online relationship. She considered it no big deal for a married person to exchange sexually suggestive material with a stranger in a chat room — “everybody does it.”
Duped: Jerry Cassaday
Police confiscated both Sharee’s and Cassaday’s computers, and got someone from America Online to dig up their instant messages. They discovered that the two had in fact met in person and had real, offline sex.
Compelling lies. And Sharee had apparently made Cassaday believe that Bruce Miller needed to be disposed of. She fabricated a story about how he was involved in organized crime and abused her physically.
Here’s the part that redefined manipulation: She told Cassaday she was pregnant with twins — his — and sent him a picture of a sonogram as proof.
Later on in the relationship, she threw her most-inflammatory lie on the fire: Bruce beat her so badly that she miscarried Cassaday’s twins. She even painted a few bruises on herself and sent Cassaday photographs.
Sharee didn’t sound particularly intelligent in the clips Forensic Files shows, but she managed to fool a veteran homicide detective just the same.
A youngish Sharee Miller, back when 1980s hair was her only crime
Denouement. Investigators read messages between the two discussing a murder plot whereby Sharee would distract Bruce Miller with a phone call while Cassaday shot him. Sharee instructed him to make it look like a robbery.
Thanks to his training as a law officer, Cassaday pulled off the murder without creating much in the way of evidence — until he wrote his own suicide note after realizing he killed an innocent man.
Sharee betrayed Cassaday. Once she had her husband out of the way, she stopped communicating with Cassaday and latched onto a new boyfriend.
Sad note. Cassaday had discovered that the sonogram image Sharee sent him was five years old. (She later claimed she lied about being pregnant with twins to cheer up Cassaday because he was feeling depressed.) Apparently, the prospect of life with him, even with a newly built house, didn’t appeal to her.
“I was so blind and so stupid,” Cassaday wrote before shooting himself. “And so much in love. Little did I know she never meant any of it. She just wanted all her money and no more husband. Sharee was involved and helped set it up. I have all the proof. She will get what’s coming.”
Cassaday was right. After deliberating for two days, a jury found her guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and second-degree murder in Bruce Miller’s death. She got life in prison plus 54 to 81 years.
Second shot. She finagled a release from jail while pending a new trial in 2009. Her attorneys successfully threw into doubt the admissibility of Cassaday’s suicide note.
Nonetheless, a district court reinstated Miller’s convictions in 2012, and back she went to the Michigan Department of Corrections.
As mentioned, if you’re unfamiliar with the case, you’ll want to watch the Forensic Files episode first, then check out what Lifetime did with the story.
A Pregnant Worker, an Enraged Boss
(“A Voice From Beyond,” Forensic Files)
This week, it’s back to concentrating on an individual Forensic Files episode, and “A Voice from Beyond” is good way to start, with its blend of nostalgia and horror.
Site of the barrel discovery in Jericho, New York
The story takes us back to a pre-internet world, when people kept handwritten address books with real paper.
It was exciting to see how investigators applied millennial-era forensic technology to evidence from the 1960s.
Only in L.I. In fact, the story had everything a true crime fan could hope for: an affluent businessman leading a double life, a desperate mother-to-be, a 95-year-old woman praying for word on her daughter, a crucial anonymous call to the police.
Oh, and a mummified body in a crawl space.
And for a little extra flavor, this Greek tragedy took place in Long Island, the same New York City commuter haven that gave rise to Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco, and numerous others who can’t quite pronounce the letter “r” in words that contain it but append it to words that don’t.
Forensic Files, as usual, did a great job of telling the story in 22 minutes, but I was curious about something not shown — the reaction of friends and neighbors when they learned a horrible secret about the respectable-seeming retiree in their midst.
No Barrel of Fun. So let’s get started on the recap of “A Voice From Beyond,” along with some extra information drawn from internet research.
On September 2, 1999, as Ronald Cohen was preparing to vacate the Jericho, New York, house he had just sold for $455,000, he pried off the lid of a 55-gallon drum that had sat undisturbed beneath the bottom floor ever since he moved in.
He smelled noxious chemicals and saw a hand poking out of a pile of plastic pellets.
Plastic leaves linked the body to the killer
Authorities found an intact mummified body of a woman inside the barrel. They determined the deceased was young, petite, dark-haired, and pregnant and had died from blunt force trauma. She had some unusual dental work, likely performed in South America.
The fetus was a boy, 17-inches long.
Wrong numbers. The body had been preserved because the drum was airtight, but the pages of an address book (this is how folks kept track of friends before Outlook, iPhones, and Facebook) found in the barrel had decayed.
What really gave the episode armrest-grabbing suspense was the effort — via moisture extraction, magnification, and a video spectral comparator study — on the part of forensics experts to yield clues from the rotting paper.
They uncovered some names, addresses, and phone numbers, although the first batch yielded no leads since the people had long moved away or changed phone numbers. And this was 1999, post-internet but before social media enabled everyone to track down anyone.
Locals help. By this time, police had traced the barrel to a chemical company in Linden, New Jersey, and dated its manufacture to 1965. It contained some plastic leaves in addition to the pellets.
Neighbors in Jericho remembered that an occupant around that time period, Howard Elkins, was part owner of the Melrose Plastic Company, a New York City maker of decorative artificial plants.
Howard Elkins in an undated photo
The neighbors didn’t mention any gossip about him, but the aforementioned anonymous caller did, telling Nassau County police that, in the 1960s, Elkins had been having an affair with a Hispanic woman who worked in his factory.
Elkins had long since moved to Boca Raton, Florida. He was none-too-happy to find New York detectives on the other side of his door in his upscale retirement community.
Resolution by gunfire. Presented with the evidence of the barrel and green dye inside, Elkins denied he’d ever seen such a thing. He admitted to having an affair but said he couldn’t remember what the woman looked like or her name.
He refused to give a DNA sample to determine whether he was the father of the fetus. Before leaving, Nassau County Detective Brian Parpan told Elkins the police would be getting an order for a blood sample.
Elkins, 70, promptly bought a shotgun and ammunition from Walmart and killed himself.
By this time, the lab had tapped the address book for the name of one more of the dead woman’s friends, and this one answered when police dialed her 30-year-old phone number.
Kathy Andrade knew immediately the body belonged to a friend she met in an English class, Reyna Angelica Marroquin, who disappeared in 1969 at the age of 27. A resident alien number found in the address book substantiated the identification, according to Cold Case Files Classic’s “The Barrel” segment.
Murdered immigrant Reyna Marroquin
Emotional turmoil. Marroquin came to the U.S. from El Salvador in 1966, went to fashion school, and got a job at the Melrose factory. Shortly before disappearing, she let on that she was pregnant and that the father told her he was going to marry her.
But he already had a wife and three children and Marroquin was worried he would never keep his promise.
(Something mentioned in more than one newspaper story that Forensic Files didn’t bring up: Marroquin already had a small child whom she sometimes brought to the factory with her; it was never revealed who the father was, but co-workers suspected Elkins.)
According to Kathy Andrade, after Marroquin called her boyfriend’s house and told his wife she was pregnant, the man became enraged and threatened to kill Marroquin. She disappeared soon after.
Merciful messenger. Police theorized Elkins beat Marroquin about the head in a fit of anger, took the body to Long Island with the intention of dumping it in the ocean, put it in a steel drum, and weighted it with plastic pellets from his factory.
But at 350 pounds, it was too heavy to load onto his boat, so he pushed it into a crawl space, where it remained untouched for 30 years.
With the mystery solved and the perpetrator dead, the last loose end was finding Marroquin’s family.
Newsday reporter Oscar Corral flew to El Salvador and tracked down Reyna Marroquin’s mother in the town of San Martin. The 95-year-old, known as “Grandma Marroquin,” nearly collapsed when told of the discovery, Corral recalled in his Forensic Files interview. She’d been heartbroken ever since Reyna stopped writing home with no explanation in 1969. She’d had dreams depicting Reyna in a barrel.
The story of the body in the barrel sold many a paper
Well-enough liked. As for Elkins, it sounded as though he’d been able to mask any feelings of guilt about his role in the tragedy. Below are two excerpts, including neighbors’ statements, from newspaper articles published after his suicide in 1999:
“Howard was very active in the community, very much in the social scene,” said neighbor Robert Froment. Elkins’ Florida neighbors yesterday were shocked that the big, bearded, jovial man could have been involved in such a crime. — New York Post
“He seemed like a very sociable fellow,” Frank Lonano, a neighbor in Boca Raton, said of Mr. Elkins, whom he had known only casually around the walled and affluent community of town houses overlooking a golf course. “He was just not the type.” Judith Ebbin, who with her husband, Arthur, bought the Jericho house from Mr. Elkins and his wife, Ruth, in 1972, owned it for 12 years, never suspecting all that while that a woman’s body lay in a drum in a crawl space under the den. “They seemed like such a lovely family,” she said of the former owners. — New York Times
Reyna Marroquin’s mother, center, is consoled after learning her daughter’s fate
The one bright note to the story is the resolution brought to Reyna’s mother. As CBS quoted her: “Now I know she’s with me. She came flying like a dove back to her home.” — RR
Viewers know Peter Thomas as the narrator of Forensic Files, but his career started long before anyone had heard of high-velocity blood splatter or age-processed clay busts. Some trivia from a long (1924 to 2016) and productive life:
1.Peter Thomas voiced the 1970 commercial that declared “Tang was chosen to go to the moon with the Apollo astronauts.”
2. He considered himself lucky that his voice didn’t change as he aged. He recorded a Gettysburg audio tour in 1974 and was able to add verbiage 30 years later. His voice matched.
3. As a favor to Johnny Carson, Peter Thomas officiated at the wedding of the talk-show titan’s son Cory Carson to a Naples, Florida, native Angelica D. Carson. Johnny (below) and Peter met when they worked for the The Morning Show on CBS in the 1950s.
4. Peter Thomas postponed his own vacation to help an audio technician save his job. The sound man had messed up a Tropicana commercial recording, so Thomas did it over and never told the guy’s superiors.
5. Of all the Nova episodes he narrated for PBS, “Iceman Murder Mystery” was his favorite.
6. Although Peter Thomas spoke perfectly unaccented North American English, he had foreign-born parents — a father from Wales, a mother from England.
7. He considered the greatest innovations in voice technology to be audio tape (which could be sliced up, so one mistake didn’t mean recording from the beginning again), DAT (digital audio tape), and teleprompters affixed to the camera (instead of off to the side).
8. Don “In a World” Lafontaine (left) and Peter Thomas are considered the two best male narrators of their generation. Apparently, they weren’t rivals and liked each other’s work.
9. He won the audition for an American Express card commercial because he could say the “American Express: Don’t leave home without it” spiel in under five seconds.
10. You needn’t bother searching for Peter Thomas in the bankruptcy court records of the once-rich-and-famous. He lived below his means, invested wisely, and left a well-endowed estate. One Florida property he bought for $1 million was worth $25 million toward the end of his life.
Naples, Florida
Read more about how Peter Thomas rose from the humble son of a schoolteacher and minister to the humble voice of countless commercials and TV shows.— RR
Peter Thomas’ voice has lured me away from all kinds of good intentions: organizing tax documents, cleaning between the sofa cushions with the Dirt Devil crevice tool, going to bed early.
Peter Thomas, seen here in a Lux commercial, did on-camera work in the early days of TV
It’s not easy to describe his voice, although I’ve listened to it for a minimum of 600 collective hours. Thomas was the narrator for Forensic Files, and he’s part of the reason fans like me can’t stop rewatching all 400 episodes of the true-crime series’ 1996 to 2011 run.
Toned up. I guess what’s so inviting about his narration is that his warm, assuring voice is devoid of affectation. He speaks smoothly, although not in a “you’ll get 150 sparkling silver gem studs absolutely free with your BeDazzler” manner. And like all voice artists, he has great diction — but it’s not so crisp as to make it alienating.
“Peter Thomas is the same guy who narrated school documentaries,” says Paul Dowling, executive producer of Forensic Files. “He’s not some sleazy guy from AM radio. He makes it okay to watch.”
Indeed, something about Peter Thomas’ narration enables me to see an episode about a college student who hacked his father to death with an ax — and sleep like a baby afterward.
Randy Thomas, a voiceover artist who narrates the Oscars and Tony Awards, also admires his work on Forensic Files.
“There are some voiceover actors who think they’re doing a good job just because they pronounce the words correctly,” she says. “Peter was different. He had an inquisitive nature about so much of life, and that transferred to whatever he narrated.”
Sunshine boy. My own dream of interviewing Peter Thomas someday — and having that voice all to myself for a little while — expired when he passed away last year, but I had fun researching a bit about his life.
Randy Thomas, narrator for the 2018 Oscars, says Peter Thomas imbued his voice work with a “different sense of wonder for each project”
Thomas was born in Pensacola, Florida, in 1924, to two people who enjoyed speaking aloud and enunciating well: an English teacher and a minister.
“His father told him to paint pictures with words,” says Randy Thomas (no relation, but the two were close friends).
Peter Thomas started acting in school plays as a child and, at age 13, picked up some voice work at a local radio station. A sponsor gave him flying lessons for free because he was too young to receive a real salary legally.
G.I.-normous. At 18, he took a detour, enlisting in the army and then fighting German gunfire in Normandy, France, in 1944. He earned a Purple Heart after suffering a shrapnel wound during the Battle of the Bulge.
After returning to the U.S. and marrying longtime girlfriend Stella Ford Barrineau, he worked at Memphis radio station WMC at night and went to college during the day.
His big break came when a Hamilton Watch Company executive heard Thomas’ voice on a Florida poetry program and invited him to New York City for an audition. He won the gig, and soon nationwide audiences got to hear his voice say: “The passage of time is beyond our control, but it passes beautifully when Hamilton marks the hour.”
No mere vapor. A tidal wave of offers followed. CBS hired Thomas as the New York City anchor of The Morning Show with Jack Parr. Thomas narrated medical shows and educational documentaries and did commercials for Estée Lauder, Coke, American Express (“Don’t leave home without it”), Visine, Listerine (“The taste you hate twice a day”), and Hewlett-Packard.
Thomas’ house in Florida — he returned to the state late in his career — had a recording studio
A 2004 Broadcast Pioneers documentary from Florida station METV recalled how — in the days long before TV assaulted viewers with Preparation H and Cialis commercials — Stella rebuked her husband for narrating a Vicks Mentholatum ad. She didn’t appreciate having to watch ointment rubbed onto an actor’s chest.
Plenty of more-serious work came his way. He snagged narration gigs for the PBS series Nova as well as for the History Channel — the holy grail for voice performers.
Didn’t phone it in. His association with Forensic Files began when the 30-minute docuseries was still in development. “I fell asleep on the couch one night and there was a World War II documentary on,” says show creator Paul Dowling, “and I heard this voice, and he was carrying the whole thing. It was mesmerizing.”
Thomas turned down Medstar Television’s offer for the Forensic Files job at first because he was still earning a fortune from TV commercials and other one-offs. But after some persuading, he agreed.
His approach to the gig reaffirms one of my favorite truisms about life: No matter how talented the worker, there’s no such thing as an easy job. Thomas would spend six hours rehearsing each script at home. Stella would give him feedback.
“Forensic Files is on somewhere in the world at any given time,” says Randy Thomas. “There’s always the consistency of Peter Thomas’ voice behind the microphone, and he’s become the show’s brand.”
He also occasionally contributed to the show editorially.
Thomas (with Paul Dowling) at a ceremony honoring his work on behalf of WW II veterans
“If he didn’t like something I wrote, he’d say, ‘I don’t want to offend you, but can I change this?'” recalls Dowling. “And I said, ‘I can take all the help you can give.’ We never told him to just shut up and do the script, which is how most producers treat talent, and I didn’t find out until his funeral that we were the only ones who didn’t treat him that way.”
Thomas remained in demand for his work through age 90. He died at 91, on April 30, 2016, but his voice lives on — and not just on recordings. His sons, Peter Jr. and Douglas, followed him into the profession. — RR
Update: Read 10 fun facts about Forensic Files narrator Peter Thomas.
How did Forensic Files become the I Love Lucy of true-crime shows — with reruns on every day, everywhere from Montreal to Melbourne? The half-hour series has been compelling fans to procrastinate on their housework and homework and gym schedules for two decades.
Paul Dowling with his daughter, Brae
Since starting this blog last year, I’ve used it to answer lingering questions about specific Forensic Files episodes. With this post, I hope to solve some mysteries about the series as a whole.
Executive producer Paul Dowling, whose Medstar Television made all 400 episodes, allowed me to interrogate him during a phone call:
Forensic Files is shown in 142 countries — why are overseas viewers so interested in U.S. crimes? In many countries, cases aren’t covered in the media the way they are here.
Often the laws are different from American laws. In Great Britain, there is confidentiality until the case is decided. The crime files aren’t open the way they can be in the U.S. Same thing in Canada — you don’t learn about someone being arrested for rape or murder before the case is decided. And if he’s exonerated, you never know about it.
That can give people in other countries the wrong idea about the U.S. Brazil has a murder rate 3x higher than ours. Everyone has guns except for innocent law-abiding people, and when bad guys come to the door, they can’t defend themselves. And then they see American television and think the crime rate is much higher in the U.S.
There was a rape and murder in Brazil in front of 12 people and no one testified. People in Brazil asked me whether I’m afraid to walk the streets in the U.S. I said no, I’m afraid here.
When I was in Paris, I was told to dress like a bum [to prevent robbery].
How do you pack the whole story into 30-minute episodes?We have 22 minutes. It’s like a Broadway musical: Every line of that song has to move the story along.
As you are creating the story, you don’t think, “How will I write this?” You think, “How will I say this?”
You can tell a lot with the pictures you use. If we show a girl holding a fish [that she caught], it says something about who she was.
For every story we did, all 400, before the show aired, I sat down with three people and told them the story. It enabled me to see how the story worked. If their eyes glazed over, I knew the story was going too slowly.
It’s like campfire storytelling — if you want to keep boys and girls awake, you have to tell a good story.
How is it contending with the pressure for Nielsen ratings? Imagine you’re doing a Broadway musical and, at any moment, the audience can stay right in their same seats and have their choice of switching to 500 other musicals.
That’s TV.
TV producers are not evaluated on the value of their show — or how many people watch it. They are evaluated on how many viewers watch the ads during breaks.
You have to have a show that people are emotionally tied to so that they are afraid to get up.
Chloe (left, with pal Kimber) often visited the studio behind the scenes
How do you keep viewers in their seats?When I started the show on TLC in 1996, they wanted us to use teasers. I said no: The show should provide the incentive for viewers to come back. Toward the end of Jeopardy, when they come back from the break, Alex goes right into the Final Jeopardy question — there’s no recap. People don’t want to miss that question.
Viewers of Forensic Files want to know who killed that guy. That’s why you can’t open the show with any hint of who did it.
When we interviewed a killer on camera, we would go to the prison with our own [street] clothes for him to wear. That way, viewers don’t know yet that he did it.
We also use the passive tense in scripts, even though writers are taught not to in school. The passive tense lets you put information out there without saying who did it.
And we also don’t use big fancy words if there’s no need. A screenwriter had me look at a script once, and I said, “What does this word mean? I have two college degrees and I don’t know.” If you were at a picnic or dinner party and someone used that word, how would it make you feel?
Why do you interview the murder victims’ mothers and fathers separately — even if they’re still married? If you have two dogs in the house, there’s always one dominant one. Likewise, sometimes people say things in front of you they wouldn’t say in front of their spouse. There are interview tricks that work with one person but not two at the same time. People are often uncomfortable with silences, so sometimes they’ll blurt out something they wouldn’t [with a spouse present].
A lot of true-crime series show victims’ family members in tears. Why doesn’t Forensic Files? Because it’s manipulative. There are techniques TV producers use to make a person cry. And the viewer feels sorry for the person and gets mad at the TV show for subjecting that person to heartache.
And oftentimes it’s a year or more after the crime, so people are more composed.
We give murder victims’ families a cleaned-up version of the episode they’re in.
You mean a version without graphic footage of wounds, autopsies, etc.? Yes, we tell them that this is the version they’ll want to watch and show their friends.
You recently tweeted that your dog Chloe had passed away at age 15. How was she involved in the show? She used to come in the editing room with us, next to the editor. I was working so hard that I wasn’t home a lot, and my kids would come in with sleeping bags and pizza and the dog would eat pizza behind our backs.
Chloe was here when we did reenactments with German shepherd-style attack dogs. She started running in circles and getting bent out of shape.
So you used real dogs and cats in the reenactments?Yes, and we had a trained squirrel and homing pigeons and a kangaroo once.
What about reenactments of vehicular accidents — did you use stock footage?No. Every crash you see on Forensic Files is something we created. We did a show about boat crashes, and we bought boats. We use cars that are the same model and color [as those in the real accidents]. Some movies edit crashes and fast-forward to a stock shot of the outcome. Forensic Files shows crashes without an edit.
With crashes, you can’t have gasoline in the cars — you don’t want explosions. So sometimes you have motorized pushers. But you have to be fair as far as the speeds used, so a defense attorney doesn’t come back and say to you, “Hey, the real crash was 30 mph, but the show’s was 70 mph.”
Doesn’t all that make accident reenactions awfully expensive?Yes, but there was never a budget limit for re-creations. I never wanted anyone to be hurt in an accident re-creation and to have the director say afterward, “Well, I only had $50,000.”
Were there any episodes that chilled you to the bone, that you couldn’t forget after you went home?Yes, if we hadn’t done one particular episode, three people would be in prison for something they didn’t do. It was for the Norfolk rape and killing of Michelle Moore-Bosko in 1997, and these three people didn’t do it. Someone else confessed to the crime, and the prosecutor wouldn’t act.
Tim Kaine was governor of Virginia then, and he saw the episode [“Eight Men Out,” 2001] and had the state police reinvestigate.
I read that “Bad Blood” — the story of a woman raped by a doctor (John Schneeberger) while she was unconscious — was your favorite episode of Forensic Files. Why? If a forensic hall of fame existed, that victim would belong in it.
The doctor’s DNA didn’t match the rapist’s. The victim was sure the hospital was being paid off to throw the tests or something. So she broke into the doctor’s things and got his Chapstick. She paid for a DNA test with her own money, and it matched the DNA from the rape.
It turned out the doctor had implanted a plastic tube into his arm with somebody else’s blood and was having that blood tested.
The doctor’s wife had been saying on TV that this woman was a slut. And then the wife’s daughter from another marriage who lived with them told her mother that the stepdad [Schneeberger] had been drugging and raping her.
Paul Dowling at the 2016 Mipcom trade show in Cannes. A German network licensed Forensic Files for 10 years because “there are people who aren’t born yet who’ll want to see it”
After talking to various people who watch Forensic Files, I haven’t really been able to identify a demographic pattern. Have you? One thing we know is that a lot of women watch the show for safety reasons — knowledge of safety they can pass along to their daughters.
Can you share any safety tips?We don’t get into victim-shaming, but we do show things that the victims shouldn’t have done regarding situational awareness.
Some girls and women don’t know that there are predators at bars and clubs casing them out. A predator will watch for things like two women walking in together late. He knows that later in the evening they will have parked farther away. So when they’re ready to leave, if one stays and the other goes out to get the car and drive it around, the predator will follow her out to the car.
I tell my daughter and her friends what the FBI says: When you go to your car, have your keys in your hand. If someone with a gun comes up and says to get in the car, throw your keys and purse in one direction and run in the other. The bad guy isn’t expecting this, so he thinks, “I can get the money and car instead of going after her.”♠
This week, instead of recapping an episode of Forensic Files, I’d like to explain a bit about the series itself and the genre it inhabits.
Forensic Files executive producer Paul Dowling
Despite that the show has been around for 20 years and is broadcast in 142 countries, a lot of prospective viewers mistakenly lump it in with other TV fare related to crime.
Forensic Files is a straight-up true-crime series as opposed to the wholly fictional crime dramas (such as CSI ) that dominate network TV.
It also differs from made-for-TV movies (Like Mother Like Son: The Strange Story of Sante and Kenny Kimes) that are based on real crimes but also may take dramatic license by making up dialogue and creating composite characters.
Classifying. True-crime shows feature interviews with the real-life investigators and lawyers who worked on the cases and friends and family members of the victims.
These series can’t pack in every element of the story, but they don’t fabricate any either. On the Case with Paula Zahn, 48 Hours Mystery, and certain Dateline NBC shows fall into this category.
Forensic Files belongs to the same genre, but there’s no Erin Moriarty or Keith Morrison hosting the show or appearing on camera during interviews.
Each 30-minute Forensic Files episode is a mini documentary told in a whodunit format with off-camera narration by Peter Thomas. It includes some re-creations of events, but they’re labeled as such and don’t take liberties.
Nothing tawdry. And the producers of Forensic Files have taken pains to make the shows tasteful. You won’t see any interviewees melt down and become hysterical on camera.
And the producers never make viewers wince through oversexualized reenactments with low production values.
“There’s something in TV called ‘permission to watch,'” Forensic Files executive producer Paul Dowling explained an interview with True Crime Truant. “We provide a show you can leave on if your 8-year-old daughter and her friends come in the room.”
If you’ve never seen Forensic Files, you probably haven’t been looking too hard. You can find it somewhere on any given day.
Netflix streaming, Amazon Prime, Hulu, Roku, Apple TV, HLN (which has regular marathon showings), and the Escape channel are a few of the outlets that carry the show. And most of the episodes have been uploaded to YouTube.
Media critic Robert Thompson is a Forensic Files fan
There are 400 episodes of Forensic Files produced from 1996 to 2011. The show is not going away anytime soon, in part because the producers avoided crimes involving celebrities.
“Most viewers don’t know what the cases are, so the Forensic Files episodes don’t get boring,” says Robert Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University.
And speaking of gripping content, here’s some exciting news: Next week’s post will be a Q&A drawn from an in-depth interview that Forensic Files creator Paul Dowling gave to True Crime Truant.
Dowling divulges some behind-the-scenes secrets and discusses his relationship with the great and unpretentious voice-over artist Peter Thomas.
Cautionary words. And he offers some safety tips that I’ve never heard — advice that can help you remain a fan of true-crime shows rather than the subject of one.
career started long before anyone had heard of high-velocity blood splatter or age-processed clay busts. Some trivia from a long (1924 to 2016) and productive life:
with the Apollo astronauts.”
4. Peter Thomas postponed his own vacation to help an audio technician save his job. The sound man had messed up a Tropicana commercial recording, so Thomas did it over and never told the guy’s superiors.
8. Don “In a World” Lafontaine (left) and Peter Thomas are considered the two best male narrators of their generation. Apparently, they weren’t rivals and liked each other’s work.
