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Post by 912thamwuser on Jun 19, 2023 17:27:38 GMT -5
Reading about the budget slash and truncated season of In Pursuit, I have a question: Does anyone here know enough about the TV industry or TV economics to explain why the transition to a primarily streaming oriented nation has been so bumpy? I'm having a harder time making sense of it than with feature film economics.
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Post by 912thamwuser on Jun 11, 2023 21:53:04 GMT -5
A gracious YouTuber has kindly uploaded the April 23, 1994 episode! All four of the fugitives featured in this episode, as far as I can tell, have been captured. They include Robert Endres, who became Capture #308 a month and a half after this episode aired. Some other notes: - The woman wearing the blue shirt in the Mark James reenactment is none other than Edie Falco! I've seen this clip shared in different AMW retrospectives but I didn't know what case it was until now. Also, the clip of James shooting at the victim has been recycled multiple times over the years. - James Rankin was also profiled on Final Justice. The archived CourtTV website also misspells the name of the cop/victim's father.
Endres was one of the few remaining Direct Result captures I knew nothing about. Some time tonight, I'm determined to update the Captures Directory for him. But I still have 2 questions: I can't find anything about Mark James or his case online. Any idea when and where he was captured? Was that Rankin's first profile on the show?
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Post by 912thamwuser on Jun 4, 2023 20:26:27 GMT -5
Watching the episode, I noticed a few discrepancies with the amw.com archive. The Carnegie Deli triple murder and eventual FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive Ruben Hernandez Martinez were supposed to be introduced that night, but they both apparently got pushed back, the former to the May 26 broadcast.
To Pakman: For what it's worth, you can apply these to an episode guide for the 5-19-001 broadcast.
Segment 1 -The murder of Derwin Brown. This sheriff-elect in DeKalb county, Georgia, was a veteran of the force since 1978, and had been elected to unseat incumbent Sidney Dorsey in late 2000. As the electorate was growing tired of corruption, he campaigned on cleaning out the department. Derwin was shot to death on his front lawn in mid December, just minutes after a sheriff training seminar. Between 20 and 40 police department staffers had gone to prison on corruption or similar charges by this point, and 38 previous staffers had been ordered to resign by the time Derwin was to get sworn in. It was the US' first political assassination of its kind since at least 1980. Multiple statewide agencies spent almost a year looking into who shot the sheriff, and on the night before December 2001, the aforementioned Sidney Dorsey was arrested alongside ex-deputy Melvin Walker and short-lived Sheriff's Department recruit David Ramsey, none as a Direct Result of the show. -Theophilus A "Tony" Williams. Wanted since mid March 2001 for a carjacking, kidnapping, and murder, amidst a drug-related robbery, after a blown deal ended with a truck getting stolen. The dealer was bludgeoned in a former DeKalb county jailer's front yard, leading to a 59-bullet gunfight, then Theophilus' co-conspirators took the dealer to a nearby park and shot him dead, also with a TEC-9 rifle. It was speculated to possibly be connected to Derwin's murder, but it's unknown whether they were indeed related. Police quickly rounded up 3 other co-conspirators but Theophilus got away. The FBI retraced Theophilus' personal history, sent some leads to the NYPD, and had an acquaintence track Theophilus down. He was nabbed in the back room of a Brooklyn home later that year, on November 3, not as a Direct Result either. At the end of November, the ex-jailer struck a plea bargain in that murder.
Segment 2 -Roger Leroy Johnson. Late breaking news alert, wanted for the murder of his ex-girlfriend's mother and 3 children, aged 4 through 6 outside of Stockton, California. He died by suicide the night of this airing, having severed one of his arteries atop his wife's grave. -Brian Michael Jones. After a woman, then known only as Mary, traveling in Nevada on a hot summer night in late August 1999, got her car stuck in some sand by the side of the road, she decided to accept help from anyone who seemed like a good Samaritan, against her own better judgment. Jones happened by, told her he left his truck at his mansion in a gated community, promised her to tow her car out of the sand once he retrieved it, and convinced her to look through his telescope. She had obligations, and was in a hurry to leave, but when she tried, he flew into a rage, beat her up, bound her in his bed, and sexually assaulted her for 18 hours. The next morning, she tried telling him a little bit about herself, in an attempt to make him see her as a human being, but ended up having to record a video that made it look like everything was consensual in order to convince him not to kill her. Once he went into the shower, she gathered her belongings and tried to seek help at his neighbor's house, but the neighbor ignored her pleas. Two more people happened to open the community gates, which she ran through just as Jones pulled up in his truck. These rescuers were left with an impression after seeing how much of a scared animal Mary looked like. Jones was soon arrested and got out on bail, but in September 2000, he stopped showing up to his parole officer meetings. John Walsh, in order to congratulate Mary on her bravery and survival, later named Jones his #2 most wanted fugitive of 2001. He was captured in February 2007, teaching English in Thailand, but not as a Direct Result.
Segment 3 -Update on the Precious Doe case. Kansas City, Missouri's community was really touched by the profile of this unidentified girl the previous week. Many callers thought she might've been a more famous missing child, such as Teekah Lewis or Ashani Creighton, none of which panned out. She was identified 4 years later, and arrests were made on May 5, 2005. -The Murder of Bonnie Lee Bakley. Profiled as a half-minute inbump. She was the wife of an actor named Robert Blake, who portrayed the titular cop in the TV show Baretta in the second half of the 1970s. The LAPD found her body earlier that month in the couple's car outside an Italian restaurant in Studio City. Blake initially told police that, on the night she was murdered, he'd gone to that restaurant to retrieve a gun he'd accidentally left there just before finding her murdered, but restaurant staff couldn't corroborate it, noticing he seemed free to take his time, and asked only for a glass of water. The couple had also been in a dispute over their then 11 month old daughter, and were living in different houses on the same property. Shortly after his bodyguard and driver was taken into custody, Blake was arrested for this murder on April 18, 2002, at his daughter's house, but not as a Direct Result. Blake was later acquitted, but sued for wrongful death in civil court and found liable. -The Murder of Sherlyn Fleming. She was a retired officer in Detroit who had a colorful style of lecturing K-12 students on the consequences of crime. Her mother was overjoyed when she retired from the force, because she seemed to be out of danger, but in early February 2001, a robber burst into the dry cleaning business she was picking up her clothing from, and went for Sherlyn's purse. Leaning into her police instincts, she pulled out her gun and demanded the robber back down, but the robber fired 3 shots, piercing her heart. No idea whether this case was ever solved.
Segment 4 -StreetSmart Cyber Security special feature. With the growth of clandestine cyber-hacking identity theft, John Walsh was recommending the StreetSmart security system with a money back guarantee. I have no idea whether the software ever went into the news again. -Captain D's Triple Murder. Central Tennessee was just starting to breathe a sigh of relief in the spring of 1997 when Paul Dennis Reid, a fast food restaurant worker and dish washer who'd recently been laid off, was sentenced to a statewide record-setting 7 times death for multiple robbery-murders at 3 fast food restaurants in the region, including two in another Captain D's. But on July 12, 2000, disaster struck at another middle Tennessee fast food restaurant, a Captain D's seafood joint in the Nashville suburb of Smyrna. A woman driving a truck for a garbage company made the call of a young man found seemingly idling in a car behind a Big K discount store around the corner. When an officer responded, the man, identified as 18 year old Troy Snell, was pronounced dead. His first instinct was to look for any warning signs of a suicide, but all he found was a gunshot wound behind Snell's head and a Captain D's shirt in front of one seat, and it was ruled a homicide. The only person they could find at the restaurant proper was a pest exterminator who didn't know there was anyone there at first. The police left, then the exterminator got a feeling something was wrong, and found two managers' bodies in a freezer, shot the same way. None of the 3 victims had any mortal enemies, and as a timeline of that night's events was assembled, it was concluded that the killers had first robbed the till, marched the managers to the freezer and shot them dead, forced Snell to drive behind the Big K, then shot Snell to death from inside his own car which he was working diligently to keep up on the payments for. A witness saw a man behind the store at one hour, and a woman in the store at another hour, and investigators told AMW viewers to look for a missing keychain, belonging to one of the managers, with the words "All I want is some peace and quiet. Give me a piece and I'll be quiet." On November 9, 2001, a tipster identified the killers as already having been sent to jail that summer. LaTonya Taylor had been initially pinched in Nashville on July 19, 2001 on robbery charges, and Percy Lee Palmer had been pinched in Denver, Colorado on August 6, 2001 for breaking and entering. LaTonya and Percy were then marked as Captures #685 and #686 respectively. Both were eventually convicted. LaTonya was initially sentenced to death, but may or may not have been commuted to life in prison, and Percy was sentenced to 3 times life.
8-second commercial break airing -Ronald Sabik. Wanted out of Pennsylvania for raping 4 young boys over the summer of 1999, including some of his own friends' children. Working on recent leads surrounding a fake ID he'd assumed out of New Jersey, he was captured living out of a boat on a marina in Sebastian, Florida 3 days later, not as a Direct Result.
Segment 5 -National Police Week special feature. Respects were being paid through candlelight vigils in DC near an officers' memorial slate, but Walsh needed our help to capture one more fugitive suspected of murdering Clayton "Scooby" Hicks in south Memphis, Tennessee on the night of November 13, 2000. -Antonio Marquette Huntsman. Hicks had been enthusiastic about being a law officer practically since he was born, and had won multiple community commendations throughout the years. He supervised multiple neighborhoods, including the one Antonio Marquette Huntsman grew up in. Marquette-Huntsman was a varsity sports star in high school, but turned into a leader within the Growth & Development, Inc, the Memphis chapter of the Gangster Disciples, in a few short years. In the late 1990s, Marquette-Huntsman had racked up charges for drug trafficking and weapons, but that Monday night, he and a few other men were invited to a party where Hicks happened to be hanging out with his brother at. Marquette-Huntsman's girlfriend had previously had a run-in with Hicks, which made things contentious, and other detectives then suspected that Marquette-Huntsman fired several shots, one of which killed Hicks, as Hicks cut the party short and tried to flee. On June's Eve 2001, Marquette-Huntsman surrendered in Shelby County, Tennessee via a well-known attorney as Capture #672, but for reasons unknown, most likely a profoundly successful legal defence, Marquette-Huntsman only served 3 1/2 years in prison.
Segment 6 -John Walsh reiterated the difference the AMW audience has made, and continued to make, before the ending credits.
I'd have to leave the episode notes and pop culture references up to you, however.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 30, 2023 23:03:04 GMT -5
If this case isn't solved quickly, we might have a serial killer in the works. It's as urgent as Michael Alfonso and Jorge Ivan Villamizar-Ayala, both of whom AMW busted.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 20, 2023 17:56:56 GMT -5
This case reminds me of Teri Anderson (AMW Capture #819), albeit without the unidentified suspect factor.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 20, 2023 17:52:19 GMT -5
America's Most Wanted busted Matthew Ian Taylor and went after Jason Nedobity for very similar crimes. If only there was still a place on network television for fugitive hunting shows.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 15, 2023 18:54:42 GMT -5
I also remember that amw.com's Prospero forums went offline on 12-12-012. I didn't know they were the same day.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 12, 2023 22:18:03 GMT -5
First there was Ervil LeBaron, then Warren Steed-Jeffs, now Lori Vallow. What's with all these heinous crimes committed and orchestrated in the name of Mormonoid fundamentalism?
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 12, 2023 17:21:03 GMT -5
Back in late '003 or so, AMW had a short-lived segment for fugitives who were aired the previous week or two, and which tips were leading a lot closer to. They had no good reason to axe that, and keeping that follow-through in their mindset could've really sped up the captures in the years after. It's my only idea of how to best run the show proper, and sadly I wouldn't know nearly as much about TV economics or capturing viewer interest.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 11, 2023 12:51:22 GMT -5
4 dead and 2 wounded. Hurst is as bad as Eduardo "Limpy" Campos Rodriguez, but unlike Limpy, I'm hoping Hurst will be an easy grab. We have got to know what went wrong with those headcounts and that perimeter fence!
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 9, 2023 2:14:46 GMT -5
This is one of the most graphic cases I've ever seen, right up there with Eugene Ross whom AMW busted as a Direct Result back in '997, and similarly brutal torturer and sexual murderer of a teenager Robert Brent Bowman, whom AMW went after in the autumn of '007. This is one of the cases I'm most appalled at the fact that it didn't get publicized more.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 7, 2023 20:03:55 GMT -5
These new fugitives are dropping like flies. I'm the gladdest I've ever been about that.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 4, 2023 18:50:45 GMT -5
With that, barely 1/3 of the way through the year, 1/10 of my most-wanted of '022 collection has been caught.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 4, 2023 14:53:45 GMT -5
This better not be as tough a case to solve as Jesse James Hollywood was.
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Post by 912thamwuser on May 1, 2023 0:16:16 GMT -5
The case of Francisco Oropeza recently brought some blatant border-hawkery out of Texas governor Greg Abbott. But on top of this and his possible role in bringing the Robb Elementary Massacre about, there's one more thing about Abbott I can't hold in anymore. Everything I've read about his policy record tells me his governorship is good-for-nothing. RationalWiki alone alludes to a rarely-precedented 17 problems he's accused of bringing about or exacerbating.
*Slashing funding for women's health treatments by wielding a federal anti-terrorism law during his time as an associate judge on the state supreme court while giving a cult named Operation Rescue a free pass amidst it. This was primarily reported in May of '012. Then, signing a law in September of '021 forcing rape and incest victims to carry to term by banning abortions at 6 weeks. Obstetricians and gynaecologists never expect their patients to even know they're pregnant that soon in gestation. One county's district attorney almost brought a woman to trial for performing an abortion, but a combination of national backlash, and an analysis that proved she didn't violate any specific Texas law, thankfully got her charges dropped. *Blowing off the federal Constitution's establishment clause and the state Constitution's bill of rights in order to stir up atheophobic sentiment when some proselytizing banners were raised at football games in one school district. This was primarily reported in September of '012. *Disrespecting an invitation which the state department extended to the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights at the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe by threatening to throw any of their observers in the slammer who tried to observe the gubernatorial election of October '012. *Pandering to secessionist cults like the Texas Nationalist Movement by taking credit for all the conservatism in the nation surrounding Mitt Romney's '012 campaign for president, as part of a strategy to win the '014 Texas gubernatorial election, a strategy that further endangered all relevant democratic and national institutions. *Artificially and falsely legitimizing the Jade Helm 15 conspiracy theory by publicly pressuring the Texas National Guard to tighten their monitoring on relevant military exercises. *Attempting to keep the thoroughly debunked and profoundly dangerous practice of sexual orientation change efforts legal, coming into office as his party started systematically kicking anyone out who merely knows the dangers and ineffectiveness of orientation change efforts. If Abbott or the greater Texas GOP ever gets the opportunity, they will bring back straight-only marriage to state law. If Texas ever secedes, the Texas GOP under Abbott's leadership would be free to enact a Final Solution on LGBT-etcs therein, if the party should be bankrupt-of-conscience enough for that. *Signing a bill into law in mid '015 that threatened to punish any city if they dared pass a local law to disallow fracking within their boundaries, blowing off a study by geologists in Oklahoma which linked fracking to earthquakes in places that aren't on tectonic fault lines. *Trying to punish officials in various levels of governments and offices / departments who wanted to respond comprehensively to the '020 coronavirus pandemic and protect their citizenry. This was mostly by threatening to slash funding for every agency (except for nursing homes and assisted living facilities) if they didn't let the unvaccinated into their premises as they pleased. He threatened fines of 1 Grand, including against individuals at these various agencies, and against small businesses, if they required vaccination as a condition for access. *Taking bribes from statewide energy and power utility corporations to exempt them from winterizing obligations. This drove up the power grid failure and death rate in the blizzards that struck Texas in February '021. *Loosening gun regulations against all expert advice, thus bringing about 6 massacres from '016 to the Robb Elementary Massacre in '022, followed by Oropeza's crimes in '023. Among various politicians, this is usually linked to taking bribes from Wayne LaPierre, Larry Pratt (Gun Owners of America), and Remington lobbyists. *His specific response to the Robb Elementary Massacre, namely signing a bill that allowed people to carry handguns without permits or training, and by praising the Uvalde police department's fractally blown response to the massacre in progress. *Offering 10 Grand rewards, plus the cost of attorney's fees, to everyone, even in other states, who presses a lawsuit against anyone who plays any role in helping sexual assault victims get an abortion at 6 or 7 weeks into pregnancy with the rapist's child, and wins such a lawsuit. *Vetoing a state budget subsection which would fund the state legislature from 9-01-021 through 8-31-023 after Democrats fled out of state in May of '021 when the Texas GOP proposed another round of vote suppressors, then in July of '021, threatening to throw these Democratic legislators in the slammer like burglars and bank robbers if they didn't give Abbott the quorum he needed for these vote suppressors. That veto would've starved more than 2000 staffers of their salaries, possibly provoking the most talented ones to flee to other states, which would bleed the Texas state legislature's overall competency. Previously, in June of '013, Abbott had taunted the victims of a then-recent Supreme Court ruling which rolled back some of the Voting Rights Act's protections for marginalized citizens, making a big production of giving the Justice Department and then-Attorney General Eric Holder some of what white supremacists think was coming to them. *Wielding power that state law never even grants a governor, to request a pardon for Daniel Perry in April of '023, the same month Perry was convicted, after Tucker Carlson complained about Perry's conviction on FOX News. Perry's crime was the murder of a Black Lives Matter protester on 7-25-020. After Perry claimed self-defence, hundreds of witnesses testified that Perry drove his van into the crowd of protesters long before anyone started beating up on the van, and that the victim either never fired his gun at all, or only returned fire at Perry after Perry fired the first bullets. Unsealed documents about Perry's social media postings since '019 promptly proved that Perry had violent colorbashing and Islamophobic mercenary fantasies, and at the time of Abbott's request to the Texas Parole and Pardons Board, the sentencing process was still incomplete, and the appeals process had not been exhausted. Even advocates for toughness on crime were disturbed by the selectivity therein on Abbott's part, and the special favors he's giving to far-right white power vigilantes. *Issuing an executive order in February of '022 that automatically authorizes an investigation into any family in which a transgender child exists, attempting to prosecute every couple for child abuse who doesn't force their irrefutably transgender child into a cisgender life, and threatening to have every teacher, doctor, and caregiver fired from their jobs if they don't rat out a transgender child to Abbott's inquisition. This has led to a spike in resignations and a deeply urgent statewide staffing shortage. Abbott has also demanded a ban on medical transition for adults 18 to 20 on top of banning it for minors, and a ban on social and documentational transition for youth 16 and under. The latter is believed to most likely be a ploy to court votes from theocrats, theonomists, and other particularly extreme religious fundamentalists. *Sending immigrants on buses to DC in April of '022, out of bitterness that the Biden administration had rolled back Trump Sr's coronavirus-era order to expel most migrants without considering them for political asylum. However, Abbott failed to make such a program mandatory nor override the wills of any cities and counties who weren't siding with Abbott. *Giving an order to Texas' Public Safety Department in April of '022 to deepen commercial vehicle inspections as they cross from Mexico to Texas, inspections which federal-level authorities already conduct beforehand, just to further spite the Biden administration for spurning Trump's border hawkery. This brought average traffic on the Pharr-Reynosa bridge from 3000 to 1200, stifled the proportionate share of 60 to 70 Megadollars worth of goods and services per day, and exacerbated statewide and national resource shortages. A protest by truckers on the Mexican side of that bridge quickly got so bad that a fellow Republican, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, warned Abbott he was about to spark a statewide famine.
I wish I could minimize any bias I might be showing, but I'm really scrambling for any limit to Abbott's evil I can find.
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