Post by Scumhunter on Jun 13, 2019 10:17:34 GMT -5
Ok so after three years I finally got to attend CrimeCon! This year's event was held at the Hilton Riverside Hotel in New Orleans, overlooking the beautiful water in New Orleans Riverwalk Park. So I'll review the weekend! I'll try to be as short as possible. (Also there were numerous events going on at the same time, I'm reviewing the events I attended)
-Thursday, June 6th
Early badge pick-up today. Glad I went to this since the lines were insane the next morning. Check-in went smoothly and quickly and if I recall correctly they took us early even though official time was 6-8 PM, went to look for my e-mail but they had my name just from ID.
Both days and the event itself I noticed the people in the line. There is a reputation with CrimeCons that they are mostly female attended. (Even on the crimecon.com message boards with those who said they were attending, it seemed to be mostly middle-aged females in the profile photos I saw). This shouldn't be surprising as this forum with mostly male posters is sort of an aberration. For whatever reasons, it is actually women who are the most popular demographic of true crime. They are the ones who watch the ID channel the most, or other types of crime networks/shows.
However, I noticed plenty of males in line both days and during the entire weekend, granted some were possibly there because of their wives/girlfriends, but I just wanted to stress I feel this was a bit of a stereotype. Don't get me wrong, it was majority female attendees (so much so the ground floor was a female-only bathroom and males had to use the upper floors lol), but it wasn't so many that males looked weird for being there.
There was a pre-weekend event called "CrimeCon on the Run" which was very informative. One was a former law enforcement officer that discussed how to tell when someone is lying during interrogations (mannerisms, ticks, explaining why eye contact is overrated and it's more about the way someone sounds or speaks etc...) another was a Detective in Jacksonville explaining how she processes a crime scene, and the final speaker was a very entertaining Professor and former NYPD Cold Case Detective from the Bronx discussing the reviewing of cold cases.
-Friday, June 7th
First official day of CrimeCon. Explored Podcast Row and met former AMW correspondent Angeline Hartmann! I told her to let John and Cal know I said hi lol.
Paul Holes kicked it off as the official host of the event. (If you somehow don't know who Paul Holes is, although he had help, he is the Detective largely responsible for the capture of Joseph DeAngelo after putting the then previously unknown Golden State Killer's DNA into the website GEDmatch) Paul Holes will have a new show on Oxygen in the fall. Holes kicked off by giving a good speech about having fun but remembering the victims and that will always be about the victims.
Event 1: CeCe Moore, a forensic genealogist originally involved with GedMatch was the first event I attended. It was interesting as she explained her original purposes for working with genealogy sites was to help people explore their family history, only to wind up an unintentional crime fighter of sorts. GedMatch was different from Ancestry and 23andMe.com and other sites in that law enforcement previously didn't need any sorts of warrants or court rulings or anything to enter DNA and find suspects. GedMatch recently changed their terms of service so you can opt out of sharing it with outside sources (in other words, law enforcement). This is all unfortunate, my opinion has always been you should WANT to know if a relative if yours is a serial killer. Help people get justice while get that out of your family.
Event 2: K-9 Detection Demonstration- Sorry for saying this, especially considering it's supposedly one of the convention's most popular presentations, it was the only disappointing event for me during CrimeCon. They for some reason had the event in a room with a pillar in the middle so the guy had to walk to different parts of the room to talk to everyone. And I thought the dogs would be more prevalent. It was basically the guy talking about how he trains dogs while taking Q&A, everyone telling him they wanted to see the dogs, he finally brings a dog out who does her sniffing until she finds the item i the box thing, and then people ask him more questions and he is too polite and continues answering dumb questions instead of just bringing the next dog out. I left before getting to see the guys's personal and main dog Max since I was so frustrated. My advice to them would be less speaking, more dogs next time.
Event 3: Murder for Hire: Inside a Contract Killing. Interesting event where they had an undercover Detective and the potential victim of a contract killing discuss the behind-the-scenes for a new show coming up on Oxygen. The girl on the panel had a hit put out on her by her boyfriend. What was interesting was at one point the undercover's boss's wanted him to wear a retire as he went up to the boyfriend's apartment. The Detective had a gut instinct that the boyfriend would check for wires and refused. (He recorded him on a second hidden cellphone instead). Sure enough, the boyfriend checked for wires.
Event 4: 20/20 where a reporter interviewed the DA of Orange County who has never lost a case.
OK there were more events for me after this. There were events but I left early for something and one of the events was Nancy Grace, so I felt I had no choice but to leave early since if I went to that I would have wound up throwing tomatoes at her. She's supposedly surprisingly entertaining and personable, I still don't give a crap.
-Saturday, June 8th
Event 1: Active shooter panel with retired U.S. Marshal Art Roderick and Crystal Miller, who was a survivor of Columbine. Basically, they discussed the motto run, hide and fight, different websites to look up for resources etc...
Event 2: "The use of Technology in Forensic Investigation" Really cool and interesting presentation. Alina Burroughs was a CSI who investigated the Caylee Anthony case and noticed jurors falling asleep during Casey Anthony's trial. After that her company invented this really cool VR camera/tripod thing that captures crime scenes in digital animated technology before they're cleared so they can be looked at later. So now instead of seeing boring slides or diagrams, jurors can view really cool animated graphics of crime scenes and stuff. Alina had a great personality and was very funny and entertaining as well.
Event 3: Gil Valle, aka the NYPD's "Cannibal Cop" spoke. Valle was a former police officer who was arrested after his now ex-wife found writings on his computer where he planned to kidnap kill and cook/eat women he knew. He was convicted but a judge overturned the verdict which was later upheld after determining that is was basically fantasy and not actual plans. Valle presented what I thought was a fair argument- you can consider him a creep scumbag etc... but you can't prosecute people and punish them for their thoughts. I actually agree with him and thought he was overly charged.
Event 4: Cold Justice- The current cast of Cold Justice interviewed by a producer on the show. Besides this lady that kept yelling and wooing behind me at every single comment from the panel that probably gave me permanent hearing damage (I can understand the beginning, the end, or any impromptu moment that caused the entire audience to roar in approval but she literally loudly wooed everything that I had to change my seat lol), it was entertaining and funny and the back-and-forth and ribbing among Kelly Siegler and Steve Spignola was great.
Event 5: The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes- Really cool presentation where Holes shows a mock crime scene of a murder in a hotel room (mock crime scene, not an actual case) and how he processes it. Really felt like he was a professor as he asked audiences questions after pointing out contradictions of the crime scene (for exmpla,e the killer wrote victim #1 in blood seeming to indicate he wanted people to know he did it, yet there's also a burnt garbage can indicating he wanted to set the room on fire and destroy the evidence.
Event 6: Panel on the Delphi murders with members of Abby and Libby's family and a State Trooper working the case. This was a panel I didn't attend because I wanted to, but because I had to. Was difficult to watch, but it did give me hope Abby and Libby's case can be solved.
Event 7: Jennings and Holes: The Murder Squad. Live taping of a podcast with Paul Holes and investigative journalist Billy Jensen. The idea is every week they give an audience a case to investigative and give the podcast their tips. This week's case was the Jennings/Jeff Davis 8. We've discussed on the forum, but they were a group of seven Louisiana women who were sex workers (one teenage girl who wasn't a sex worker but was in the same circle of friends) that were all missing/murdered within the same time frame in the mid-200's. Audiences send their tips theories etc... to Jensen and Holes afterwards. This was the last non-VIP event of the night (I didn't go for VIP since it was a bit pricey lol), so Billy Jensen sent us home reminding us to have fun in New Orleans but not become an irony and a victim of crime in New Orleans during CrimeCon.
-Sunday, June 9th
Event 1: Escape from Alcatraz- Art Roderick, the retired U.S. Marshal who has been one of the main investigators on the escape of Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers escape from Alcatraz, goes over the case again. I don't want to go into too much detail since I want to add some of what he said into our thread on the case later on in the week (or when I get a chance), but thought it was interesting he still feels they never made it out despite the very convincing Brazil lead. I got to ask him a question afterwards and I'll address the answer whenever I get a chance to comment on on the thread as well.
Event 2: Serial Killers Among us with John White. A professor who wrote a book on serial killers. One interesting thing he mentioned is they changed the definition of serial killer to anyone who has two or more victims. I think we all thought it was three or more previously.
Event 3: Inside Crime podcast. Thought I'd attend Angeline's podcast since the least I could do was help promote publicity of it. She had Dateline NBC's Josh Mankiewicz as her gust for this one.
Event 4: Attended a special event with Billy Jensen as a CrimeCon Insider. Was interesting as he discussed the use of social media and how he helps try to solve crimes on the internet. One interesting technique he uses is if there's an aspect of a case like trying to find a particular type of shoe or itemclothing- instead of posting in a crime forum or a Reddit Unresolved Mysteries thread, he'll post in like a forum on shoes (I'm not remembering correctly so I'll give an example he didn't use since I think I get a gist- let's say one clue is the killer is seen wearing cowboy boots- don't go on a crime forum but a forum that discusses cowboy boots lol). He also gave us a case to investigative- the murder of Jennifer Cohen aka the Owl's Head Park murder in Brooklyn, New York. We've actually discussed Jennifer's case on our form but no one ever replied to my posting so I hope we can take another look.
Anyway yeah it was a really an interesting and informative event. Sort of like half-doing homework for my "job" as forum admin (I don't make any money off this site but you get the point) but still fun. Next CrimeCon will be in Orlando from May 1st-3rd next year. I *probably* won't be able to attend next year but I highly recommend going if you can!
-Thursday, June 6th
Early badge pick-up today. Glad I went to this since the lines were insane the next morning. Check-in went smoothly and quickly and if I recall correctly they took us early even though official time was 6-8 PM, went to look for my e-mail but they had my name just from ID.
Both days and the event itself I noticed the people in the line. There is a reputation with CrimeCons that they are mostly female attended. (Even on the crimecon.com message boards with those who said they were attending, it seemed to be mostly middle-aged females in the profile photos I saw). This shouldn't be surprising as this forum with mostly male posters is sort of an aberration. For whatever reasons, it is actually women who are the most popular demographic of true crime. They are the ones who watch the ID channel the most, or other types of crime networks/shows.
However, I noticed plenty of males in line both days and during the entire weekend, granted some were possibly there because of their wives/girlfriends, but I just wanted to stress I feel this was a bit of a stereotype. Don't get me wrong, it was majority female attendees (so much so the ground floor was a female-only bathroom and males had to use the upper floors lol), but it wasn't so many that males looked weird for being there.
There was a pre-weekend event called "CrimeCon on the Run" which was very informative. One was a former law enforcement officer that discussed how to tell when someone is lying during interrogations (mannerisms, ticks, explaining why eye contact is overrated and it's more about the way someone sounds or speaks etc...) another was a Detective in Jacksonville explaining how she processes a crime scene, and the final speaker was a very entertaining Professor and former NYPD Cold Case Detective from the Bronx discussing the reviewing of cold cases.
-Friday, June 7th
First official day of CrimeCon. Explored Podcast Row and met former AMW correspondent Angeline Hartmann! I told her to let John and Cal know I said hi lol.
Paul Holes kicked it off as the official host of the event. (If you somehow don't know who Paul Holes is, although he had help, he is the Detective largely responsible for the capture of Joseph DeAngelo after putting the then previously unknown Golden State Killer's DNA into the website GEDmatch) Paul Holes will have a new show on Oxygen in the fall. Holes kicked off by giving a good speech about having fun but remembering the victims and that will always be about the victims.
Event 1: CeCe Moore, a forensic genealogist originally involved with GedMatch was the first event I attended. It was interesting as she explained her original purposes for working with genealogy sites was to help people explore their family history, only to wind up an unintentional crime fighter of sorts. GedMatch was different from Ancestry and 23andMe.com and other sites in that law enforcement previously didn't need any sorts of warrants or court rulings or anything to enter DNA and find suspects. GedMatch recently changed their terms of service so you can opt out of sharing it with outside sources (in other words, law enforcement). This is all unfortunate, my opinion has always been you should WANT to know if a relative if yours is a serial killer. Help people get justice while get that out of your family.
Event 2: K-9 Detection Demonstration- Sorry for saying this, especially considering it's supposedly one of the convention's most popular presentations, it was the only disappointing event for me during CrimeCon. They for some reason had the event in a room with a pillar in the middle so the guy had to walk to different parts of the room to talk to everyone. And I thought the dogs would be more prevalent. It was basically the guy talking about how he trains dogs while taking Q&A, everyone telling him they wanted to see the dogs, he finally brings a dog out who does her sniffing until she finds the item i the box thing, and then people ask him more questions and he is too polite and continues answering dumb questions instead of just bringing the next dog out. I left before getting to see the guys's personal and main dog Max since I was so frustrated. My advice to them would be less speaking, more dogs next time.
Event 3: Murder for Hire: Inside a Contract Killing. Interesting event where they had an undercover Detective and the potential victim of a contract killing discuss the behind-the-scenes for a new show coming up on Oxygen. The girl on the panel had a hit put out on her by her boyfriend. What was interesting was at one point the undercover's boss's wanted him to wear a retire as he went up to the boyfriend's apartment. The Detective had a gut instinct that the boyfriend would check for wires and refused. (He recorded him on a second hidden cellphone instead). Sure enough, the boyfriend checked for wires.
Event 4: 20/20 where a reporter interviewed the DA of Orange County who has never lost a case.
OK there were more events for me after this. There were events but I left early for something and one of the events was Nancy Grace, so I felt I had no choice but to leave early since if I went to that I would have wound up throwing tomatoes at her. She's supposedly surprisingly entertaining and personable, I still don't give a crap.
-Saturday, June 8th
Event 1: Active shooter panel with retired U.S. Marshal Art Roderick and Crystal Miller, who was a survivor of Columbine. Basically, they discussed the motto run, hide and fight, different websites to look up for resources etc...
Event 2: "The use of Technology in Forensic Investigation" Really cool and interesting presentation. Alina Burroughs was a CSI who investigated the Caylee Anthony case and noticed jurors falling asleep during Casey Anthony's trial. After that her company invented this really cool VR camera/tripod thing that captures crime scenes in digital animated technology before they're cleared so they can be looked at later. So now instead of seeing boring slides or diagrams, jurors can view really cool animated graphics of crime scenes and stuff. Alina had a great personality and was very funny and entertaining as well.
Event 3: Gil Valle, aka the NYPD's "Cannibal Cop" spoke. Valle was a former police officer who was arrested after his now ex-wife found writings on his computer where he planned to kidnap kill and cook/eat women he knew. He was convicted but a judge overturned the verdict which was later upheld after determining that is was basically fantasy and not actual plans. Valle presented what I thought was a fair argument- you can consider him a creep scumbag etc... but you can't prosecute people and punish them for their thoughts. I actually agree with him and thought he was overly charged.
Event 4: Cold Justice- The current cast of Cold Justice interviewed by a producer on the show. Besides this lady that kept yelling and wooing behind me at every single comment from the panel that probably gave me permanent hearing damage (I can understand the beginning, the end, or any impromptu moment that caused the entire audience to roar in approval but she literally loudly wooed everything that I had to change my seat lol), it was entertaining and funny and the back-and-forth and ribbing among Kelly Siegler and Steve Spignola was great.
Event 5: The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes- Really cool presentation where Holes shows a mock crime scene of a murder in a hotel room (mock crime scene, not an actual case) and how he processes it. Really felt like he was a professor as he asked audiences questions after pointing out contradictions of the crime scene (for exmpla,e the killer wrote victim #1 in blood seeming to indicate he wanted people to know he did it, yet there's also a burnt garbage can indicating he wanted to set the room on fire and destroy the evidence.
Event 6: Panel on the Delphi murders with members of Abby and Libby's family and a State Trooper working the case. This was a panel I didn't attend because I wanted to, but because I had to. Was difficult to watch, but it did give me hope Abby and Libby's case can be solved.
Event 7: Jennings and Holes: The Murder Squad. Live taping of a podcast with Paul Holes and investigative journalist Billy Jensen. The idea is every week they give an audience a case to investigative and give the podcast their tips. This week's case was the Jennings/Jeff Davis 8. We've discussed on the forum, but they were a group of seven Louisiana women who were sex workers (one teenage girl who wasn't a sex worker but was in the same circle of friends) that were all missing/murdered within the same time frame in the mid-200's. Audiences send their tips theories etc... to Jensen and Holes afterwards. This was the last non-VIP event of the night (I didn't go for VIP since it was a bit pricey lol), so Billy Jensen sent us home reminding us to have fun in New Orleans but not become an irony and a victim of crime in New Orleans during CrimeCon.
-Sunday, June 9th
Event 1: Escape from Alcatraz- Art Roderick, the retired U.S. Marshal who has been one of the main investigators on the escape of Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers escape from Alcatraz, goes over the case again. I don't want to go into too much detail since I want to add some of what he said into our thread on the case later on in the week (or when I get a chance), but thought it was interesting he still feels they never made it out despite the very convincing Brazil lead. I got to ask him a question afterwards and I'll address the answer whenever I get a chance to comment on on the thread as well.
Event 2: Serial Killers Among us with John White. A professor who wrote a book on serial killers. One interesting thing he mentioned is they changed the definition of serial killer to anyone who has two or more victims. I think we all thought it was three or more previously.
Event 3: Inside Crime podcast. Thought I'd attend Angeline's podcast since the least I could do was help promote publicity of it. She had Dateline NBC's Josh Mankiewicz as her gust for this one.
Event 4: Attended a special event with Billy Jensen as a CrimeCon Insider. Was interesting as he discussed the use of social media and how he helps try to solve crimes on the internet. One interesting technique he uses is if there's an aspect of a case like trying to find a particular type of shoe or itemclothing- instead of posting in a crime forum or a Reddit Unresolved Mysteries thread, he'll post in like a forum on shoes (I'm not remembering correctly so I'll give an example he didn't use since I think I get a gist- let's say one clue is the killer is seen wearing cowboy boots- don't go on a crime forum but a forum that discusses cowboy boots lol). He also gave us a case to investigative- the murder of Jennifer Cohen aka the Owl's Head Park murder in Brooklyn, New York. We've actually discussed Jennifer's case on our form but no one ever replied to my posting so I hope we can take another look.
Anyway yeah it was a really an interesting and informative event. Sort of like half-doing homework for my "job" as forum admin (I don't make any money off this site but you get the point) but still fun. Next CrimeCon will be in Orlando from May 1st-3rd next year. I *probably* won't be able to attend next year but I highly recommend going if you can!
