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Post by pakman on Jun 15, 2023 16:58:31 GMT -5
Whoa! Yeah, I was not expecting this one! Great work by the tipster who gave him up to the US Marshals!
Of all the officially-designated AMW cold cases that aired in 2005, believe it or not, he is the SECOND one to be caught after Adam Zachs. Teddy Ellis and John Gentry remain at large.
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Post by pakman on Jun 12, 2023 8:25:25 GMT -5
^ I have no clue if this was Rankin's first profile or not.
But I can tell you this was at least Mark James' second profile. Someone uploaded William White Graham's profile from February 1993 and the profile includes a preview of James' case. I looked him up in the New York Department of Corrections and there's a record for a man named Mark James convicted of murder in 1996 serving a life sentence. The age matches up to the one on James' profile card, so I'm certain that it's the same person. Unfortunately I can't pinpoint a capture date, but I would assume it would have been in 1994 or 1995.
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Post by pakman on Jun 11, 2023 19:48:36 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.
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Post by pakman on Jun 3, 2023 11:07:39 GMT -5
Well, Max/Discovery Plus has also been getting a ton of bad publicity lately - removing shows that people liked, lumping all their directors/editors/producers into a generic "creators" listing on the streaming app, deciding not to air movies that are done and ready to be put on the service. I actually think it's not cable that's causing the issue, but streaming. I watch ID and I've noticed that all their so-called Discovery+ "exclusive" documentaries have all aired on the network.
Movie reviewer Dan Murrell has an excellent summary in this video:
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Post by pakman on May 31, 2023 21:49:13 GMT -5
Has anyone else noticed that this is the second FBI Ten Most Wanted fugitive with the first and middle name of Donald Eugene? The other was the infamous Donald Eugene Webb, added in 1981 for killing a Pennsylvania police chief, removed in 2007 after no longer meeting the criteria and his body finally being discovered in 2017 (buried in his ex-wife's backyard).
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Post by pakman on May 31, 2023 21:46:40 GMT -5
The X-Men in general. I always liked how anybody could be a mutant and they didn't have to have anything special happen to them like getting bitten by a spider or being an alien from another planet.
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Post by pakman on May 31, 2023 21:41:56 GMT -5
Someone uploaded a Fox VHS tape to archive.org that contains the Dec. 20, 2003 episode (it's about an hour and 2 minutes into the first file). This contains Daniel San Diego's first profile (which incorrectly stated the Shaklee Corporation tests their products on animals, which they don't), the profile of the Howie Steindler murder, and capture reports for longtime fugitive Jerome Bargo and Larry and Elizabeth Hentz (the latter containing one of my favorite tipsters - the Hentzes gave him a ride and abandoned him, and when he saw them on AMW he jumped up and said, "I'm going to get them back for ditching me!")
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Post by pakman on May 12, 2023 18:10:38 GMT -5
Something that hasn't been touched on yet, but was a major reason I didn't like the reboot - focus on your writing. Don't have the host say inane things like, "If you saw Larry Chism in 1978, call our hotline or leave a tip on our website." Who cares if you saw him in 1978? I want to know where he is right now! This made a very talented journalist like Elizabeth Vargas look really dumb, and I have to think she recognized how stupid it was to say that, but probably couldn't deviate from the script.
Also, do a better job at balancing out the fugitive cases. Not every fugitive needs a two-segment story (Josephine Overaker, for example).
I did a suggestion of what a show layout should look like a few years back, but here's a variation on that:
Segment 1 - Recent Fugitive Case, Part 1 (a case less than 2 years old); Brief fugitive profile (not an unknown case) Segment 2 - Brief fugitive profile (not an unknown case); Recent Fugitive Case, Part 2 Segment 3 - AMW Cold Case (full profile of a fugitive never caught from the old series); Brief fugitive profile (not an unknown case) Segment 4 - Brief fugitive profile (not an unknown case); Rapid-Fire Cases (similar to All-Points Bulletin) OR Unknown Case (full profile)
Break Four Tease (bring this back; there's no reason it should have been discontinued)
Segment 5 - Recent capture OR Full fugitive segment; Missing Child/Person Alert Segment 6 - Case recap/preview of next week's show
A variation on this I think would work. Maybe even have a dedicated segment to a local case or a case that was brought to AMW's attention by the victim's family. This way, you get a two-part case, you get missing person profiles, you get unknown cases, and you have four brief fugitive profiles that equate to 15 Seconds of Shame.
I definitely agree that someone connected to John Walsh should host the show. I repeatedly said this when the 2021 reboot came and went, but I sincerely wish John could have recorded a brief message saying something like, "Good evening to all of you. I'm John Walsh. For over 25 years, we were the best crime-fighting team in America, and across the world. With your help, we nabbed over 1,200 fugitives, and brought back over 50 missing children to their families. But now, it's time for me to move on. However, please stick around, because my good friend (host's name) will be taking over for me, and I know they will continue to faithfully fulfill our mission of catching the bad guys and bringing missing kids home. So, while I'm unable to join all of you, I'll be standing on the sidelines cheering you on. I hope you'll give (host's name) a warm welcome, and that you'll always remember; you CAN make a difference."
Yes, I know John is under contract with another network, but I find it really hard to believe he couldn't at least be allowed to make a short, minute-long message to the viewers of AMW. By doing a message like that, viewers would have known that John isn't the host anymore, but that it has his blessing and that he wants the viewers to support the new host/show. The way they did it in 2021, they simply had Elizabeth Vargas say, "John Walsh hosted this show for years, and we thank him for all his hard work. And now we're picking up the mission from him." All while showing an old headshot of John Walsh from the late 90s. (Weirdly, this again goes back to the writing. Even if John Walsh couldn't make a statement himself, surely better writing would have gotten the point across).
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Post by pakman on Mar 16, 2023 11:49:03 GMT -5
Now that my 2005 guide is completed, I'm ready to finish by analysis of the year! Here's my tradition of recapping the year, which includes my favorite and least-favorite episodes!
Reflecting on 2005, I would best describe it as a “transitional” year for AMW. It seems to me that the show may have been going through a rebranding, trying different segments and different ways of telling stories in an attempt to keep the show “fresh,” so to speak. Many of these segments, unfortunately, didn’t really take off.
These segments included Street Stories (a collaboration between Tom Morris and filmmaker Ray Farkas that interviewed random people on crime-related subjects), The Safety Chick (where safety expert and stalking victim Kathleen Beatty shared tips on how to keep people safe), and Call to Action (a partnership with OnStar where AMW told brief stories about how the tool, which was relatively new at the time, had helped in emergencies).
Most famously, though, was probably Cold Case, a segment that, in theory, was a fantastic idea – profile old cases AMW hadn’t featured in years in the hope of generating new leads. Longtime fugitives Teddy Ellis, Adam Zachs, Donald Santini and John Gentry, plus a few others, received their first profiles in years. But the segment failed to deliver on a major promise; John Walsh said the cases would feature new interviews and updates, but none of them did. They were all exactly the same as when they had last aired. Sadly, this seemed to be the last year AMW really concentrated on closing some of their older cases. Longtime fugitives would continue to air sporadically, but there was never a dedicated segment for it.
2005 also saw the end of the “John Walsh Investigates” segments, which stared in October 2004 when he decided to investigate the murder of hotel desk clerk Helen Walker himself. It was a unique idea, but it clearly wasn’t a hit with viewers, and by March it was done. It would eventually come back in the late-2000s, but that’ll be a story for another time.
But 2005 was also the year of the first AMW All-Star Award, a tradition that would continue up until the show’s final cancellation in 2012. The tail-end of the year saw the introduction of Kids Safety Tips, which would become a semi-regular feature over the next year. And 15 Seconds of Shame really hit its stride this year after debuting for one episode in December 2004, continuing until 2010.
A total of 48 fugitives were directly captured in 2005 (plus a couple from previous years that had capture numbers retroactively assigned to them). Several longtime fugitives (including Randolph Dial, Christian Rodriguez, Malaika Griffin, and Peter Hommerson) went down, plus three members of the U.S. Marshals’ 15 Most Wanted (Phillip Williams, John Lockhart, and Jody Thompson), three of John Walsh’s Ten Most Wanted of 2004 (Damar Pink, Jahbir & Alfonso Fowle) and three web-exclusives (Scott Dellagatta, Shannon Griffin, and David Kiermaier).
As for the episodes themselves? Honestly, it was hard to compile my favorites and least-favorites, simply because most of the episodes didn’t really stand out one way or another. That’s not to say they’re bad episodes, but the majority I felt indifferent towards. Heck, I could actually only find eight episodes I didn’t like as opposed to 10.
But either way, here are my personal favorite and least-favorite AMW episodes of 2005!
Favorite Episodes: April 2, 2005 This episode, to me, was when AMW started returning to form following the John Walsh Investigates experiment and focusing on telling the stories of fugitives who needed to be caught. Yes, this episode featured another airing of Jason Brown, but John Walsh didn’t specifically cover his case for this episode. This episode also featured the much-anticipated capture report of Jesse James Hollywood, plus several longtime fugitives met their end thanks to this episode. Christian Rodriguez went down in Puerto Rico after this airing, and Peter Hommerson, who was on this episode’s APB, was recognized by two separate tipsters and busted in Mexico after nearly 10 years on the run. They also gave Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus another profile, a year after Gina disappeared.
April 9 2005 Just a week later, the show continued to impress me. Randolph Dial’s capture and Bobbi Parker’s recovery earlier in the week thanks to an AMW tipster made for a fantastic capture report – which was really well-done given the breaking news nature of the story – plus several old cases were reaired in this episode. I consider this the unofficial debut of the Cold Case feature, since John Walsh acknowledged they were profiling Teddy Ellis for the first time in over a decade. Michael Soutar, who was profiled in 1997 but caught just a day before the show aired him, was also profiled after committing more crimes, plus it was always nice to see Joel Urena get profiled (I don’t know who made that reenactment but they did a fantastic job of showing how frightening the home invasion and shooting were for the victims). There was also a really nice update on the Smith brothers that acknowledged Dino Smith’s capture a year earlier.
May 14, 2005 May 2005 was a very good month for AMW, as you’ll soon see. This was the first time AMW took a couple weeks off for NASCAR, but they returned with a whopper of an episode. They kicked off with a great feature on Operation: FALCON (it makes me sad for when I’ll have to analyze the very disappointing 2009 Operation: FALCON episode), then went into 15 Seconds of Shame, which had finally found its “groove,” so to speak, as the way it appeared in this episode is pretty much how it remained until its September 2006 overhaul. Great segments on fugitives and missing persons, plus the first time In the Line of Duty connected to a wanted fugitive (in this case, Raul Garcia-Gomez), which will happen a couple more times over the years.
May 21, 2005 Those who have been following me on this forum for some time know I don’t like episodes where very few cases are profiled. That said, I don’t mind this episode. Despite only three fugitives (one of whom was unknown) being aired, I love this one. This is the episode where John Walsh went to Capitol Hill to lobby for the law which eventually became the Adam Walsh Law (one of whom is the current President of the United States). You can see just how passionate John is about this legislation, and it’s one of the few times his “boots on the ground” method impressed me. Not to mention this episode led to the capture of Phillip Williams, who had been on the run for nearly two years, plus it was the first time Emanuel Veiga was profiled. It was also the annual Police Week recognition which featured the family of Officer Mark Sawyers coming by the hotline to thank the show for all they’d done for them.
May 28, 2005 The inaugural AMW All-Star celebration. Until the show’s cancellation in 2012, this was a staple and it was usually one of the better episodes of the year. Yeah, it was a drawback hearing the monotonous Kasey Kahne announce in APB, but I like that they profiled fugitives wanted out of the home states of the NASCAR drivers. Plus, there was a great tribute to Sgt. Greg Martin, whose case became one of the most frequently-aired unsolved murder on AMW (in fact, it’ll be aired for a second time in January 2006, so expect to see that soon). Aspects of the award changed over the years, but this is where it all started. Perhaps appropriately, the inaugural winner was a detective who specialized in crimes against children.
July 2, 2005 and July 9, 2005 (tie) Both of these episodes were reruns. The July 2, 2005 episode originally aired in November 2002, with reruns in January and August 2004. The July 9, 2005 episode originally aired in May 2003. Most of the time, I’m not a fan of reruns, but these two are the exceptions. Neither episode felt like a rerun. The July 2 episode had several case additions and replacements, plus a re-shot ending, and the July 9 episode featured an update to a longtime fugitive (Chaka Raysor) and a complete overhaul of one of the cases from this episode's original airing (Scott Hornick). My only wish is that they’d replaced the Ed Myers capture report in the latter episode with another segment, but that’s really a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things. I never did like reruns, but if they treated them like these two episodes, I’d feel completely different about them.
July 23, 2005 This is probably my favorite episode of 2005. It was completely jam-packed with profiles. They featured in-depth stories on Alfredo Lopez-Cruz and Omar Maldonado, both 15 Seconds of Shame and All-Points Bulletin, plus the official introduction of Cold Case. It included the first time Adam Zachs was profiled since the late-90s (I believe 1998 was his last profile prior to this). A couple other longtime AMW fugitives – Kevin Vermette and Joe East – also received profiles. Although this particular episode only led to one direct capture – 15 Seconds of Shamer Robert Ellison – I was so happy to see so many cases be profiled while also not seeming like a rushed episode. This was also the episode where amw.com had a behind the scenes feature showing what went on at the hotline that night, and it was the first night the show decided to keep the hotline active for one hour longer than usual.
Sept. 10, 2005 The Hurricane Katrina Special Edition. There were certain national tragedies where AMW went on scene to help out, and this was one of the more unique ones in that it was a natural disaster. But they had a primary goal of reuniting missing families, which apparently they were successful at. AMW also featured fugitive scammers who might target Katrina survivors, plus a few escapees who took advantage of the chaos. Dozens of other fugitives who had nothing to do with Katrina were profiled too, including, once again, a 15 Seconds of Shame and All-Points Bulletin combo (the latter of which featured longtime AMW fugitive Gary Irving).
Sept. 17, 2005 Just a week later, AMW went in-depth into the Collar Bomber investigation. Again, I normally don’t like episodes that dedicate the entire show to one case, but this is one where I make an exception simply because of how complex the Collar Bomber case was. There were so many unanswered questions. Who could have done such a horrible thing? Was Brian a victim, or was he involved? How were all of these bizarre characters – a high school shop teacher, a woman who shot her former lover, a fugitive rapist, a pizza delivery man – all connected to each other? Of course, the show also featured APB and 15SoS, which helped make the episode flow a little bit better, and it would also be reran in January 2007. There’s some evidence to suggest that this episode may have played minor roles in solving the Collar Bomber case (in my research on the case, the FBI long suspected the people they mentioned, but they just needed someone to help connect the dots, which AMW did).
Least-Favorite Episodes: Jan. 1, 2005 The very first show of the year is a really good summation for what was to come. A rerun of a special Friday night edition from October, there were only two really minor changes between both shows. One was Vickie Nash replacing the captured Frederick Rosato in APB, and the other was missing child Rosa Sandoval as the Break Four Tease (replacing Juan Marte, who I believe was still a fugitive at the time). They also didn’t bother replacing Donald Crosby’s capture report, even though at the time there were there were seven recent captures whose stories hadn’t been featured yet. There were nine weeks in between these airings, but only six episodes (the show did not air the last week of October, the last week of November, and the last week of December). I get that they were on a break, but I feel like they could have aired any other episode in its place.
Feb. 26, 2005 Of all the John Walsh Investigates episodes, this was easily the one that felt like it had the least effort put into it. Here, John went to California to investigate the disappearance of preschool teacher Nancy MacDuckston, and there were pretty much ZERO differences between his case and Ed Miller’s report from a year earlier. All the interviews were recycled from that story, and there were no new clues mentioned. The only addition? Interviews with random people on the street asking them what they thought might have happened. This ended up being the last John Walsh Investigates show for several seasons, so I think this is a really great reflection of the segments as a whole. Oh, and I almost forgot that this was the official debut of John Walsh’s Dirty Dozen, which featured two abbreviated profiles of fugitives who had just been profiled two months earlier.
March 26, 2005 The 800th Episode. And I’m thinking we were spoiled by the phenomenal 700th episode that aired in December 2002, because this was incredibly underwhelming. Yes, the show aired a member of John Walsh’s Dirty Dozen (Gary Lasher), a longtime fugitive (Michel Barrera), the newest addition to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted List (Jorge Lopez-Orozco) and the capture of John Walsh’s Most Wanted Fugitives of 2004 (the Fowle brothers) but this was such a disappointing show. They could have done so much more, but chose not to for some reason. Interesting to note that this was the last milestone episode until the “1,000th Episode” in 2010 to be acknowledged (the 900th episode, which will air in 2007, will not be noted). I suppose it’s not a “bad” episode, so to speak, but it just didn’t live up to being the 800th show.
Aug. 13, 2005 and Sept. 3, 2005 (tie) I had two reruns on my favorites list, and I have two on my least-favorites list. And these two episodes are here for the same reason; they very much felt like reruns. Both aired a week apart in April 2005, and both aired mere weeks apart in the late summer. I suppose the Aug. 13 episode (which was a rerun of April 9, 2005) is the better of the two, but it still stands out because Teddy Ellis went from not being profiled for over a decade to being profiled twice in a single year. And the latter episode was basically the exact same episode; the only difference being the replacement of one unknown case with another. They didn’t even replace the Fabian Smart Final Justice story, which really didn’t have to be aired twice.
Oct. 1, 2005 Okay, I actually have a very specific reason for disliking this episode. It has nothing to do with any of the cases profiled, nothing to do with anything that disappointed me, and nothing to do with any egregious errors. No, it’s because my copy of this episode is messed up for some reason. When I burned it to DVD, the file got corrupted and it can’t play. On my VHS master copy, the episode skips (at least on my 20-year-old VCR) and when I tried to digitize it again the episode kept skipping. Fortunately it still plays, but the skipping is incredibly annoying and distracting. I’m hoping I can get a better VCR to fix this.
Nov. 12, 2005 This episode is probably the first episode I’d consider “poorly edited.” The previous week, John Walsh stated that Jason Howard was going to be profiled on this episode, which was filmed in Savannah, Georgia. Well…he wasn’t. Daniel Hiers was, though, and his profile took up a whopping 15 minutes of the episode (if this had aired in 2010, they would have cut the profile in half with a commercial break). I’m not saying they shouldn’t have aired Hiers, but I wish they would have found a better episode for his profile. This meant the only Georgia case profiled on this episode was missing teacher Tara Grinstead. Not to mention, Miguel Torres, based on John Walsh’s generic intro, was almost certainly not originally meant to be aired on this episode either. AMW had a weird habit of traveling to places and not profiling cases actually from that location, and this is a prime example of that in action.
Nov. 19, 2005 The infamous Cold Case special edition. The positives? AMW aired perhaps the most infamous cold case of all time in the Alcatraz escapees, plus they led to the capture of longtime fugitive Ronald Young (who I think, but can’t prove, was profiled on AMW between 1996-1999). The rest of the episode, though, was highly underwhelming. They could have done a 15 Seconds of Shame with only cold cases (as it is, Kevin Donner was the only old fugitive that was aired), or maybe cut down either Young or the Alcatraz story to fit in a cold case (I feel like that entire first part could have been summarized) All-Points Bulletin. There were just so many odd choices for this episode that really didn’t make sense. I wonder if Peter Braunstein going on the run impacted their plans, since he received his first full profile on this episode.
There you have it! My recap of AMW in 2005! As for my next plans, I will get to 2006 sooner rather than later, but there’s something else I’m working on too. I won’t say what it is just yet but I plan on going back and forth between that project and the 2006 guide. Hopefully 2006 won’t take me several years to complete!
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