Adventures with a True(ish) Crime Show

By Angela Dove

“Could you scream?”

“No.”

“Shout out?”

“No. I already told you. I just sat down.”

The director tapped her chin in thought. “But you cried, right? I mean, we could film you crying? Maybe collapsing onto your husband?”

I watched the match unfold between director and subject. This particular subject, Jacque MacDonald, had the home court advantage. Regardless of all the lights and cameras and sound equipment, this was still Jacque’s home. Jacque’s living room, to be exact. And she wasn’t about to mince words in her own home.

“I most certainly did not collapse,” she said, the London accent of her youth becoming stronger in her anger.

“I sat down. “

The director just didn’t get it. “But you were crying, right?”

Jacque expelled her breath all at once, probably in lieu of shouting. “I had just learned my daughter had been murdered. I was not crying. I was in shock. I sat down.”

The director nodded, her long ponytail bobbing up and down.  “Of course we want to be as truthful as possible—“

“—because it’s a ‘true crime’ show—“ Jacque cut in. I smiled at her.

“Yes,” said the director, unphased. “But what that means is that we present the truth of a situation, not necessarily every little detail.”

I started. Her words sounded exactly like a talk I’d given myself while writing about our family’s story  www.NoRoomForDoubt.com . The murder of Jacque’s daughter (my stepmother) had been the starting bell of a race that lasted for nine years, until Jacque’s efforts finally solved the case.  So much of it was important, but I couldn’t possibly include it all. I had condensed events. I had brought forth key characteristics of detectives and friends while leaving other details behind. But I knew not to change the details of the most gut-wrenching moment in Jacque’s life.

Anyone who spoken to many victims or survivors would understand the sanctity of the Moment. The moment when everything changes. The moment when all the rules are revealed to only be comfortable assumptions. No matter what your storytelling medium, you don’t tamper with the Moment.

Jacque had agreed to do this show because she hoped—as I did—that it could help other families struggling with their own cold cases. Having Jacque reenact her moment was bad enough, but this woman wanted . . . theater. She wanted to tantalize her viewers at Jacque’s expense. It was wrong.

“Let’s take a break,” I said, maneuvering through the cables snaking across Jacque’s carpet.

“I don’t understand this,” Jacque was saying. “I’ve done a lot of these shows, and I always tell the truth. What’s the matter with the truth? I was making tea. My husband returned a call to work. He came out again. He told me the phone call was really about Debi getting killed. I sat down—“

“You were making tea?” The director had let Jacque’s words wash around her while she stood dry on an island of indifference.  “I have an idea! Why don’t we show your husband talking to you, right? And you’re holding the tea pot on a tray, and you spill it—“

Finally, Jacque lost all composure. “I’m British!” she shouted. “The British do not spill their tea!”

The assistant producer (read “gopher”) was a caring soul who obviously understood more than her boss. She was making a bee-line toward Jacque with a glass of cold water. Together we steered Jacque toward the kitchen.

 “You’re right, Jacque,” the assistant said. She had soft curly hair, soft eyes, a soft smile. “We only want to tell your story. The real story.”

 “Has she lost a child?” Jacque fumed glaring toward the living room. “Has she been told her daughter was stabbed to death in her own home?”

I looked toward the director, who was too engrossed in a conversation with her crew to hear the angry grief spilling out of the kitchen. Still high and dry.

“Have some water, Jacque,” I said. She took a shaky sip. “Remember,” I told her. “If you don’t do it, they can’t film you doing it. That’s the biggest truth in the room right now. You’re in control of this situation.”

I didn’t care if the director heard me. I didn’t care if the assistant director was annoyed. What they didn’t understand, but what any survivor could tell them, is that one of the worst components of violent crime is the victim’s feeling of powerlessness. I’d heard Jacque say many times, “When that beast killed my Debi, he took control. But when we found him, I got my control back.” Sure, there were a hundred other emotions with which we all had to contend, but Jacque had the essence of it right there. The truth of the situation, as it were.

Jacque understood my meaning immediately, and we shared a moment apart from any busyness surrounding us. She nodded. Then she turned to the assistant director. “I know what you need, and I’m trying to help you get it,” she said. “I am cooperating, but I will not act in any way other than what I did that night."

I watched warily as the crew filmed Jacque sitting down in her shock and grief. Later, while Jacque was outside, I saw the director have her camera man film Jacque’s tea pot steaming away until its built in whistle screamed into the quiet of the kitchen. She had found her theatrical element at last.

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Angela Dove [link to www.AngelaDove.com] is an award-winning humor columnist and author of the true crime memoir No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder  She has appeared on three true crime shows since the book’s release, and is happy to say that the above incident was unique in its ickiness. 

The Use and Misuse of 911 Recordings

By Angela Dove


“Disgusting”


“Completely inappropriate”


“Immoral and tasteless”


This is just a sampling of more than 150 reader responses to the article, “Brittany Murphy’s Mom’s hysterical call to 911” on People.com. On January 8, the entertainment magazine published audio of Sharon Murphy’s call to an emergency operator as her daughter, actress Brittany Murphy, lay dying in the actress’s California home. The move prompted immediate backlash from readers who vowed to boycott the magazine and told online editors, “You should be ashamed of yourselves.” None of the comments criticized the accompanying article, which included heartbreaking quotes from the call; instead, online users were united in their belief that encouraging the public to listen to a mother live through the worst moment of her life is despicable. Within 48 hours, the magazine removed the audio file.


While I agree that it is unpardonable to parade a family’s pain under the banner of entertainment, I am nonetheless intrigued by the power of such recordings. With—and only with—the family’s permission, a 911 recording can be an effective tool, particularly during the investigation of an unsolved crime.


It was for my family.


When my stepmother, Debi, was murdered in 1988, police were unable to make an arrest. Debi’s mother began a relentless media in hopes of bringing forward an informant. During the ensuing nine years her efforts landed Debi’s case on numerous true crime shows, most of which I avoided watching. There was one time, however, when I accidentally caught part of a show (I won’t mention any names) and watched in morbid fascination as several detectives offered a condensed version of the case: Debi was murdered in our house with a knife from our kitchen, my father found her the next morning, my baby sister slept through the attack just a few feet away, and there was no sign of forced entry.


By the time this show aired, Debi’s murder had been unsolved for more than a year, and I had moved across country in part to get away from the celebrity that comes to survivors of unsolved crime—relentless media aftershocks that can bring new devastation to lives already in ruin. What I was not at all prepared for was the tape of my dad’s frantic call to 911. The crime show played the call, and the panic and desolation in my father’s voice winded me like a punch to the stomach. I stumbled to the TV set and turned it off, sobbing in my now-silent living room.


At the time, I felt my family had been revictimized by the show. What I did not realize, however, was that the same recording that sickened me had actually convinced others that my father was not Debi’s killer.


Because of my naivety (I was only a teenager when Debi died), or perhaps because of my grief, I had somehow missed the fact that many area residents, and even some members of law enforcement, suspected my father had murdered his wife. Sure, the spouse or boyfriend is always questioned first, but even a year after Debi’s death there were those who doubted my father’s innocence. But anyone who knew my father beyond mere acquaintance would have been hard pressed to listen to that call and believe him anything other than innocent. Perhaps, if it had been released sooner, my father would not have suffered such ostracism and hostility during his own grieving process.

Aside from testifying to the state of mind of those on scene, 911 calls strike a chord even with strangers. (Over 150 comments to People’s online editors—and those were only the ones who bothered to log into the site long enough to tell them off!) Who knows if one of those listening strangers may hold the key to solving a crime?


When Debi’s mother, Jacque MacDonald, waged a war for justice in front of the cameras, it was only because she believed that someone, somewhere, knew who had killed her daughter. “There was one person who knew,” Jacque says, “and my job was to get them to come forward.” Were they afraid? Or did they think their one little piece of information wasn’t important? Jacque knew she had to break down their reticence or apathy. So she and my father laid their pain out there to the public. Eventually, Jacque’s “one person who knows” came forward with the information we needed.


Today Debi’s murderer is in jail, and Jacque fights for justice on behalf of other victims and survivors through her radio and television talk show, “The Victim’s Voice.” Based in central California, Jacque continues to counsel survivors of unsolved crimes to use anything they have at their disposal—including 911 recordings—in their search for justice.


“Other people understand panic and fear and loss,” Jacque explains. “Maybe they’ve lost a loved one or a friend. So that tape makes a connection.” If the family is able to connect to their ‘one person who knows,’ as Jacque did, then a shared understanding of loss may convince the informant to come forward.


Again, I want to be perfectly clear that I do not support the hawking of other people’s tragedies. Whether it is a mother’s 911 call or photos of disaster victims, I abhor the way some news and/or entertainment venues package and sell the heartbreak of others. But in the wake of an unsolved crime, it may be that sharing a vulnerability with the public can lead to a strong personal victory.


***


Angela Dove is an award-winning columnist, speaker, and author of the true crime memoir, No Room for Doubt: A True Story of the Reverberations of Murder (Penguin/Berkley, 2009). She welcomes feedback at www.AngelaDove.com.