Actually, everything about these shows makes me feel sick about the concept of justice that these people apply.

If a man cries incessantly: SUSPICIOUS!

If a man cries not at all: SUSPICIOUS!

If a man calls 911 before searching the entire house: SUSPICIOUS!

If a man searches the entire house before calling 911: SUSPICIOUS!

If a man likes to look at pornography even though God told him not to: MURDERER!

It's all thanks to a biblical mistranslation. Turns out the Aramaic phrase for "I like to look at boobies" is nearly identical to the phrase for "I'm going to take a weed-wacker to my son's face."

My favorite part was the guy saying Blagg was "trying to make himself cry like a human". Honestly, I don't think that was poetic license; I think that fellow literally believes that Blagg is not a human being! He wouldn't be the first person to think that criminals are actually a different species from the rest of us God-fearing, picnic-going humans.

Part of it is probably just the venue; True Crime documentaries are always a little lurid and stupid.

"No, Mr Simpson! A cat is a living creature!"

"I don't care!"

Man, that's an amateur level collection. You're not even in the ballpark of porn obsessed until you've got at least somewhere around 2,000.

What if you have 2,000 *on your phone*, and that just from the last three months?

Actually the more I think about it, the more creepy a middling porn collection becomes.

1-500 = A genuinely low interest in porn

500-2,000 = Repressed with a lot of religious guilt or a weirdly specific fetish

2,000 or more = fairly average porn hoarder

Lightweights. If the number of porn images on your hard drive is fewer than the age of the universe, then you're practically asexual.

If the number of porn images you have is small enough for you to actually count, then you don't have enough.

There's no fucking hearsay, Homer! Hearsay is if I say someone else said that they saw Blagg hanging out by the dumpster.

Which is exactly what the cops were doing. They have no evidence that Mr Blagg was anywhere near the trash, let alone dumping bodies. They just have the recollections of an employee or two, which were apparently not even mentioned until well after the fact. (this in itself would be quite telling, as people's memories are very prone to error, and if his coworkers did not come forward with this information until well after he'd been established as a suspect, then that in itself is enough to to call the entire account into question.)

You keep harping on about Mr Blagg taking out the trash as if it's somehow meaningful, but it's not. Unless the police can produce some video evidence, some physical evidence, or some corroborated eyewitness testimony that says, not just that Mr Blagg went to the dumpster, but went to the dumpster *carrying bodies*, then I'm sorry. The doubt is more than reasonable.

The cop's own version of the dumpster events is literally just: Mr Blagg took out some normal trash, and we think maybe the reason he did so was to see if bodies that he'd allegedly stashed earlier were gone. Pure conjecture, completely circumstantial.

The way the interview with coworkers was presented here on TV doesn't make it seem terribly meaningful, but the way the cops responded to it makes me think there might more to it, and that leads me to think that the focus of this documentary isn't on the evidence, and there may be evidence that we're not seeing. I don't know, and neither do you.

It occurs to me now that the way that the interviews with coworkers are presented here is in the context of how the body was found. There's nothing here to indicate that the testimony of coworkers was used at the trial at all, if it was, it wouldn't have been heresay. The coworkers would have been brought in to testify directly to the court, otherwise it wouldn't have been admissable.

But there would be have been nothing to testify *to*. Again, all the coworkers said they saw was Mr Blagg taking some trash out. They did not say they saw Mr Blagg taking bodies out to the trash, and indeed, the cops agree: no-one witnessed Mr Blagg disposing of the bodies, if it was even him that did so.

The only significance of the coworker's statement was that Mr Blagg's behavior was deemed a little out of the ordinary, and this slight detail prompted the investigators to say "Hey! Maybe the corpses were thrown in a dumpster?" Turns out they were right (about one body; who knows if the daughter is even dead?) But don't make the mistake of thinking that the circumstances in which the police first had their hunch are at all significant, because in the absence of any evidence linking Mr Blagg to the corpse, they are not. That's probably why the coworker's testimony wasn't brought up at trial; because even the prosecution knew there was no merit to it.

No, so you may have to check to see if you have a browser buddy.

And it mysteriously fixed itself after I complained, of course.

That's happened to me before, too, only it's usually bright neon green. Usually on Firefox Mobile.

I'm colourblind so take my assessment with a grain of salt. It's screwed itself up again but meme's probably right, one of my firefox addons is probably screwing with it; I had to disable something this morning to get flash player to run again. As long as I don't have to turn off noscript, adblock and ghostery I'll be happy.

I've experienced momentary shifts in formatting. They were ephemeral.

Illuminati did it.

Oh shit, OZ is right! It's the colour of Annunaki blood! SHI-

Do you use noscript? I've had its ABE thing popup on this site before saying it denied poeTV access to my LAN. I have no idea if that means it tried to get into my computer, or that was its way of putting scary words on something common and mundane. What was mostly odd about it is that I gave poeTV full permission to molest my technology long ago.

I do have noscript, but the settings haven't been changed. If it comes down to a choice between disabling noscript and getting used to the 'new' formatting, I'll just stick with the latter. It's already becoming familiar.

I watched it again and I think you're right. The more I think about it, I probably would have voted guilty too.

The blood in the van combined with his shifty behavior around the dumpsters at work and a complete lack of any sign of anyone else ever being inside the house or any forced entry really seals the deal.

I do think some of the things they focus on here are pretty silly though, like the amount of porn on his computer and the fact that he called 911 before tearing the house apart.

I wonder what really did happen to his daughter though.

I think she's probably in the landfill.

The fact that she was found near trash from the company is somewhat compelling, as is the blood in the vehicle; allegations that he was acting 'suspiciously' around the dumpster are really not.

How many things do you think that you might do in any given span of time that may (after the fact) be construed as 'odd' in light of subsequent events? The whole thing reeks of confirmation bias to me.

Oh, and on the topic of the OJ case:

http://altereddimensions.net/2014/nicole-brown-simpson-ronald- goldman-murdered-by-jason-simpson-oj-son

Pretty interesting article supporting an alternative suspect in the murders. I watched a doco about it last night.

>>How many things do you think that you might do in any given span of time that may (after the fact) be construed as 'odd' in light of subsequent events? The whole thing reeks of confirmation bias to me.

No way. They didn't find the body in the landfill, then talk to the co-workers. It was the other way around. Because of what the co-workers told them, the police spent weeks in what may be literally the most difficult and unpleasant search for evidence I've ever heard of, and I'm someone who gobbles up these True Crime docs like they're bags of popcorn. And it was successful. Interviewing the coworkers led to the discovery of the bodies. That's SOLID.

It's still not solid evidence. It's suspicious as hell, yes, assuming that what the fellow said was true and the body was found near garbage positively linked to Porno Dad's place of business. However, near as I can tell, the only thing linking *him* to the body is a bit of hearsay about him taking out some trash. The prosecution's argument wasn't even that he was seen taking *bodies* out to the trash, just that maybe, by taking regular trash out, he was covertly checking to see if the bodies had been cleaned up. That's circumstantial, not solid.

Do I think he did it? Going by what has been presented on this TV drama, yeah, probably. *But has it been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt*? That is the pertinent question, and it does not appear to have been answered affirmatively.

Okay, Homer, first of all, the standard of proof isn't a shadow of a doubt, it's a reasonable doubt.

Secondly, I don't know where you're getting "hearsay" out of this. Heresay is something else entirely.


Thirdly, me saying it's solid evidence is not the same thing as me saying that, all by itself, it proves his guilt. You're responding to my post, which was a response to borrowed solutions assertion that the testimony of the coworkers "reeks of confirmation bias" I was pointing out that the confirmation came later so, not so much. We're discussing the validity of a single piece of evidence, not the whole case.

Yeah, you're right, that was a typo on my part, but it doesn't change the facts. There is most certainly reasonable doubt here. Borrowed Solution is perfectly correct: the coworkers testimony is completely circumstantial and reeks of confirmation bias. Whether it was "confirmed" later is still very much up for debate; yes, a body was found in the dump. So what? Plenty of murderers dispose of bodies by throwing them in the trash. Who's to say some unknown kidnapper didn't murder the wife, bag her up, and then throw her body into a dumpster? The only real link between Porno Dad and the body was the fact that some coworkers claimed (well after the fact!) to have seen him taking out trash earlier that day. By all accounts it was regular trash, too; it's not like his coworkers saw him dragging a woman-sized trash bag that was dripping blood and had a human hand dangling out of it. It's also suspicious how the investigators failed to find the child. If they were so sure that the wife's body was dumped in the same spot as the rest of the trash that came from his particular place of business on that particular morning, then surely the child, who according to the prosecution's version of events would have been disposed of right alongside the wife, her body should have been found somewhere nearby. But it wasn't. There's no evidence, absolutely none, that the kid's body was ever disposed of in that dumpster, or even that she is dead! Again, all this stuff about the child being interred and looking down on the cops from a better place, it's mere speculation and confirmation bias.

The worst part is, this is all just going off a forty-something minute long slice of yellow journalism, crafted by TV producers who want to sell a lurid story and truly believe that the guy was a killer. If something as hopelessly biased as this true crime documentary cannot present any solid evidence which proves Mr Blagg's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, then what must a six-week long criminal trial have been like?

I mean, let's recap some of the "solid" evidence we've been given.

"He's a veteran!" - that's why the cops never got a confession out of him.
"He's really smart!" - that's why the cops couldn't poke any holes in his story.
"He watches porno!" - that's his motive.
"He took out some trash!" - that's how we know he disposed of the bodies.
"He called 911 the moment he found blood!" - that's how we know he killed his family.


Yeah, that's not looking real solid to me, Mr Holmes. Do they have anything else, that wasn't mentioned in this documentary?

Thanks, Homer. That about sums up my thoughts on the matter.

JHMF: You've mentioned working in the justice system? That's probably why this is confusing you so much. I'm sure from the inside all of this absolute turd-polishing nonsense has merit (from a professional point of view if nothing else) but from a slightly more detached perspective it's just that: turd-polishing.

JHMF was a hitman for MS13. He spent fifteen years in federal custody before killing three guards and escaping out the sewage tunnels.

I mean, let's recap some of the "solid" evidence we've been given.

>"He's a veteran!" - that's why the cops never got a confession out of him.
>"He's really smart!" - that's why the cops couldn't poke any holes in his story.
>"He watches porno!" - that's his motive.
>"He took out some trash!" - that's how we know he disposed of the bodies.
>"He called 911 the moment he found blood!" - that's how we know he killed his family.

None of that is evidence. What IS evidence is the wife's body, where it was found, and the testimony that led to it being found. I'm not sure that it proves guilt, and I never said that it did.

>>You've mentioned working in the justice system?

Nope.

>> That's probably why this is confusing you so much. I'm sure from the inside all of this absolute turd-polishing nonsense has merit (from a professional point of view if nothing else) but from a slightly more detached perspective it's just that: turd-polishing.


Look, I'm with Homer here.

>>Do I think he did it? Going by what has been presented on this TV drama, yeah, probably. *But has it been proven beyond [beyond a reasonable doubt] That is the pertinent question, and it does not appear to have been answered affirmatively.

That is pretty much exactly my opinion on the matter of his guilt, but that's not what we've discussing, is it? If it is, I'm with Homer.

Let me make one point here. The fact that the cops spent weeks digging through fetid garbage day and night tells me that they had a lot more than a coworker with a funny feeling. They knew what they would find there.

Even for a true crime TV doc, I suspect this is especially shitty. Based on this, if I was on the jury, I would want to convict, but I would need to know more.

The cops drive military-grade MRAPs and spend billions of dollars cracking down on potheads. As long as they can convince a politician to approve the budget for it, I'm sure they'd be willing to dig up every landfill in the state.

They *suspected* they'd find two bodies, but they only found one, and they do not appear to have found any evidence that actually linked the body to Blagg. The body means nothing without that. Put another way, "finding a body" is only evidence that a murder has been committed. It is not evidence that Blagg was the killer.

Look, Juror Number 7, I know you have tickets to a baseball game, but hear me out. Think about it for awhile. A man's life is on the line.

http://tinyurl.com/c4hhekr

Your problem, Homer, is that for you, the concept of "evidence" is indistinguishable from "proof", I can understand if you're confused about me talking about "solid" evidence, that I meant that it wasn't circumstantial. I simply meant that it is real evidence, circumstantial evidence is evidence. Anyway, didn't somebody say there was blood in the guy's truck or something?

If the body is found in the trash from this guy's job, that's not proof linking this guy to his body, it's evidence. Seeing him hanging around the dumpster isn't proof. It's evidence. Circumstance evidence is evidence. In the real life, non TV world, forensic csi evidence just isn't always there, and prosecutors are forced to make circumstantial cases. That's a disturbing fact of life, but lettling murders go unprosecuted is not acceptable to most people.

I'm going to say this again, and you're probably not going to hear it this time, either, Homer, but I'm not saying that I think this proves the guy guilty, If I'm on the jury, I'm not going to rubber stamp this shit, but you keep saying there's no evidence, and there is.
I

Yes, *circumstantial* evidence. Circumstantial evidence is not solid evidence; if your case built on nothing but circumstantial evidence, then it is not a solid case. Nothing about this says, "Mr Blagg killed his wife". There are a lot of little clues that say "maybe Mr Blagg killed his wife", but the doubt is there.

I'm well aware that real life doesn't operate like a CSI show. In CSI, everyone is guilty, and the cops always nab the bad guy in the end. In real life, things aren't always that clear cut, and sometimes, you know, the defense really does deserve to win. You remember that aphorism, "Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"? When did it become, "Finding evidence is HAAaaarrrrRD, let's just settle for hearsay and possible coincidence"?

There's no murder-prosecution quota we have to fill here. We don't have to hurry up and send the guy to prison for life just so Horatio Caine can sleep a little easier tonight. If the glove don't fit, you must acquit!