True crime, multiplatform edition
“How can you say euthanasia is better than evacuation?”
— Rodney Scott, Memorial Medical Centre patient during the hurricane.
Among this year’s crop of true crime adjacent limited/anthology series is Five Days At Memorial on Apple+. It shares a title with its source, Sheri Fink’s book on what happened at Memorial Medical Centre in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. When I first heard of the series, I thought it would be a documentary exploration of the topic. There was so much that could be covered and added like present-day perspective from survivors, lookbacks for closure and deeper understanding.
But no, Five Days at Memorial, the series, is a narrative retelling of those five days of the hurricane, when patients and doctors were stranded at the hospital.
“Help was coming too slowly. There were too many people who needed to leave and weren’t going to make it, [Dr. Ewin Cook] said, describing for me his thinking at the time. It was a desperate situation and he saw only two choices: quicken their deaths or abandon them. ‘It was actually to the point where you were considering that you couldn’t just leave them; the humane thing would be to put ’em out.’”
— Sheri Fink, The Deadly Choices at Memorial
As Fink documents, there were multiple triggers to the tragedy that took place. Not only was the FEMA response inadequate, but the hospital itself wasn’t properly prepared, backup generators were below sea level and first to be lost to the flood. To complicate matters, there was a second independent hospital operating within the building; LifeCare Hospitals which leased a floor and catered to patients with around-the-clock needs. Bureaucratic communication problems were added to the pile of exacerbating circumstances. Patients had to be carried up and down the stairs to be evacuated, and arrivals in need of help were turned away. Reverse triage was instituted as a way of determining who would and wouldn’t get a coveted evacuation spot and who would receive care.
When all was said and done, 45 bodies were found in Memorial’s chapel, and an investigation followed. Authorities believed that euthanasia had taken place, a breach of medical ethics to some, an inevitability to others.
Three people were arrested, and only one doctor presented to the grand jury as two nurses were spared in exchange for testimony against her. Ultimately, charges were dropped and no indictment was pursued. Civil actions remain possible.
All of that messy back and forth, condensed and funneled through a screenwriting lens, director’s choices, and many other edits and revisions on behalf of any number of decision makers. Pressed into a narrative fit for broadcast. The number of people involved in the real event; patients, loved ones, relatives, staff, rescue workers, and so on numbers into the thousands. These people who were part of a tragedy have become characters, reinterpreted, and adapted for the narrative.
Then again, I read Fink’s book, which itself is a retelling of what happened. It targets a different audience on a different scale, but is it not also essentially a remix? Intended to inform and expose, one can assume, I assumed, because that’s what I got out of it.
The nightmare of those five days is portrayed effectively, and the horror is palpable. There are so many stories included in Fink’s book, emphasizing how wide-reaching the tragedy was. Personalizing it, in a way, making them well-rounded, real people.
Still, there’s no way to say how accurately the people involved were portrayed. It numbers into the thousands, those affected. Is it ever possible to appease that many people in cases like these?
The window of time between crime itself and content seems to be shrinking, regardless of adaptations.
Who benefits, beyond the investors? What is the purpose of this retelling? Would a topical Grey’s Anatomy finale double episode not be as effective with an audience?
It’s something I’ve thought about before and beyond this show. The Act, The Shrink Next Door, The Staircase, The Thing About Pam, The Girl From Plainville, Under the Banner of Heaven, Escape from Dannemora, WeCrashed, Super Pumped, Inventing Anna...
The window of time between crime itself and content seems to be shrinking, regardless of adaptation. The true crime podcasting world has industrialized into a profit-making machine a while ago. You probably don’t matter. I remain undecided on whether this overexposure is all bad; covering unresolved cases can reach someone in the know, refresh memories and reinvigorate law enforcement’s investigation.
For all the hours of true crime podcasting that has been released over the last decade, few have been directly credited with uncovering new, crucial information that was used by law enforcement.
I only know of two such podcasts, both of which culminated in court cases just this summer. The verdict is in for one, declaring Chris Dawson guilty of murdering his wife Lynette Dawson in 1982. The conclusion to the case has been credited in great part to the Australian’s podcast The Teacher’s Pet. I think it’s the first case of a true crime podcast leading to an arrest and a conviction.
In this case, husband Chris alleged that his wife had become ensnared in a religious cult and abandoned him and their children in 1982, never to be seen again. Some speculated that Dawson’s rugby fame was insulating him from repercussions, which is certainly possible, albeit depressing when the weight of evidence is acknowledged.
There were plenty of signs of foul play at the time: the marriage was troubled and abusive, Dawson was known to be in a “relationship” with a 15-year-old student who was moved into the house days after Lynette’s disappearance. And then there were the witness statements that were never collected, a long list of relatives and friends who were never contacted by the police. Two separate coroner’s inquests declared Lynette deceased and that Chris was her likely murderer. Yet, there was no movement in the case until the podcast, which publicized testimonies that were never heard before and never sought by the police.
The second is the Kristin Smart case where father and son Ruben and Paul Flores are currently on trial, with charges against Susan Flores still pending. The podcast Your Own Backyard has not only been credited for much of the progress but also has become part of the case itself. Chris Lambert, the man behind the podcast, is attending the trial and reporting on the progress in the podcast feed. One of the recent episodes featured him recounting testimonies where he and the podcast were discussed, leading to some real meta, self-referential moments.
The Dawson and Smart cases have a few similarities that seem relevant to the present situation: they were both no-body homicides, which are notoriously difficult to prosecute, both cases had prime suspects already, and both appeared to be without official resolution because of law enforcement failures. These weren’t cases of sensational, mindbending evidence, but common knowledge that seemed to be wiped away.
Kristin Smart’s disappearance was initially labeled as a party girl who might have wandered off after a wild night. When she was reported missing to the Cal Poly campus police they dismissed her disappearance entirely, labeling her a runaway.
Smart’s friends knew that she hadn’t made it back to her dorm room and that she had no possessions on her, yet it took nearly a week for the police to start asking questions. It took a few more weeks for the case to be passed on to the sheriff’s department.
In the meantime, dorms were vacated and deep cleaned, witnesses relocated all over the world, and call records were purged. Missing out on all this vital evidence is part of the mistakes, but it goes beyond that, to losing evidence and performing insufficient searches.
Because of this, Paul Flores—the primary suspect this entire time, the last to be seen with Smart, the most eager to help her get home—has been free for 25 years, free to harass and assault multiple other women. It may seem like a bold claim on my part, but there is evidence beyond testimonies: searches of his home revealed videotapes of him raping unconscious women, many unknown, as well as “date rape” drugs.
Many of the people that were willing to be part of Lambert’s podcast expressed hesitation at first, they wanted to make sure the story was “told right” emphasizing their trust in Lambert. I’m not doubting the intentions or the presentation of these testimonies, but rather painfully aware that this can now be used in future content, by other people. (Including myself, I’m very well aware.)
As the Flores trial continues, Dawson’s conviction remains bittersweet. For me, it turned sour when it became clear a film was in the works, with Hugh Jackman and Joel Edgerton attached. Despite the timely publicity push, it’s not news that Hedley Thomas, the journalist behind the podcast, discussed signing a deal for TV rights in 2018. There was even talk of an unscripted show based on the podcast itself.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a film about the Flores trial is also pending, outline in flux and awaiting a verdict. I heard a production about the Jian Ghomeshi film was in the works, casting during the trial. Whether it was shelved because of the verdict or a more common behind the scenes struggle is impossible to know. Just as there probably are multiple adaptations in the works, right now.
At which point does it become exploitative? At which point does it become a negative in the lives of those affected, perpetuating cycles of attention they never sought out?
So we circle back to the ethics of it all; the assembly line of cases on their way to stages, sound booths, manuscripts, screenplays… Not that there’s anything wrong with the formats, it’s their role in the soma ladder I find troubling.
I don’t know if it’s possible to measure the interest, empathy, and discomfort that each medium causes; I don’t know that I want to know. Perhaps we’ve reached a new level, where a story within a story within a story is the most effective form of information absorption.
Regardless of the results, it’s inevitable, right? A perpetual motion machine, with content brought to you by the human condition.