Newsweek's True Crime Week

Newsweek has a smorgasbord of stuff related to real-life crime, starting with Walter Mosley's essay on why America has a long-running obsession with all things illegal, criminal and murderous: it's because everyone is guilty of something:

Guilt is the mainstay of who we are and how we are organized, and is, seemingly, our undeniable destiny, along with Death and Taxes.

Our relationship with guilt is as old as the DNA that defines our species. But the nature of culpability changes with technology and technique. These changes affect the way we see the world and the way we seek to understand our predicament. True-crime stories, murder mysteries, up-to-the-minute online news reports, and (as always) rumor and innuendo grab our attention faster than any call for justice, human rights, or ceasefires.

This is because most of us see ourselves as powerless cogs in a greater machine; as potential victims of a society so large and insensitive that we, innocent bystanders in the crowd, might be caught at any time in the crossfire between the forces of so-called good and evil.

There's also Vincent Bugliosi looking at the Manson murders, 40 years later; James Ellroy on the life and death of LA teenager Lily Burk; an account of the Grim Sleeper, stalking LA's streets for the last twenty-odd years; and L&O creator Dick Wolf's favorite true crime stories.

Comments

[Terrill Lankford]

I wonder how many of these articles will mention the money made (including what the writers themselves will earn, in both cash and publicity, as they write these articles) as the living exploit the dead?

[California Girl]

when i read this post the first time I thought it said "Death and Texas". hahahahaha!

I'll go along with the guilt angle.