Death and 'Serial'

I'm not listening to Serial.

I'm a voracious podcast listener. This American Life, Snap Judgment, Too Beautiful to Live, Nightvale Radio, loads of NPR podcasts. I'm the key demographic for this show.

Except I won't listen to it.

It's about a murder, as I understand it. Someone murdered someone - or maybe he did, maybe he didn't. The show digs through the evidence, interviews witnesses, and considers whether the person actually committed the crime. It's supposed to be riveting. It's supposed to be great radio. It's supposed to be a revolutionary way of using the medium.

I can't listen to it.

I've been there, you see. I've sat in a courtroom while the prosecution presented the autopsy pictures of my brother; described the wounds that were inflicted on his body; described how he died.

I've been there in the courtroom when the defense tried to challenge evidence, cast doubt as to the real killer, declared the fine character of the man accused of killing my brother.

That's just me. I don't read murder mysteries. I don't watch movies like Pulp Fiction that glorify killing and treat dead bodies like punch lines.

Interestingly, This American Life did an episode about this tendency, about how the families of murder victims end up hyper-sensitive to popular culture with references to murder. I never forgot that episode, because it nails it perfectly. Not all survivors of murder feel this way. But many of us do.

I wish nothing but the best for Serial and I hope it has a long and successful future. But I hope the next story is about robbing a bank. Or kidnapping a pig. Or stealing a piece of art. I don't want to hear about murders presented for entertainment, no matter how seriously the subject is taken. I can't be entertained by it, and I'm not the only one.

Killers and Cops

For years, I avoided shows and movies that I thought were callous about the value of human life. I didn't read detective books or watch movies about serial killers (everything from Pulp Fiction to Silence of the Lambs.) Many people who have lost loved ones to violent crime tend to do this - I'm not alone. (For more, listen to the brilliant episode of This American Life called "How to Rest in Peace.")

I seem to be watching a show now that is immersed in the "serial killer" genre, and that has me thinking.

Now, first, the show is brilliant. Luther is the show. I'm a little late to the bandwagon - it came out in 2010 and hit our side of the pond in 2011. I'm watching it now on Netflix, and I'm riveted. It stars Idris Elba, who is one of the most compelling actors I've ever seen. Luther is driven and ruthless and unpredictable, a pitbull in the clothes of a homicide detective. He's haunted by what he does for a living. But his chief tendency is tenacity. He will not let go of a crime until he has tracked down the perpetrator and either brought them to justice or otherwise stopped them.



I love the show. I love the depth of each character, the fact that characters never seem to do what you expect them to do. I love that the writers inflict real consequences on their characters. Like Joss Whedon, the writers of this show know that to care about the main characters, you have to see them in genuine danger. Luther might lose his job. He might be killed. He might lose people about whom he cares dearly.


And I love his foil, Alice Morgan. She is an adversary for him, a foil, his dark conscience that whispers the worst things into his ears. When Luther wants to bring someone to justice, Alice wants to stab him to death and leave him in the street. There is a scene in the fourth episode - if you've seen it, you know the one I mean. The scene places Alice and John Luther at opposite ends of a phone line, and they both end the scene screaming, broken apart at the seams. Alice does something unspeakable and when Luther tries to chastise her for it, she screams at him, "I did it for you, pig! Filth! I did it for you!" It explodes off the screen. I've rewatched the scene at least five tiimes, and I may do it again tonight before I go to sleep.

And it's about killing. Bodies fall. People are killed, serial killers track their victims mercilessly and dispatch them brutally. It's a very bloody show. But ... and maybe this is because I don't watch a lot of these shows... the murders have consequences. They are bloody and messy and they leave holes in people's lives. The detectives are upset - traumatized sometimes - by what they see. This is as it should be.

I can watch a show like this. They care about the lives of people and they pursue killers, not as puzzles to be solved, but as menaces to be removed from society.

When my brother was murdered, I thought we would never find the killers. My brother was one of a thousand victims in New Orleans, a city that was facing thousands of outstanding warrants before Katrina even happened. The city was overrun by crime and its police force was drowning. They wouldn't find the killers. They didn't have the time or the manpower to find them.

Four years later, one of the killers was found. And arrested. And I attended his murder trial, along with my father. And he was sentenced to life in prison (the most severe penalty I could accept - I refused to go along with the prosecutor if they pursued a death sentence.)

John Luther is a superhero of sorts. He's brave and true, ruthless and relentless, and he does things that most of us would never imagine. He puts himself in danger, time and again, to catch the bad guys. I like the idea that detectives are like that. When the most horrible thing happens to a loved one, I am comforted by the idea that those detectives, those police officers, are as haunted as we are. That they are staying up at night, trying to figure out how to solve the case. That they would do anything in their power to find the perpetrators. John Luther is a rampaging bull, but speaking as someone who has had to rely on the dedication of police detectives and inspectors and prosecutors, I'd always want someone like him on my side.

Amanda Knox and Meredith Kercher

I know very little about this case.  I have avoided stories of this story feverishly, even though it is a story that touches many of my neighbors.  Even though the accused lives in the same city, the same neighborhood, as my family.  However, I feel called to talk about it because it is so close to home, literally and figuratively.  

I have avoided this story the way I avoid all stories of murder:  gruesome murder, celebrity murder, exploitative stories about murder, tragic stories about murder.  I avoid these stories.  I don't watch movies that talk cavalierly about murder, or movies like Pulp Fiction that use dead bodies as a punch line.  I wince at the way murder is treated in this country, and especially in the news.

So I did not seek out and I do not wish to know more about the Amanda Knox story:  about her alibi, her claims of innocence.  I do not wish to hear the cries from her family that she could not possibly have done something like this.  I do not want to know.  I don't follow murder stories.  

My brother was murdered fourteen years ago, you see.  (Some of my longtime readers have heard me talk about this before.)  We found out weeks after it had happened.  They found my father's address in his personal effects and were able to track him down, and they called him to identify the body of his son.  

One of the killers was found and arrested, years later.  He went to trial.  I was asked to attend as a witness.  I saw photos of my brother's body, taken at the morgue, depicting the blows that ended his life.  I saw the evidence of what had been done to him.  I saw these things and I wish that I never had.

I saw the man who was accused of murdering my brother.   I heard the prosecutor and a witness to the crime describe the things that had been done to end my brother's life.  I heard his attorney offer alibis, explanations, reasons why their client could not possibly have done these horrible things.

I met his family, the murderer's family.  They couldn't understand how such a mistake could have happened.  They were upset, angry, confused, and they know their son was innocent.  They just knew it.  He wasn't that kind of person. 

He was found guilty by a jury of his peers, and was sentenced to life in prison.  I have not seen him since that trial and I don't know if I will ever see his face again, except in my dreams, except when I want to think about my brother and instead, I see the ruddy face of the man who took his life.

So no, I don't want to know more about Amanda Knox' situation.  I don't want to know the holes in the prosecution's case.  I don't want to know the alternative theories of how the murder transpired.  It's not that I dislike Ms. Knox or that I've prejudged her.  I just don't want to know any more.  I can't do it.  I choose to just close my eyes and let the system do its job.   

I know this, however.  I know that Italy is a nation of laws, a nation with a legitimate government.  I know that Knox' trial was not conducted by reading goat entrails or casting runes.  I know that her trial was carried out in a legitimate court.  And if the jury said that she was guilty, then I have to believe that she was guilty.  A person was murdered.  Meredith Kercher's family deserves justice.  I will not, I dare not question the judgment of that Italian jury.  It is not my right.  None of us has that right except the judge and the men and women who made up that jury.  That's how it works.   

I believe that the jury who convicted my brother's murder carried out their role and meted out justice.  I believe that the jury who convicted Amanda Knox did the same.  I have to believe that.  There are so many murders in this country and around the world that go unsolved, their perpetrators left to roam free, the families of the victims left with gaping wounds in their hearts.  I have to believe that justice was carried out here, and I do believe that.  It is disrespectful to Meredith Kercher's family, to that jury, and to the entire country of Italy to claim otherwise.  

And that's all I can say about that.