Dateline is killing Datalounge

All the true crimes and unsolved mysteries are keeping me away from Datalounge. Anyone else addicted to these true crime shows?

I thought this was going to be a Chris Hansen pedo trolling thread.
No, OP. Those shows are stupidly slow and repetitive.
I like Forensic Files on court tv and Cold Case on A&E.\ \ Use to also watch New Detectives on the Discovery Channel, but I never come across it any more.
\ I love a lot of those shows. "Locked Up Abroad" is my current favorite (and makes me want to burn my passport), but I also really like "I Almost Got Away With It" and "Disappeared". "American Justice" and "Forensic Files" are also always engaging.\ \ I tend to hate Dateline. There are only so many times I can invest two hours in a true crime mystery only to hear at the end "... and we may never know what happened to Mary Smith..."
Yes, I have become addicted to Dateline and the true crimes they portray. I just got full cable so I''ll have to check out those other programs as well.
i am totally addicted to Locked Up Abroad, too. it''s very well done, and the stories are always engaging.
I didn''t even know the National Geographic channel existed. \ \ I don''t have it.
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/series/locked-up-abroad/4386/Overview
Too bad, r7. Lots of great info on that channel.\ I love all the true crime shows, too. But I still find time for DL.\ \ What''s happening to DL feels like a crime.
I love the ID channel. Why I Ran, Solved, Deadly Women, Prison Wives, Wicked Attraction, Most Evil, Deranged. I also like the show Bio airs with Paul Winfield.\ \ I hate 48 Hours and anything with Paula Zahn.
Yes, I LOVE ID. I only wish Robert Stack were alive so that he may narrate these shows and scare the crap out of me with that creepy ominous voice of his.
I miss him.
Locked up Abroad hasn''t been on in months. I like Boarder Wars, I almost got away with it, Solved, & Lock Up. Lock Up needs new episodes, I can only watch the Women''s Prison in SC so many times. That big ''ol bulldyke is disgusting.
I always liked Deadly Women on ID, and now I''m into DIsappeared, and On The Record with Paula Zahn.
[quote]No, OP. Those shows are stupidly slow and repetitive.\ \ \ God, that''s the truth. The stretch out a 15 minute story into an hour by piling on the drama and cliff hangers before every commercial. It''s maddening.
Why is Dateline so morbid all the time now? Remember back in the 90's when it used to be interesting and they covered a variety of topics, not just gruesome murders?
Because r14, the networks turned away from being consumer watchdogs and looks like its fighting crime by pretending to promote "awareness" in the form of True Crime. DL people watch a lot of TV
I love Dateline. I've seen probably every episode. I also love the I.D (Investigation Discovery) channel
A good 2 hr episode of Dateline Mysteries is like crack. Remember the one about the Canadian military bigwig who was breaking into women's homes to steal their underwear and then started killing them? They found hundreds of pairs of underwear in his attic and pics of him wearing a lot of them.
Does Dateline ever get sued, or are they too careful for that? I've only watched a few times, but those times they've fabricated a case based on little to no actual evidence. The show feels very manipulative and plays on viewers' emotions. I really dislike the guy who narrates this mess partly because of the way he uses his voice to try to weight the evidence. The first time I watched it I was channel surfing and saw that the suspect was someone I know. Strange surprise. I'm not saying the guy is innocent or guilty because I wasn't there, but what I do know is that the local DA dropped the case because he had no real motive, the evidence was very flimsy, the forensics were sloppy and most of what they collected did not point to him. It was almost certain he would have been found innocent had he been tried. Apparently nobody told Dateline that, because Dateline pronounced him guilty based on speculation and conjecture. I noticed Dateline chose not to reveal some crucial pieces of evidence because apparently it didn't fit with their hypothesis. I know someone who was very close to the victims who said he and others thought the murderer was the brother of the dead woman (the victims were a husband and wife). The brother had lost everything to his gambling addiction and he thought he would get a share of his sister's estate. He did a number of very suspicious things both before and after the murders that made the family believe he did it, but nobody wants their daughter dead and their son in prison for life without parole.
I read DL because it's smart, funny and won't tolerate fakers and bullshitters. In other words, the opposite of reality television.
r11 ha, ha, I remember her, Havey D, right? r16 Who? I am a fanatic for true crime and have seen all the Datelines. Just tell what the case was about and where. Thanks.
Sorry, I meant Heavy D.
r20
r18, all of these shows are like that. They are basically Ready made Reality TV series. If you are a true crime buff and you read in depth accounts of any of these cases, they are very, very different from what ends up on these shows.
I like a lot of the ID shows, but I would say Disappeared is the absolute best. Locked Up Abroad is also extremely well done. American Justice was the forerunner of these shows and was excellent, but I think it is long shut down. Dateline tends to leave too many open questions to be satisfying (as in "will we ever know who killed Jane Smith?"). That can be a little irritating after watching for two hours.
Some of them are pretty interesting. Others, not so much. One that I found particularly heartbreaking was the story "Mystery in the Deep Blue Sea." A pretty, nice young woman named Tina Thomas for some reason married a lumpish, unpleasant bubble-wrap salesman named Gabe Watson. He insisted they go scuba-diving on their honeymoon, despite his bride not liking scuba-diving at ALL. Before they went on the trip he asked her to put her life insurance in his name (she didn't, unbeknownst to him). To make a complicated story short, he left his bride to die on the ocean floor while he leisurely rose to the surface to "get help (he was supposedly a qualified, certified rescue diver). Gabe Watson has got to be one of the most monstrous human beings I've ever heard of. Really, he's right up there with Charles Manson when it comes to downright evil.
r24 Was that the couple from Alabama? They made a lifetime movie of that with Harvey Keitel playing her dad. I didn't watch it but they kept advertising it and playing the Dateline when it was going to be on. He didn't get convicted if I remember correctly.
No, Mary!
Aphrodite Jones is on tonight. Total Milf dyke hooker.
Did he go to jail or not, R24?
I miss the days when Chris Hansen was on Dateline...those were always good shows. Whatever happened to him? Now Dateline is no different than 48 Hours Mystery.
No, 48 Hours Mystery has a similar title to Dateline Mysteries, but it's very different. 48 Hours is a rather bland, imo, show that mostly follows what the cops are doing to solve it. Dateline Mysteries has much higher production values and plays like a documentary.
You realize that Datalounge's bitches will all be prime suspects if anyone out there ever mysteriously dies of a grease fire.
I like when Keith Morrison is on "Dateline." He's kind of creepy yet fun to watch. Bill Hader does a great imitation of him on SNL.
How about how Keith Morrison says "record" like a Brit r32? Man, my ex and I would literally take bets every Friday on how many times he would slip "record" into a story. Usually at least 2. He says it all drawn out, like "wreck-ord" so annoying and pretentious.
and%20he%27s%20Chandler%27s%20stepdad%2C%20for%20the%20record
Thanks, R22. That fits with what I saw on the show. On the few Datelines I've seen, normal everyday behavior is made to look questionable. [italic]The suspect stopped at a 7-11 and bought milk, even though witnesses said there was milk in the house from the day before.[/italic]
R18
I love the shows on Investigation Discovery... They're among the few shows I watch on T.V. these days. They're so campy - I know they're atrociously written and poorly re-enacted, but that's part of the appeal.
OMG... I watch ID, C&I, and the other True Crime channels constantly. I thought I was the only one addicted to these shows--my older gay brother constantly asks what's on the TV in my TRAILER, as if to imply I'm trailer park trash and not modeling good gay behaviors! I really like that new Aphrodite Jones show... Especially the episode about the NY motivational speaker that has himself murdered in order to pass the insurance cash to his family. The guy he convinced to do it, Kenneth Minor (sp), seemed nothing like your typical "First 48" street thug. He appeared intelligent and educated, to the point I felt sympathetic for his being convicted while the man's family raked in the insurance cash (and never bothered to make an appearance at the trial.). Maybe we need a True Crime club, or a Weds night party to watch the First 48 rerun marathons on the Bio channel. It's amazing how much the filming quality has improved with todays's shows compared to late-night reruns of LA Detectives from the late 90's. Clearly, these shows are much more popular than I believed they were....here I thought I was the only gay tuned in!!
I like the ID channel, but damn..... they have to show their sexual reenactments over and over and OVER again. It's really starting to get on my nerves. And, I hate the show that has Susan Lucci as a host. Just give it up, dear. Oh, and whenever I get on the internet and look up these retarded psychos, they're always ugly as hell. Never the hotties or beauties the ID channel claimed they were.... charming playboy this, stunning beauty queen that, MY ASS!
It is interesting how they attempt to get models that resemble the people during the time period in question.
"Did he go to jail or not?" He did a little jail time in Australia, where the murder took place. When he got released it was expected that he would stand trial in the U. S. According to Wikipedia: "Alabama judge Tommy Nail ruled that evidence of Watson's behavior following Tina's death was inadmissible. Nail also blocked Tina's father Tommy Thomas from giving evidence regarding Watson's alleged attempts to increase Tina's life insurance. On February 23, 2012, Nail acquitted Gabe Watson for lack of evidence without the defense needing to present its case. Nail said that the state's evidence was "sorely lacking" and that the prosecution could not prove that Watson had any financial motive. Prosecutor Don Valeska said that this was the first time he had had a trial end in a judge's acquittal in the 41 years he had been trying cases. Regarding the judge's decision, Thomas said, "It should have gone to the jury for them to decide." One of the most astonishing things about this case was Gabe Watson's bizarre, sociopathic behavior. Tina's parents regularly left flowers on her grave, but they kept disapearing. They had flowers chained down, and still they went missing. A video camera revealed that Gabe Watson was the thief; he was videotaped using a bolt cutter to remove the flowers from his wife's grave, after which he tossed them in a trash can. He claimed it was nothing against Tina, he was just pissed at her father for pestering him, so to retaliate he stole flowers from his wife's grave and trashed them. What a monster.
I remember that flower thing r39. That was beyond the pale! As far as I know that guy is married again..weird women out there..
The ID channel can be addictive, so I'm glad I don't get it. But, when I'm house sitting for my friend, I can watch that thing from 8 pm to 4 in the morning. However, I agree that the campy, CONSTANTLY REPEATED reenactments are way over the top. It would be OK if they showed it once or twice, but do they have to show it 20 different times? The best shows are the ones that let us see real pictures of the perpetrator and victim(s). Makes it more real and horrifying. And, as a woman, somehow these shows make me feel safer because I see how victims are got, so it won't happen to me.... at least not in that way.
Some of the promos for these shows sound like they're glorifying murder and I hate that. Even CNN does that shit!
Some of us are sheep and some are lions. Happy to feed your addiction, OP!
Yes. I only watch the Investigative Discovery channel shows, American Justice, and City Confidential.
R20, I missed your question because I'm R18, not R16. The case I saw was about a man in Albuquerque who supposedly killed a husband and wife. I believe he was a mortgage broker, his business was not going well and he was desperate, they supposedly screwed up a deal and he killed them for revenge.
r45 r18 Oh, I feel like an idiot. I was wondering why no one posted back. I know exactly the case you are talking about. I thought they thought the daughter did it (and I did too) but couldn't prove it. She ordered a new BMW right after the funeral and then moved to Southern California if I remember correctly. I know the wife was having an affair or something too...is this the case you are talking about? Thank you for getting back to me, sorry about the confusion!
r20
City Confidential always gave you a feel for the location, like one of those Lait and Mortimer books from the fifties. That's why it wasn't repetitive, because of the care they took setting the scene. The lack of this effort is why Dateline and all these other true crime shows fail. The closest thing to City Confidential now is the fictional Cold Case Files, where they mine the past in the way that City C. mined geography. Except City C. was much better because it was true.
r45 Thank you for answering, sorry about the mix-up. I did see that Dateline and what I came away with was that they thought the daughter did it, at least her family did. They said she was pretty inappropriate at the funeral, laughing and chatting with her friends, and that she got a lot of money from their death and ordered a new BMW like a week after they died. I think she ended up moving to California to get away from the family and their cloud of suspicion. Also, I thought the wife had had an affair and that was a sketchy part of it too. I remember the mortgage guy had a gym bag or something and they said that was suspicious but I didn't think he had done it. Is that the case you were talking about?
r20
Oh I thought my post was lost and rephrased it. Sorry. r46, 48.
r4 r6 r11 and anyone else who loves it, "Locked Up Abroad" marathon tonight 3/8 starting at midnight PST.
Last night I saw the CREEPIEST Murder By The Book on CNN. The author was the guy who wrote LA Confidential and some other well known books. Let me tell you, I seriously think his occupation is author/serial killer. He was so disgustingly CREEPY. His mother was raped and murdered in 1958, and he wrote a book about it. He kept saying... this mother I hated and lusted for. This woman who shaped my sexual desires. This woman I couldn't escape from. OMG, shut up, you creepy little bastard. If I had a drink every time he said...swarthy man, I would have died of alcohol poisoning. He was so utterly gross that I almost couldn't finish watching the damn show. And, no, they never found the SWARTHY MAN/killer.
I hate Murder By The Book! The authors serve no purpose whatsoever.... other than to irritate the shit out of the viewers.
"The author was the guy who wrote LA Confidential and some other well known books." His name is James Ellroy, and, yes, he did come across as very freaky in that episode.