r/DiscoveryID

I am retired, and basically all I do is see my grandkids, fool around, and watch my true crime and nature shows.

Every day I check my Direct TV listing and DVR my shows. You can look at the description and if the original airdate is the current date, it’s a new show. Yesterday I taped Homicide Hunter - The Man With No Face and Homivide Hunter Devin in The Mountains.. I noticed it didn’t have an original air date, nor a season and Episode number. It was presented as “special”.

So I come home, get a snack and sit down to watch Lt Joe Kenda do his magic. Both shows were reruns. And were not listed as reruns.

Not the first this has been done.

Ok, I am REACHING as far as what is content on ID so I can talk about it on ID Reddit. I know this Scott Peterson documentary is on A&E, but I still want to discuss it with my ID fellow fans to see how they feel about the case. I live in Sacramento, CA, which is 1 1/2 hours from where Laci and Scott lived, so the news coverage was intense here at the time. Everyone hated him. I was like everyone else, that bastard is Guilty. I know for a fact that the information they are releasing in this particular documentary on A&E, is nothing new. They have been bringing up evidence that they say he hasn't been guilty for a while. And I want to be fair and have an open mind to all of it.

But when they were first bringing on the "Scott is innocent" narrative, I rolled my eyes and fought against it for these reasons. Neighbors say they saw Laci way later than they should have, according to the State's timeline. My thinking at the time was that you can't trust that evidence, because eyewitness testimony is completely unreliable, especially after all that time. I know they point the finger at the people who burgled the neighbor's house, but you'd think after ALL this time, if someone other Scott killed her, we'd hear about it from a witness who couldn't keep quiet or someone in prison knowing something, just like we solve many other cases that had bad convictions that ended up being overturned. After years, an alternate suspect pops up, and we begin to hear their name. Before, they haven't specifically had a particular suspect they were pointing the finger at, but maybe in this documentary they will. How can someone who knows something keep quiet all these years if there was an alternate suspect?

Then mostly what I can't get around is that man's behavior. If he IS innocent, wow, he did NOT care about Laci at all. I'm mean, obviously he didn't. His behaviors, lying, and actions were what made a lot of people think he was guilty. What was up with his behavior IF he is innocent? His nonchalant behavior about her being missing, selling her car, taking off with dyed hair, tons of money, and headed for the border even though he knows he is a suspect. The Amber Frey affair and him lying, saying he was at the Eiffel Tower at Laci's candlelight vigil. Can he still be a psychopath but innocent? Would any one of us behave that way if the finger was pointed at us? I know everyone is different, but DAMN, he shady. But I know you can't look at behavior alone; you need solid evidence.

So those were the reasons where I was like, no, they are just trying to get him out of prison; he is guilty. But now that the Innocence Project picked it up, I have to re-think things and be open to the fact he may be innocent. That would BLOW my mind.

What do you guys think? Do you think he is innocent?

The episode has all the 1970s photos and three of the teens/kids who survived!

It’s So good!

I know Investigation Discovery tried to move into 1st person story telling and a more news-reporting style, more like Dateline. A lot of this was done to give victims more power in telling their stories, but also just to copy where other networks were heading with their programming. I 100% agree with giving survivors more power and changing the narrative around victims to embrace them as real people. I liked the old format so much better and believe there is a better way to integrate these foundational beliefs into it.

The old format felt much more concise in its storytelling; the bad acting was interesting to watch, and I preferred the blend of hearing the real impact on victims and having them tell their stories, mixed with the more objective narration style. I think that because people have emotional connections to these stories, they are not always concise in the way they tell them, which can be hard to follow along with as a viewer.

I also don't think that their redoing old shows in new ways has been particularly successful, as evidenced by the reinvented final season of Web of Lies.

Old Programming I really enjoyed: Blood Relatives, Disappeared, Nightmare Next Door, Who the Bleep Did I Mary, Homicide Hunter, Breaking Homicide, Your Worst Nightmare, People Magazine Investigates: Cults, Forbidden Dying for Love, Fear Thy Roommate (better than the Netflix show Worst Roommate Ever imo), Unusual Suspects, Twisted Sisters, Web of Lies, Obsession Dark Desires to name some.

Current Programming I still enjoy: Evil Lives Here, Fear thy Neighbor (up in the air, but likely canceled), Body Cam, See No Evil, Signs of a Psychopath, The Murder Tapes, American Monster

I know that's a long list, but their programming used to be extensive. I am a criminal justice graduate student, and so many of the cases I've gotten to highlight in papers, projects, and presentations, I learned about from ID. I do not just learn about these cases for no reason; they've inspired my advocacy work. I aim to keep victims and survivors' names alive, however I can. ID is part of what inspired me to become a criminal justice student to begin with. However, I was also a film major in undergrad for a while, and I understand the importance of telling stories in a way that is digestible for people, concise, and corresponds with learning styles. ID used to do that, now they have moved so far away from some of these goals that I've moved more to getting true crime from podcasts, YouTube, and books.

Did you prefer the old format, and what are your thoughts on being able to incorporate families and survivors' voices at the forefront while keeping some of the old format?

Or something like Never seen Again on Padamount.

I watched an episode on this case around 2015, and I believe I watched it on Investigation Discovery. It was about a woman in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend (I don’t think they were married). He had strangled her to the point of unconsciousness in the past, and I remember she told a male friend about this and he could see the physical signs that she had been strangled. He spoke about this in the show, and he was probably in his 30s at the time of the episode. I don’t know the details of the woman’s murder, but I know her boyfriend/ex-boyfriend did it and she was in her 20s or 30s.

I think they had been on a trip to Vegas when the strangulation occurred but I could be wrong. I don’t believe they lived in Vegas but the details are fuzzy. This has been driving me absolutely crazy so any help is appreciated!

A little late to the game but I’ve been binging Evil Lives Here, and WHY do so many of these parents buy & gift their mentally disturbed children guns, often described as a “bonding experience” after they’ve already done some crazy ass shit??? FFS you delusional nut jobs, your child is dangerous!

I am finding the show boring. Of course God bless the victims but 80% of the show is about their social media following, which I don’t care about.

IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE LATEST EPISODE AND DON’T WANT SPOILERS, THEN STOP READING RIGHT NOW:

Just watched the latest episode about that guy Randy. I feel like there’s a lot of stuff they didn’t tell us. So Randy is a shy, but sweet guy making funny YouTube videos. And all of a sudden, he supposedly has this mental health decline. All of a sudden he becomes unhealthily obsessed with this cartoon character from his childhood. And his obsession gets to the point where he talks about killing himself to be with her because she’s a ghost. And supposedly, his parents had no idea about any of this. Had no idea that is mental health decline. About these dark things he’s putting on YouTube. At one point he even accidentally stabbed himself while making a dark YouTube video and needed multiple surgeries. My question on what I feel like they left out is where was he living? Was he around his parents? Because if he was that obsessed with these fictional characters, and that mentally ill do what he did, I don’t believe for a second there was no indication about his mental health decline. That’s what I don’t get. That’s what I feel like they left out. Also, he stocked shelves at a grocery store and he wasn’t doing well on YouTube. So how did he afford shotguns and the shells that he used to do what he did. I feel like we’re missing something.