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Reviews
Vatican Girl: The Disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi (2022)
Great companion piece to The Keepers
Fascinating and well done story of the disappearance of a teenage girl in Vatican City and possible involvement of the Vatican. Though much of the documentary is dubbed into English and is rather complex at times, I had no trouble following along, watching all the episodes in one binge; the Netflix way. A real life mystery that ranks with the best Netflix is true crime docs, such as these somewhat similar The Keepers, as well as American Monster and Icarus. Strongly recommended for fans of true crime and religious controversies. While covering a true story, I have never heard of this entire matter here across the Atlantic, so it was as suspenseful to me as a real life mystery. As I imagine many others in America may be unfamiliar with a story as well, I'll stop there and just encourage you to give it a chance, though you need to stick with it, as a lot of information is kind of jumbled together at the beginning. It doesn't have a lot of the biographical background American true crime shows have; the doc gets right into the story, as there is much information to sift through.
The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith (2022)
Canada Not So Progressive After All
If you're a true crime fan, and you want to watch something to truly make your blood boil, this is the one to watch. You do need to stick with it, as the extent of the police department's, if not the entire Canadian government's, corruption doesn't really come into clear and undeniable focus until the final episode. This is a true story, so I don't know if the spoiler rule applies here, but the civil liberties violations against this poor man led to the government - supposedly anyway - putting an end to this practice of basically threatening people into false confessions. The creep cops in this true story actually posed as mobsters who had just killed someone, and threatened their suspect that if he didn't tell them something they could "hold over him"... well, you can guess the rest. I hope he wins his multi-million dollar lawsuit, especially since not a single, crooked cop in the story has ever been disciplined in any way. You give police unlimited power to arrest the person they want to arrest, even though the victim's husband was a fairly big time drug dealer in a crime-ridden city (Home to a violent motorcycle gang called ' satan's specials" I believe), where there were many suspects, and cases like these are inevitable.
Disappeared: A Mother's Secret (2010)
Sanitized and inaccurate
Yet again, ID sanitized a story simply to make the victim look like a saint, which none of us are. Page in particular was not simply "giving massages" to earn a little extra, grocery money; she was a sex worker/escort, according to police reports in actual news stories. She engaged in high-risk activity - this is not a reason to have any less sympathy for her, but it helps explain the nature of the crime committed against her. ID apparently doesn't realize people will research some of these topics, and the first thing you'll notice about this story is that the whole 'massage' business was barely touched on and never presented as a possible factor; it was all about this woman being a victim of...everyone and everything. CBS' 48 Hours did in a much better report on this story. And this show's beyond the grave narration is just creepy.