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.