121: The Devil Next Door and two crowd-solving longreads

Stephanie Green is back to discuss Netflix's latest original docuseries, The Devil Next Door, in which John Demjanjuk may or may not have been a Nazi extermination camp's Ivan The Terrible...and his true identity may or may not have been the point of the series. How is trauma "remembered"? Why did the U.S. consider some war criminals "useful"? And what did Demjanjuk really do between 1942 and 1952? Later, we talk about two different takes on crowd-solving cold cases: CrimeCon's "true crime experience," CrowdSolve; and the Vidocq Society. The Crime Report's piece on the former raised more questions than it answered, but The Telegraph's 2009 overview of the latter had me and Stephanie wondering if a hybrid isn't advisable. The panel will not be taking questions on Jack The Ripper; it's The Blotter Presents, Episode 121.


SHOW NOTES

•  The Devil Next Door: https://www.netflix.com/title/80201488
• Netflix to amend docuseries following complaints from Polish government: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2019/nov/15/netflix-to-amend-holocaust-documentary-after-complaints-from-polish-government
• "My Weekend As An Amateur Cold Case Detective": https://thecrimereport.org/2019/11/12/my-weekend-as-an-amature-cold-case-detective/
• "The Vidocq Society: Murder on the menu": https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/3489805/The-Vidocq-Society-Murder-on-the-menu.html
• "Crowdsourcing Criminal Investigations in the Digital Age": https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2014/07/01/cold-cases-criminal-investigations
• Stephanie Early Green's site: http://stephanieearlygreen.com
• The Blotter Presents's sponsor, Zola: zola.com/blotter