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Thursday, January 19, 2012

New TV Show on Investigation Discovery--Scorned!

ADD: Air Date is Today February 25!   10pm Eastern on ID

When they came to town, it was scorching summer. Now it's Chamber of Commerce winter weather in Phoenix and the TV crew launching a new series on Investigation Discovery is ready to roll out a brand new series!   The show is called Scorned.  The first episode airs Saturday night, January 21st 2012. 

When they came to Phoenix in the summertime, they wanted to know all about Marjorie Orbin. That episode will air soon. The lighting they used on their shoot when they were filming me was so atmospheric and spooky, I think I ended up looking like a scary character myself! They ordered me not to smile and after hours under the kleig lights, I looked rather cross-eyed and ominous as I glare directly into the lens. See the insert of me below: I wouldn't wanna meet her in a dark alley!

I'll let you know as soon as we hear the airdate for this episode. I wonder what I had to say?

Watch for the Marjorie Orbin episode coming soon!
In the meantime, why not try out the show?  Your first chance comes up Saturday night! Snuggle in with a cup of cocoa, glass of wine, or bowl of popcorn and see what ID has cooked up for you now.


Hey! Before "my" episode airs, why not get a copy of the book, What She Always Wanted? Wouldn't it be great to have that in your hand, flip through the pages, while you watch us on TV? Read it beforehand and judge for yourself how the TV show matches up to the real story!

(click on a title below to buy)
Camille Kimball's books:
                 **A Sudden Shot** as seen on TV!
Coming soon: Masters of True Crime-Chilling Stories of Murder and the Macabre

Thoughts on this or any article at this site? To the next person whose comment I use for a post I will send a free signed book!  (If you post as "anonymous" for convenience, try to include an identifying website or name in your remark so no one else can claim your prize!)  For an example, please click here.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Marjorie Orbin's Appeal



ADD again: Click here for video and new show info!
ADD: Did you just watch Scorned on ID? Click here for questions and discussion after the show.

This is the book about Marjorie Orbin
Arizona Court of Appeals
AZ Court of Appeals
Marjorie Orbin, the subject of my book, WHAT SHE ALWAYS WANTED, is a very confident woman. From the Maricopa County Jail, and later from an Arizona state prison, she would write to me that she “knew” she would prevail upon appeal. In fact, shortly after her sentencing, she wrote me that she expected to be out of prison in “a year and a half.”

Well, she has just had the second anniversary of that sentencing, but she’s still behind bars. Because the Arizona Court of Appeals has denied her wish for a new trial.

If you have read WHAT SHE ALWAYS WANTED, you know that there were numerous problems with Marjorie’s trial. Bizarre, unforeseen twists and turns in that proceeding gave Marjorie and her supporters room to hope that the whole shebang would be tossed on the slag heap and she could try all over again with a shiny new jury who had never heard of her. 

But Marjorie may have failed to consider the intricate subtleties of law. In a unanimous three judge decision, all the troubles that plagued Marjorie’s trial have been deemed, in one way or another, irrelevant to the outcome. 
orbin
Marjorie Orbin w/ a CBS camera

Perhaps the most publicity-oriented complaint Marjorie and her attorneys had about her trial centered on video tapes that were used by the TV show 48 Hours. In an episode they named “Diary of a Showgirl,” the case of Marjorie Orbin played out frame by frame. As described in WHAT SHE ALWAYS WANTED, an angry hearing took place after the show in which Marjorie’s lawyers unsuccessfully argued some home videos in Diary of a Showgirl should have been given to them to use in the trial, not to a TV crew to use on the air.

The Court of Appeals has ruled that, first, the tapes were never in the possession of the prosecution but only in that of Jake Orbin, Jay’s brother. Jake qualified as Jay’s heir and executor and, under the law, a victim of the crime. He had no obligation to turn the tapes over. Moreover, “the court found Defendant had personal knowledge of the existence of the tapes yet never requested them until after the verdicts.”     This very point was made, in my presence, by Judge Anderson himself at the original hearing. How could the tapes have been “undisclosed” when Marjorie herself knew about them all along?  After all, she appears in them! The Court of Appeals, as did Judge Anderson, seemed to consider it some kind of mendacious gamesmanship that the defense would ignore the tapes until the trial was over, the verdict was in, and some strangers happened to put them on TV.

The other big ticket item was the investigation of then Homicide Detective Dave Barnes. The court ruled that this spectacle, as eyebrow-raising and unusual as it was, did not “go the foundation of [Marjorie’s] case.”  They also said Judge Anderson’s handling of the calamity did not impair any of her rights.

dave barnes.jpg
Former detective Dave Barnes
​Okay, so there was another big ticket item: Prosecutorial Misconduct. This was a complicated affair that you’ll have to read the book to unravel, I don’t have enough space here. But the three appellate judges studied it and concluded, “We find no abuse of discretion.”

On another issue, one in which Marjorie’s defense was trying to blame Marjorie’s former lover for the murder--a defense known as “3rd party culpability”--the court ruled the defense’s position was “an incorrect statement of the law and would have misled the  jury.”

And finally, Marjorie’s lawyers had argued about expert testimony that they had wanted disclosed much earlier. Of note to those also following the sweat lodge trial, the trial court basically ruled that the prosecutor botching a timely disclosure does not magically create reversible error. In several pages of legalese, the Court of Appeals spelled out that while the prosecution had, indeed, botched it, the trial court made sure the defense ultimately had ample time to review and present the material. No harm, no foul.

Marjorie has other appeal options open to her. The process will continue. But she has missed her goal of being out “in a year and a half.”  And the Orbin family is spared the ordeal of going through a whole new trial.

New! True Crime Short just 99 cents!
Special for viewers of Bridal to Homicidal on E!
 
It's the secret life of the soundbites...anyone interested in Marjorie Orbin will want to sneak in on this one....




Pssst! Going to jail, buying documents, and everything else it takes to get this kind of info  for the blog takes time and money! Every time you make a purchase here, it helps me be able to do more for you! 

Thoughts on this or any article at this site? To the next person whose comment I use for a post I will send a free signed book!  (If you post as "anonymous" for convenience, try to include an identifying website or name in your remark so no one else can claim your prize!)  For an example, please click here.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Dog Lovers--A Case of Heart and Hope

Donating blog space today to the sweet doggie, Violet, who has been trying the biggest comeback since Rocky Balboa. Some wonderful people are bringing her back from the edge...but today they could use a hand. Got 5 bucks? Consider sending it out to sweet Violet the Beagle mix:

The following email and photos reprinted by express permission of Arizona R.E.S.C.U.E. 
This link takes you straight to the AZ R.E.S.C.U.E donation page. Navigate around their site and see what great work they are doing. 


ADD: Update on Violet is good! Just got this message from AZR.E.S.C.U.E.

Hello,

More great news to share on Violet! She continues to do well. We
expect that she will be able to go home with strict instructions on
mandatory bed rest for two weeks. If she gets through those two weeks
without issue she will be able to forgo surgery!!! Fingers crossed!
Please keep those positive thoughts coming!  --JENNIFER BERR


Hello,


I wanted to send you an update on RESCUE dog Violet.  If you haven't met this sweet girl, you're missing out.  She is a beautiful Beagle who has an amazing personality.  When we rescued her she had some of the worst teeth I had ever seen.  It was actually hard to be within a couple of feet of her due to the horrendous smell coming from her mouth!! :(  She also had a cyst on her leg and needed to be spayed.  Poor girl needed 6 teeth removed and 6 more just fell out of her mouth because they were so rotten.  


She bounced back from this quickly and moved into foster care with past RESCUE adopters of Wyatt.  She made herself at home in no time as you can see by these photos!  She has been a perfect houseguest while she is awaiting her forever home.  

Unfortunately late last week Violet started acting abnormally.  First she was stiff and lethargic, within hours she was unable to move her left leg and was falling over.  We rushed her up to the hospital, by which time she had nearly lost all mobility.  The vet diagnosed her with a cervical spinal cord injury.  

We don't know how she got this but we started her on emergency treatment and left her at the hospital on Saturday.  By Sunday morning she had made a DRASTIC improvement and we were feeling very good that she would be coming home on Monday.  Unfortunately the drastic improvement waned a bit and even took a slight step back.  We are hoping that she just over did it on Sunday and with one more day of treatment she will get better.  

However, if she does not make improvement by tomorrow morning she will need surgery to physically repair the ruptured disks in her spine.  So this is my plea to you.  Please send Violet you positive thoughts.  She has never made a peep through all this.  She has been nothing but her happy, cheery self.  We do not want to have to do surgery on her but if her little body can't fix itself with the help of medicine we have no other choice but to go in surgical to fix the problem for her.  So please keep those positive thoughts coming her way. Secondly, if you can spare a few dollars to help cover her care, it would be greatly appreciated.  Sadly her care is NOT cheap and will actually be the most expensive case we've ever had. We really appreciate your support!  http://azrescue.org/apollo_program.php

Thank you and please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think might be able to help with positive thoughts and/or donations,
Jennifer Berry
President

RESCUE, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Bill Heywood: Friend, We Did Not See This Coming





My phone rang this morning and a close friend, a long time broadcaster like myself, said, "I have news." She read me the headline that Bill Heywood and his wife Susan had been found dead in a Scottsdale hotel. Scottsdale Police, a department I know and respect through my work as a crime author, say the evidence is clear that it was a double suicide.

I worked with and around Bill over a span of 25 years. What the world needs to know about this legendary Radio and TV personality is that he was a gracious, gracious man. Radio is a wild world of intensely smart, talented, and ambitious people where rage, devious scheming and substance problems are common, a jungle of sudden snakebites and rampaging rhinos.

Bill was never that man.

Bill was courteous to a fault and his hallmark was his smooth sound that perfectly showcased his temperament.

The classic "radio rage" moment, familiar to anyone who has worked in a station, features a "cart" (olden days technology for tape cartridges that contained songs and commercials) being hurled across a studio.

I never saw Bill do that.  No one ever saw Bill do that.

Many of the photos that are on the net today show him in casual wear such as Hawaiian shirts or turtlenecks, but I always think of him in dress shirts with french cuffs and white collars. Bill was elegant and posh, in his dress, in his humor, and in his manners. (I have my own photos of Bill, but they are physical photos, mementoes from days at KOY. It would require more concentration than I can muster today to convert them to digital.)

After we had both left KOY, Bill and I crossed paths as those in the radio industry do. When I became a columnist for the Arizona Republic, I gave him writeups from time to time. He always called or dropped me a note to thank me as if I'd hosted him at my house for a weekend or presented him with a cashmere sweater.  (I happened to post one of those mentions a short time ago. Read the bottom of this column-click here.) 

When Bill and I first met, I was a very young broadcaster and he was a well established star.  I was in news, a very different thing from being a disc jockey, which is what Bill was. I often was part of his morning show, providing an extra voice for a bit he was preparing or doing live drop-ins of some kind--news, traffic, the visit of Pope John Paul II, and so on. I don't remember the context of one particular morning I was in his studio, but I remember he made me roar with sudden laughter when he introduced me as "Camille Kimball, Punky Brewster's test-tube mother."  I don't know if the joke survives in 2012, but at the time it caught me by such surprise and was so relevant to the current zeitgeist as well as being such a bizarre fit for me, that I have never forgotten how loud I laughed and the moment  has often tickled my funny bone privately over these many years.

Bill was tickling on the funny bones of thousands of people for more years than I've been alive. To bring entertainment into the world, a moment's witticism, a well-planned bit, a smooth, calm voice during a harried rush hour, these are golden gifts, a grace to the grinding march of daily life. Bill, you were respected and admired by your colleagues, loved by your audience. I do wish that in your moment of darkness, we could have given some of that luminescence back to you, pulled you back into a hall of mirrors, maybe, where the light you gave us all could be reflected so bright you could not have fallen prey to shadows ever again.

Rest in peace, Bill Heywood.


(click on a title below to buy)
Camille Kimball's books:
                 **A Sudden Shot** as seen on TV!
Coming soon: Masters of True Crime-Chilling Stories of Murder and the Macabre

Thoughts on this or any article at this site? To the next person whose comment I use for a post I will send a free signed book!  (If you post as "anonymous" for convenience, try to include an identifying website or name in your remark so no one else can claim your prize!)  For an example, please click here

Sunday, January 1, 2012

Season's Greetings from the American Southwest

Many people visit this site from all over the world--from Russsia, from England, from Malaysia, from Brazil, from Sweden, from Israel, from France, from Canada, from China, from Germany, and from so many more.  Thank you all for dropping in!  I am happy to give you insights into crime...and glimpses of uniquely American life as it unfolds in the Southwest.

Greg and Jennifer Bahe and their children, from Chinle, happily posed for this photo to wish you all the best of the season.
Tumbleweed Snowman and the Bahe Family send out holiday cheer across the world!

Chinle is in northern Arizona, in the Navajo Nation. It does snow up here, but water as a commodity is scarce, so in large swaths of Navajo country the lush snow drifts required for winter playland decor never form. Never fear! Ingenuity and tumbleweeds to the rescue!

I felt our international visitors as well as the many Americans who never see this part of the country  outside of a John Wayne flick would enjoy this vision of good cheer. John Wayne, in fact, did shoot many of his movies in Navajoland and many families up here have relics, mementoes and lore from when Uncle Joe or Grampa rode into movie history at the direction of John Ford and did a scene with the Duke.

Happy 2012 everyone!  Thank you for visiting this site and may you one day be able to see the wonders of the Painted Desert, Monument Valley, the Window Rock and so much more for yourself!


(click on a title below to buy)
Camille Kimball's books:
                 **A Sudden Shot** as seen on TV!
Coming soon: Masters of True Crime-Chilling Stories of Murder and the Macabre

Thoughts on this or any article at this site? To the next person whose comment I use for a post I will send a free signed book!  (If you post as "anonymous" for convenience, try to include an identifying website or name in your remark so no one else can claim your prize!)  For an example, please click here