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“Edit (and SPOILER ALERT):
After Martin's inevitable conclusion based on his well known bias, I decided to go and get one of Joe Karam's books (ie the first) to see how he dealt with the issues, just to balance things up, and I was only a chapter or 3 in before I could see all the holes in the Crown's case which I think erase MvB's basic premise.
I think it was a BIG mistake to minimise/ ignore the fact that Laniet was telling various people she was in an incestuous relationship with her father. Personally I doubt this was the truth, especially given this was during the height of the recovered memory hysteria in NZ; but any father would be broken - the last straw - by being falsely accused of this. With things going so badly south in the family, it's really not that hard to see how even a basically good man could snap.
I love a good murder podcast and I think this is very well done as a piece of entertainment.
But less so as a mechanism for justice. The evidence minutiae creates endless paths for speculation, although that is to be expected in court case reportage; the other missing thing is a lack of deeper empathy or insight into human behaviour, and judgments based on a narrow social ideal of how people should behave.
For instance, David behaved strangely after the event. I'm pretty sure if the average person came home to find all the members of their family dead they would be behaving in strange and bizarre ways as well, compared to the rest of us. After all how many of us have observed people in this situation often enough to figure out what is normal? I would say no one. Pretty sure the average man, MvB included, would be hallucinating black hands too under such circumstances.
Although fascinating from an entertainment point of view, it was not doing justice to set up one of the victims, ie the mother, Margaret, as virtually a perpetrator, based on narrow-minded judgements on what is socially acceptable behaviour - for instance, in regards to women doing (or not doing as the case was) housework. Fancy that, as an educated woman with her own interests, she wasn't that motivated to tidy and clean up after five other people at a time when parochial NZ fully expected that of her (still do apparently).
And there is also the focus on, and bias against (and dimly grasped understanding) of New Age beliefs.
Granted there was also her unhealthy obsession with the devil in her life, that was probably more relevant, nothing to do with housework or N/A beliefs though.
At the simplest level, it is a common cause of family murder/suicides for the father to snap, so not that difficult to see how it might have transpired in this case.
Why did Robin not struggle or fight back? According to the evidence he wasn't asleep, or in bed like everyone else. Why didn't David just kill Robyn in the caravan? Was he really capable of setting up the elaborate ruse the Crown think he did?
I think this case remains a mystery, but most media observers would know the author of this podcast had his mind made up many years ago even if he would like to think of himself as an independent and unbiased reporter. But I gave it a 3 because it's a good podcast.”Read full review »
sesame22222 via Apple Podcasts ·
New Zealand ·
07/27/17
More reviews of BLACK HANDS
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“I had always thought David was innocent and despite MvB's obvious bias I'm still not 100% convinced that he's guilty. However I enjoyed this podcast and learnt some facts I wasn't previously aware of. This was quite compelling and I binged over a couple of days. I love these who...”Read full review »
Debz407 via Apple Podcasts ·
New Zealand ·
07/30/17
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“Thorough and informative. You have to just shake your head at some people's denying of cold hard facts.”Read full review »
Andy law 321 via Apple Podcasts ·
Great Britain ·
08/06/17
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“Amazing! I've never heard of this case before and I was captivated from the beginning of this podcast series. Very addictive!! The narration was amazinggggg! His voice was very soothe and easy to listen to, if anything this is what I found captivating, not only the story being told, but how...”Read full review »
AceVanstone via Apple Podcasts ·
Australia ·
08/02/17
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