Ultimate Crime Getaway

Brad Goins Thursday, April 4, 2019 Comments Off on Ultimate Crime Getaway
Ultimate Crime Getaway

New Orleans is always throwing out something good and new and surprising for us. Are you ready for CrimeCon 2019, which is being held in the Crescent City? 

 

If you’re thinking it’s a great big convention all about true crime, you’re right. It’s been called “the ultimate true crime getaway” and “the nation’s premier true crime convention.” It’ll take place just down the road on June 7 through 9.

 Speakers will include Christopher Darden (yes, the co-prosecutor in the O.J. case), Anne Redding (a professor who’s spent 30 years researching the Black Dahlia cast), Gil Valle (the officer once accused of being the “Cannibal Cop” and later exonerated), Columbine survivor Crystal Miller, Jax Miller (head of the documentary series An American Mystery) and others known for criminal, DNA and media work. The event is far enough ahead that speakers are still being lined up. Fourteen true crime podcasts are already set to be represented.

There’s still time to exhibit your wares, volunteer or even speak if you qualify.

The event’s being held at the Hilton Riverside at 2 Poydras St., (504) 561-0500. If you don’t get registered in time to stay there, you can also get group rates at the DoubleTree by Hilton, N.O. Marriott and Westin Canal Place.

A standard convention package costs $379. That gets you into everything but VIP events. (Of course, VIP packages are available at higher rates.) Go to crimecon.com.

Crawfish Price Check

I was on KPLC-TV’s site reading a story about a woman in Jennings who stole a car that was running. I’ll give you a tip. If you do that, and you are a passenger in the car when the owner steps out, you will probably be considered a suspect.

Anyway, I chanced upon a KPLC-TV feature called Crawfish Price Check. It listed 23 different venues, where boiled crawfish prices ranged from $5.25 to $6.99 a pound. Six of the venues sell boiled crawfish in quantities of three to six pounds; so you may need to use a calculator for those. Prices are updated every Friday. To check out the list, visit kplctv.com and click COMMUNITY in the list of categories that runs across the top of the page.

Please Report Those You See Working

I was out early on the day before Mardi Gras and noticed something exceedingly strange. There was a fairly large number of cars on the roads.

This immediately made me highly suspicious that some people in Lake Charles were going to work on the day before Mardi Gras. I didn’t have any definite proof. But I figured there had to be some reason all those cars were out there.

If you suspect that your neighbor or some other person you know is going to work in Lake Charles the day before a holiday, take action immediately. Contact your neighborhood Right Not To Work Guild. Provide as many details as possible — including the make and color of the vehicle.

Is This True?

This item was Tweeted by B.R. Advocate columnist Robert Mann on Feb. 25: “Worth mentioning that the governor and a group of legislators toured the LSU library a couple years ago. Declared themselves scandalized by what they saw. Said they would do something about it. And, best I can tell, have never been heard from again on this issue.”

In an earlier editorial, Mann had written in the Advocate: “The willingness of LSU’s supporters to tolerate a leaking library where water threatens the books underscores why Louisiana so often lags behind its peers in national higher education rankings.” 

N.O. Border Patrol Gets A Bite

For all eight years he was in office, N.O. Mayor Mitch Landrieu tried to close strip clubs on Bourbon Street on the grounds that they were hotbeds for sex trafficking. And in all eight of those years, there was not one arrest for sex trafficking. To me, it seemed like one of those “things that make you go ‘hmm.’”

In early March, the New Orleans Border Patrol may have gotten a little boost from news that the group had picked up “a suspected human smuggler who previously assaulted a Border Patrol agent.”

But the N.O. office may not have gone out and gotten a King Cake and started celebrating right away. There were a few little wrinkles in the story.

For instance, the N.O. Border Patrol arrested the suspect not in New Orleans, but in some place called Crestview, Fla., in Okaloosa County, Fla. I have no idea how that happened.

There were, according to the U.S. Customs story on the incident, six occupants in the suspect’s vehicle — all in the U.S. illegally. But the story had no information at all about whether these suspects wanted to be in the vehicle, had been forced into the vehicle, were being held against their will, were healthy and hydrated, or anything of that matter.

There must be some sort of major trafficking problem, because I run across the word “trafficking” so often in the media. But I also think that certain terms are often used by media to frighten the general population about things it doesn’t need to be frightened about. Every media report should be not only read, but pondered. One should be aware not just of what’s mentioned in the story, but also what’s not mentioned. And one should consider the source. In this case, I’ll assume, until I have reason to assume otherwise, that U.S. Customs is a reliable source.

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