While conducting a personal research project on post Furman and Greg death penalty cases, I found that it was very common to come across some very confusing contradictions in the sources. For example, there was a case in Indiana were a woman was abducted with some children by her estranged husband after he murdered her mother and stepfather. The sources couldn't agree on whatever the children were the woman's stepsiblings or her nieces and nephews, though the impression that I got through my readings was that they were possibly her stepfather's grandchildren that he adopted. Though nothing of the sort was directly clarified in any of the court documents and contemporary newspaper articles. There was also a case in Delaware involving a man fatally shooting his ex girlfriend’s boyfriend and wounding his ex girlfriend. For whatever reason, the ex girlfriend and the offender’s alleged sister (who was mentioned to be participating in anti death penalty rallies to stop the execution) weirdly shared a very uncommon name, down to both the first and the last. Thus, when I tried to do some research, it got pretty jumbled trying to differentiate between the sister and ex girlfriend, though I’m honestly suspecting that they might be one and the same person. It felt to me that the ex girlfriend didn’t want the offender to be put to death, and posed as his sister to reporters at the rally to dodge any unwanted questions about their relationship. Another case in Oklahoma pertained to a man killing his wife with help of a teenage boy in order to collect a life insurance policy with his girlfriend. There was no consistency on the boy's identity, and the articles kept flipping back and forth between referring to him as the nephew or cousin of the man's girlfriend. If had to make an admittedly weak guess, perhaps the boy was a cousin that one of the girlfriend's siblings took in. What is likely behind such inconsistencies in the coverage of criminal cases? To what extent could that be attributed to miscommunications and errors in reporting? How often does this also occur from simply journalists and attorneys trying to simplify overly complicated family dynamics in their articles and documents? I could imagine how much of a headache it would be to discuss a family that, as an example, included a father that had 8 children with 5 different women (including two sisters), and the women then having several other children with different men. If two of those half siblings/cousins were murdered with a half sibling and their half sibling's half sibling in a home invasion, it would considerably bog down the article trying to explain the tangled family relationships and backstories, and that isn't accounting for the privacy issues. Thus it is completely understandable why the outlets can be so fair weathered and indecisive with their descriptions in such situations.
I'd be more inclined to trust case files over reporters/media sources when looking for facts. Or at least using the casefiles to factcheck details pertaining to the case itself in media sources. If im looking for details about the family, id turn to the media sources. Media is designed to connect with its audiences. It focuses on the human experiences and tries to get readers emotionally invested... So its more likely they would humanize the victims and try to villainize (or humanize.... Depending on the source) the perpetrator.
Oldman, I think you've touched on something in our modern culture, the idea/belief that we can ever really know the precise truth about anything. The further we are personally from the situation, the more we must rely on the words and understanding (and integrity) of some so-called objective reporter. And if we are personally involved, we can only see it from our perspective. Which people personally involved report to the so-called objective media reporter and to the investigating authorities, who write their own reports according to their own understanding of what they were told. And when and if it comes to the courts, the court tries to determine, via testimony and sworn reports what apparently actually happened. And because the courts are the ones who administer the law according to their own understanding and interpretation, that is usually regarded, not as absolute truth, but as the legally-found truth. And so we have it. Potentially at least three versions of truth. All of which involve the foibles and failings of human understanding by the actors involved. And thereby all potentially involving some sort of fiction or projection applied to make the apparent "facts" fit together. And underlying it all, the all-too-often fact that the absolute truth sometimes is stranger than fiction.
