This documentary could have been done in an hour long episode. Many of the information was repetitive and many of the people being interviewed were irrelevant. Also, it doesn't say much about the crime itself. I only gave it a 6 because I love true crime docs.
7 Reviews
Fatal Attraction
flan9918 November 2019
Robert Chambers was the proverbial 'Babe Magnet.'
Tall, dark, handsome and raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he appeared on a likely trajectory to a comfortable life.
College-bound Jennifer Levin, pretty, personable and living a more normal life to the south, in Greenwich Village, hung around with the same friends as Chambers.
They hit it off and, after just another normal night out at a local club, the two headed into Central Park.
Only Chambers came out, but the police were soon knocking at his door.
This overly long 5-hour documentary spells it all out, and justice may well be served.
Tall, dark, handsome and raised in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, he appeared on a likely trajectory to a comfortable life.
College-bound Jennifer Levin, pretty, personable and living a more normal life to the south, in Greenwich Village, hung around with the same friends as Chambers.
They hit it off and, after just another normal night out at a local club, the two headed into Central Park.
Only Chambers came out, but the police were soon knocking at his door.
This overly long 5-hour documentary spells it all out, and justice may well be served.
The Sixth Amendment
three8s201314 November 2019
I Want a Lawyer!
Never, ever, ever speak to the police if you think that they think you are involved in any type of criminal activity.
Robert Chambers should have kept his mouth shut!
He volunteered to go to the police station that was his first mistake. A big one!
A sense of entitlement gone wrong. A good crime documentary.
A Tragic Death, Followed By Attack On The Victim's Good Name
Clusium16 November 2019
Warning: Spoilers
A true crime, that took place in NYC, back in the mid-80s. A beautiful teenage girl meets a handsome boy at the local bar & is instantly smitten. The 2 of them even have a few sexual encounters. However, unknown to her, he is a drug-addicted thief who's M.O. was to steal from the girls whom he seduced and dated. She goes on her final date with him in the early hours of the morning in August 1986, to Central Park, where he kills her. His defence? That she tried to rape him, and he threw her off. The evidence actually points to him trying to rob her (as he did with all his other girlfriends), and the 2 fought, and she died as a result. His family hired a hotshot criminal lawyer, who decided to support his claim that she tried to rape him, by portraying her a loose girl. Ultimately, the murder trial resulted in a hung jury, The DA and Criminal lawyers decide to let him plead to a lesser charge and serve a paltry 15 years. The documentary interviews the girl's family; the DA, one of the criminal lawyers (not the main one as he has since died), as well as many of the guy's old girlfriends (one of whom went on to become a famous TV star). The upshot was, after finally being released from prison, before long, he ended up having to go back to prison again after being convicted of drug trafficking. This time for a much longer sentence . So in a way, justice was served to the girl after all. One final note: At the conclusion of the documentary, it showed that one of priests who supported Chambers' defence during his murder trial, had decades later (after being made a Cardinal), had to step down after it was revealed that he was a pedophile. Because of this, Mike Sheehan and a few others suggested that perhaps Chambers may have been one of his victims, back when he was an altar server, as a kid. While showing the "afterwards" of some of the players in this drama may seem logical, throwing out that Chambers may have been one of McCarrick's victims, or even a victim of sexual abuse at all, is pure conjecture, and thereby, should not have been included in the documentary.
Central Park Arrest
Lejink20 December 2019
I found it pretty hard to credit this five part documentary on the high-profile murder of 18 year old Jennifer Levin in New York's Central Park in 1986 when I realised the significant parts that Linda Fairstein and Mike Sheehan, then respectively Assistant D.A. and Police Captain, played in both the original events and indeed their prominent parts in narrating the events here. Both, of course were later thoroughly excoriated in the other Central Park cause-celebre criminal trial of the five young black teenagers wrongly convicted of raping and assaulting a female jogger three years later, recently dramatised in the T.V. series "When They See Us". Either this programme was made before "When They See Us" aired or both had their own agenda in agreeing to participate, even if this time, they were both on the side of right.
The programme seemed to offer conclusive evidence, no matter how you look at it, from a taped video confession on down, that Miss Levin was murdered by the handsome Robert Chambers and yet at his much delayed trial, the jury couldn't reach a conclusive verdict and he eventually went to prison on the lesser charge and of course attendant sentence of manslaughter.
You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what happened that fateful August night. The couple already knew each other, had a physical relationship and probably went to Central Park to engage in sex. Chambers however initially denied to the police even walking up the same street to the park as Miss Levin after they left a diner together and then told detectives that the scratch marks all over him were caused by his cat. Even after he admits later to causing her death, he attempted to deflect the blame back to the dead girl by claiming he accidentally killed her after she tried to rape him and engage him in rough sex. This from a guy twice the weight and much taller and stronger than his victim, who had bruises all over her body, especially around her neck, loose teeth probably caused by a punch to the face and who had been stripped of all her jewellery and money in her purse. He even sat impassively across from the murder scene after her body was discovered as the S.O.C.O. team went about their business.
However, Chambers' well-connected mother got him a hot-shot lawyer who promptly engaged in a despicable "shame the victim" defence, didn't demur at stooping to place highly visible newspaper and magazine articles supporting the perpetrator and even corralled support from the then Bishop of New York, himself later discredited and disgraced as a paedophile, into giving Chambers a character reference. All of this seemed to put enough doubt in the jury that they couldn't reach a clear verdict leaving Chambers's legal team to broker a reduced plea-bargain which could and should have seen him get out again in five years but thankfully his poor behaviour inside at least saw him serve his maximum term of fifteen years.
My other criticism of this programme, besides Fairstein and Sheehan's over-involvement was the way it dripped out key information an episode at a time. Take the first episode where it appears for all the world that Chambers and Jennifer didn't know each other before that fateful night, or that Chambers had a previous history of drug addiction and burglary. But I keep coming back to Fairstein and Sheehan, who we see at the very end reuniting in the park embracing as they share their memories, but who, and again I say this admitting they were on the correct side in this case, just didn't seem to do a good job at Chambers' trial against his switched-on legal team. When you see them both imagining Chambers' motive on the night or even worse, trying to connect him as a potential victim of the paedophilic priest, one's mind can't help but run on to the way they later set-up with invented and coerced confessions the later Central Park Five, only a few years later.
Although Miss Levin's family and friends fully participated in the programme (Chambers and his immediate family did not), I still feel it didn't serve them as well as it should have. Sort of like the American legal process back in 1986.
The programme seemed to offer conclusive evidence, no matter how you look at it, from a taped video confession on down, that Miss Levin was murdered by the handsome Robert Chambers and yet at his much delayed trial, the jury couldn't reach a conclusive verdict and he eventually went to prison on the lesser charge and of course attendant sentence of manslaughter.
You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what happened that fateful August night. The couple already knew each other, had a physical relationship and probably went to Central Park to engage in sex. Chambers however initially denied to the police even walking up the same street to the park as Miss Levin after they left a diner together and then told detectives that the scratch marks all over him were caused by his cat. Even after he admits later to causing her death, he attempted to deflect the blame back to the dead girl by claiming he accidentally killed her after she tried to rape him and engage him in rough sex. This from a guy twice the weight and much taller and stronger than his victim, who had bruises all over her body, especially around her neck, loose teeth probably caused by a punch to the face and who had been stripped of all her jewellery and money in her purse. He even sat impassively across from the murder scene after her body was discovered as the S.O.C.O. team went about their business.
However, Chambers' well-connected mother got him a hot-shot lawyer who promptly engaged in a despicable "shame the victim" defence, didn't demur at stooping to place highly visible newspaper and magazine articles supporting the perpetrator and even corralled support from the then Bishop of New York, himself later discredited and disgraced as a paedophile, into giving Chambers a character reference. All of this seemed to put enough doubt in the jury that they couldn't reach a clear verdict leaving Chambers's legal team to broker a reduced plea-bargain which could and should have seen him get out again in five years but thankfully his poor behaviour inside at least saw him serve his maximum term of fifteen years.
My other criticism of this programme, besides Fairstein and Sheehan's over-involvement was the way it dripped out key information an episode at a time. Take the first episode where it appears for all the world that Chambers and Jennifer didn't know each other before that fateful night, or that Chambers had a previous history of drug addiction and burglary. But I keep coming back to Fairstein and Sheehan, who we see at the very end reuniting in the park embracing as they share their memories, but who, and again I say this admitting they were on the correct side in this case, just didn't seem to do a good job at Chambers' trial against his switched-on legal team. When you see them both imagining Chambers' motive on the night or even worse, trying to connect him as a potential victim of the paedophilic priest, one's mind can't help but run on to the way they later set-up with invented and coerced confessions the later Central Park Five, only a few years later.
Although Miss Levin's family and friends fully participated in the programme (Chambers and his immediate family did not), I still feel it didn't serve them as well as it should have. Sort of like the American legal process back in 1986.
Linda Fairstein has no room to talk
arilicious23419 December 2019
Warning: Spoilers
It was an interesting story, but this documentary gave FAR too much screentime and positive attention to Linda Fairstein, who was the lead prosecutor in this case. It seems that after doing poorly in this case, she was determined to get a conviction no matter what (as most prosecutors only care about 'winning' rather than what it is just) by railroading some innocent teenagers in the Central Park Jogger case, who became known as the Central Park Five (now known as the Exonerated Five). This documentary hails her as a "hero" and "fighter for justice" when we all know she was anything but. Perhaps she believed doing this documentary would help rehabilitate her image, but all it did was make look like a fool. Nice try, Fairstein. Those boys might be free now, but it's not too late to put you in jail.
As for Chambers and Levin, who knows what happened. What is clear is that Fairstein failed to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Who's fault was that again?
repetative
harald-8575113 April 2022
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