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Tuesday, March 01, 2005
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If UD’s husband, in a fit of pique... ... were to murder her, Court TV and 48 Hours and Fox News and, I dunno, Dominick Dunne, would be there in a minute with 24-hour coverage of his trial. Because professors, when they murder, get noticed. Even English professors! ‘ MURRAY TRIAL DRAWS NATIONAL ATTENTION One of CBS' most prominent news magazines, 48 Hours sees many cases run across their planning desk, but this one caught their eye. "It frames a lot of issues interestingly. There's not a lot of physical evidence that links him to the crime. It's largely circumstantial," said 48 Hours Correspondent Richard Schlesinger. Plus, Schlesinger says defendant [Kansas State University English professor] Thomas Murray is an interesting person. "This is not your average murder suspect. He's a respected guy. Well respected at the university, [and] that interested me," he said. Once they choose a case, the next step for 48 Hours is purely logistical, getting things set up. With nine microphones, a remote camera they personally installed, a sound operator, two producers and a correspondent, 48 Hours is ready to go. "We try to blend into the background and we wire these courtrooms in a way that will minimize our intrusion," said Schlesinger. The total price tag on all that equipment is about $200,000.’ (Quick: How do you know this article didn’t come from a ‘thesdan newspaper? That’s right -- The reporter holds off on the $200,000 price tag for the equipment until the very end because he thinks the cost will wow his readers… But ‘thesdans spend that much filming their children’s birthday parties, so BFD… ) UD figures that in her own case - professor-on-professor crime - she’d get (posthumously) twice the coverage of Murray…. Professor Murray is one of those stupid smart people UD wrote about a few months ago in this blog [see UD, 2/18/04]. There are a lot of professors like this guy. Odd, deeply reticent, content to spend existence chasing down word derivations … So dependent upon quietude is this sort of character that when something significantly disturbs the calm sameness of his life (in this case, his wife left him and was about to marry another man and move away, with Murray's daughter), he’s liable to blow, bigtime. Unfortunately for Professor Murray and his defense team, having blown it by committing murder, he is continuing to blow it by being an idiot about covering his ass. First, as already documented in UD [see UD, 12/11/04], there were Murray’s fervid nightlong computer searches leading up to the day of the murder, in which he put in terms like “how to murder your wife” and “methods of spousal murder.” When the police confronted Murray with this record, he explained that he was doing research for a script he was planning to send to the crime show CSI. He often wrote scripts of this sort (a claim contradicted on the stand by witnesses). Then there was this: “During the interview [with the police], neither of the detectives had told Murray that the crime scene in Carmin Ross' rural Lawrence home was bloody. Murray first brought up the topic of blood when he told detectives there might be blood inside his vehicle.” And also this: Murray told a neighbor, shortly before his wife was found dead, that his life would be much better if his wife were dead. Murray, in short, affords UD a perfect example of what she has in mind by the phrase “stupid smart people.” His trial is about halfway over; those of you with televisions can watch it. UD will read about it and blog about it again, assuming it remains interesting. |