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IF YOU FIND yourself bored out of your tree over Christmas, fear not. There’s plenty of new Netflix stuff you’ll be able to obsess over as you actively try to avoid your extended family.
There’s that movie with Sandra Bullock that’s essentially just A Quiet Place but with sight instead of hearing, Bird Box. (Technically, the book of Bird Box was actually written before a quiet place. I digress…)
And speaking of books, there’s a small-screen adaption of John Grisham’s classic true crime story, ‘The Innocent Man’. In 1982, a 21 year-old cocktail waitress, Debra Sue Carter, was raped and murdered in Oklahoma. For five years, the crime went unsolved.
Enter, Ron Williamson – the first player chosen from Oklahoma for the baseball draft of 1971. Signing with Oakland, he said goodbye to his home town of Ada and left for California to pursue his dreams of glory.
Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits – drinking, drugs and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept 20 hours a day on her sofa.
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You know what happens next, right?
Desperate for someone to blame, police came to suspect Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with murder.
With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to Death Row.
While the case has since been solved, it’s a seriously interesting look at DNA analysis and forensic testing has progressed over the years. At one point, Ron Williamson was five days away from being executed. This could have been a very different series.
The trailer for the series features John Grisham himself, saying: “If I wrote ‘The Innocent Man’ as a novel, people wouldn’t have believed it.”
Ooooooooh. Have a peek at the trailer below and see if this could be your buzz.
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Friday 22 November, 2024
Friday 22 November, 2024
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Based on the book by John Grisham, 'The Innocent Man' will be your next Netflix true-crime binge
IF YOU FIND yourself bored out of your tree over Christmas, fear not. There’s plenty of new Netflix stuff you’ll be able to obsess over as you actively try to avoid your extended family.
There’s that movie with Sandra Bullock that’s essentially just A Quiet Place but with sight instead of hearing, Bird Box. (Technically, the book of Bird Box was actually written before a quiet place. I digress…)
And speaking of books, there’s a small-screen adaption of John Grisham’s classic true crime story, ‘The Innocent Man’. In 1982, a 21 year-old cocktail waitress, Debra Sue Carter, was raped and murdered in Oklahoma. For five years, the crime went unsolved.
Enter, Ron Williamson – the first player chosen from Oklahoma for the baseball draft of 1971. Signing with Oakland, he said goodbye to his home town of Ada and left for California to pursue his dreams of glory.
Six years later he was back, his dreams broken by a bad arm and bad habits – drinking, drugs and women. He began to show signs of mental illness. Unable to keep a job, he moved in with his mother and slept 20 hours a day on her sofa.
You know what happens next, right?
Desperate for someone to blame, police came to suspect Ron Williamson and his friend Dennis Fritz. The two were finally arrested in 1987 and charged with murder.
With no physical evidence, the prosecution’s case was built on junk science and the testimony of jailhouse snitches and convicts. Dennis Fritz was found guilty and given a life sentence. Ron Williamson was sent to Death Row.
While the case has since been solved, it’s a seriously interesting look at DNA analysis and forensic testing has progressed over the years. At one point, Ron Williamson was five days away from being executed. This could have been a very different series.
The trailer for the series features John Grisham himself, saying: “If I wrote ‘The Innocent Man’ as a novel, people wouldn’t have believed it.”
Ooooooooh. Have a peek at the trailer below and see if this could be your buzz.
Can’t see the trailer? Click here.
The Innocent Man hits Netflix on 14 December.
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Netflix ron williamson the innocent man