The Murder Business: How The Media Turns Crime Into Entertainment and Subverts Justice » (Bargain)

Mark Fuhrman is a retired LAPD homicide detective who gained national recognition during the O. J. Simpson case. That case was the subject of his first book, Murder in Brentwood, which became a New York Times bestseller. Since then, he has written five other books on crime and is currently employed as a FOX News consultant. Mark lives in North Idaho with his wife and two children.

Excerpt from The Murder Business

"Media and law enforcement work at cross-purposes. Law enforcement want to solve a case as fast as possible and put the guilty behind bars. The media want a case to drag on as long as humanly possible, and do all they can to extricate every last bit of drama, drop by bloody drop, in order to hold the attention of the millions of viewers who have gotten hooked. Law enforcement must abide by rules. The media make their own rules, and even then break them, or find ways to work loopholes into them. All that matters is ratings. If people knew how it’s done—how the media seduce, buy, bribe, and corrupt, like an inevitable, malignant cancer on a murder investigation—they might be too sickened to buy the next ticket to the carnival....The unfortunate truth is that today, each murder has many victims, and high-profile murders can hurt innocent people who get burned by the spotlight, whether or not they sought it out themselves. I learned that firsthand as a police witness in the O. J. Simpson trial, a wrenching experience that showed how the criminal justice system can be manipulated by money, power, politics, and fame. In twenty years of police work, I thought that the guilt or innocence of the suspect was all-important. Then I started covering high-profile murder cases, where ratings and profit often far outweigh the importance of facts."

Prologue ix

Chapter 1 American Murder Meets American Idol: The Caylee Anthony Case 1

Chapter 2 Killer Cop Drew Peterson 23

Chapter 3 When Crime TV Goes Too Far Melinda Duckett 49

Chapter 4 Murder and the Upper Class Martha Moxley 69

Chapter 5 Portrait of a Mama's Boy Scott Peterson 87

Chapter 6 Death of a Troubled Princess JonBenét Ramsey 107

Chapter 7 The Strange Death of a White House Counsel Vince Foster 133

Chapter 8 The Case That Started It All O. J. Simpson 149

Chapter 9 The Witness Everyone "Forgot" 169

Index 189