On a lot of podcasts and articles looking back at UM, it is mentioned that UM liked to exaggerate details of certain cases or play up angles that were creepy but not really important. What would be some examples of this?

The best example is anything having to do with satanism. They liked to play up the angle that certain people were known or suspected devil worshipers. Satanic Panic was big in the 80s so this got a lot of attention, especially in the early seasons.

They also cherry picked facts at times giving you want they wanted you to hear so that it fit a certain narrative of being creepy or making a certain suspect look guilty. That happened a fair amount although most of us didn’t know it at the time.

Eagle and Sandra Anderson. And damn near anytime there was a psychic involved in a story.

Along with Satanic Panic, they also painted LARP (live action role playing) and fantasy gaming as an extension of paganism and witchcraft, and those who were involved in it as shady and predatory.

There was a series of articles a few years ago detailing the whole story of Dottie Caylor’s disappearance. After doing more reading, it seems Dottie’s agoraphobia was not nearly as debilitating at the time of her disappearance as the segment led us to believe. She had made new friends, opened her own bank account, gotten credit cards in her own name and was even taking classes at a community college. Although I’ve never suffered from agoraphobia myself, I can tell you as someone who has had anxiety and depression for years that those are huge steps toward recovery. Someone with full-blown mental health issues to the point of not being able to leave their house would likely find it impossible to achieve even a few of those things.

I still find Jule rather sketchy and a jerk, but I also don’t think that Dottie was necessarily this little shrinking violet who was totally at the mercy of her big mean husband. She seems from the articles to have been a somewhat obnoxious person to live with in her own right (agoraphobia notwithstanding) and while I will never condone abuse, it seems as though at least a few of the domestic violence incidents in the marriage were mutual combat rather than the more one-sided scenario portrayed by UM.

I don't blame families of loved ones for struggling with the death of a loved one, but suicides do occur. An ongoing theme was that he/she must have SEEN something that he/her shouldn't have seen and was murdered! There's a lot of "a hit man" must have killed them in order to keep them quiet rather than happy people sometimes suffer from depression and resort to suicide.

Oops. I forgot about the amnesia stories.

Virtually every Final Appeal segment (Paul Ferrell the lone exception) is slanted in favor of the defendant, and tons of inculpatory evidence is never discussed.

Virtually every Final Appeal segment (Paul Ferrell the lone exception) is slanted in favor of the defendant, and tons of inculpatory evidence is never discussed.

A perfect example of this is Michael Lloyd Self if you really look into it. UM really played up his being “slow”. Having a developmental disability often makes people more vulnerable to being tricked, but that doesn’t mean that such people are automatically perfect angels who never have an evil bone in their body. This case is totally different those of someone like Johnny Lee Wilson or Boo Mason.

Cases involving military personnel are almost always presented as "burn or bury": the government either was complicit in murdering them, or they went off on a "secret mission" and could still be alive today.

The far more likely scenarios are suicides, accidents, and combat casualties, although there are a couple I personally have distinct reservations about (1LT Paul Whipkey and COL Charles Shelton, namely. I also think it's possible some or all of the Baron 52 crew survived and were held in captivity for at least some time after the crash, but almost certainly died shortly thereafter).

I always remember the Bill and Tracy story (can't remember last names). Two friends who took off and disappeared. They interviewed Tracy's boyfriend and harped on that they found Bill's hat at a location that was searched and was not there the first time. A few months after the show aired, the car was found in the lake with both bodies strapped in and ruled an accident. I thought it weird that UM would even take this story on as they was not much exciting stuff on it and even watching it I thought that hat was just not his.

Also I find a lot of cases they profile as possible murders, I think are suicides right from the get go. Brian Nissenfield is one of them.

I’ve mentioned this before but mentioning the “mystery boy” sitting by the bay in the Chaim Weiss segment was pointless IMO

I’ve mentioned this before but mentioning the “mystery boy” sitting by the bay in the Chaim Weiss segment was pointless IMO

I totally agree. I always thought that was a weird, overly-dramatic footnote.

I’ve mentioned this before but mentioning the “mystery boy” sitting by the bay in the Chaim Weiss segment was pointless IMO

I also mentioned it before (can’t remember the thread). I thought it was one of the corniest scenes in UM history. The kid contemplating life lol.

Cases involving military personnel are almost always presented as "burn or bury": the government either was complicit in murdering them, or they went off on a "secret mission" and could still be alive today.

The far more likely scenarios are suicides, accidents, and combat casualties, although there are a couple I personally have distinct reservations about (1LT Paul Whipkey and COL Charles Shelton, namely. I also think it's possible some or all of the Baron 52 crew survived and were held in captivity for at least some time after the crash, but almost certainly died shortly thereafter).

100% yes ^^^^^

we have a major suicide problem in the air force and now that is widely known. not to get too far off topic, but many air force bases around the world are trying hard to address concerns. I'm interested to see what comes of that. if our leadership listens to what people have to say maybe it can help improve things.

The Satanism angle always seemed to get overplayed whenever it was a factor.

I forget which case it was exactly, but there was one of a woman who committed murder but then randomly, out of nowhere, the segment took a turn by explaining she was into witchcraft and Satanism.

It was like "Oh and by the way, she's a devil worshipper too!". It was such a random out of nowhere turn that it kind of made me laugh.

Obvious answer is "the occult", as many pointed out.

Another thing that often wasn't worthy of much thought was "Drug Deal Gone Wrong", which was in some cases a bit like their way of saying: What happened? Hell if we know!

The panic of satanic cults was frequent. But it gives you a good history of the thinking mentality of the time and how powerful it was.

In the cases involving the Maples and LaDonna Morrow's mom, they used the panic to their advantage. All they had to do was tell a judge their daughters were in a cult and they were instantly believed, and their daughters then stripped of their children for investigations despite not talking to any of the parties involved first.

The murders of Shane Stewart and Sally McNelly is something that cannot be written off in the satanic panic category. You have the cult, you have a reliable witness to the cult and their rituals from Sally's friend Helen who accompanied her once. You have both Shane and Sally leaving the cult when their fellow members decided to start taking part in criminal activities - with the duo even turning a gun over to the police that a cult member had given them. You have Sally's frantic telephone call to Helen where she said she was worried these people were going to try and kill her and you have the witness sighting of Sally and Shane arguing with a group of people about "not going back to you." Not long after, they were both dead from shotgun blasts. If they were killed by anyone else, it would have to be the biggest coincidence in the world.

And make no mistake. That cult was a bunch of a freaks. Lifetime cut out the part of the interview with Sally's mother mentioning talking to another parent that had witnessed some of the kids celebrating over the fact that they caught a demon in a bottle.