Let's nitpick the reenactments

[dynoguy88]

One thing I always loved about Unsolved Mysteries' reenactments was that the show would actually travel to the towns where certain cases took place to film their segments. In fact, many times they would actually recreate events in the actual location of the crime scene being depicted.

Many of us have read books, seen documentaries and read detailed articles about cases featured on UM. After becoming knowledgable about these cases, we can go back and see little flaws presented in the UM segments. Let's list them here if we can. Keep in mind, I realize that UM's job was to give us a basic idea of what happened and didn't need to always be 100% accurate. I understand that. This is, like I said in the title, nitpicking. But let's see what we can come up with. And no, bad actors don't count.

ORANGE SOCK KILLINGS - Bobbie Oberholtzer's body was actually discovered lying face up, not face down in the snow like in the reenactment. The look of fear and terror was still on her face forever haunting the search party members who found her. Likewise, Annette Schnee's body was actually found in a creek, not in a snow bank. Her body was discovered in July, 6 months after her murder so there wouldn't have been snow everywhere like in the segment.

CINDY JAMES - When Agnes Woodcock found Cindy after the first attack, she was not lying in the backyard like in the segment. She was lying in the outside basement stairwell of her home. In the reenactment, Agnes simply put her coat over Cindy. In reality, she frantically pounded on the door and Cindy's downstairs tennant let them inside where they carried her to the couch before calling the police.

Also, when Cindy's car was discovered in the bank parking lot (two weeks before her body was found at the abandonned house) it was not during the day. Tom and Agnes found her car within hours of her disappearance which was after 10 p.m. A police officer was sent to inspect the car shortly after.

TAMMY LEPPERT - I'm not exactly sure but I think Tammy's sister said once that on the day Tammy dissapeared, the friend who picked her up was driving a light blue sports car, not a black one.

Can anyone name others?

[justins5256]

I remember reading a post on here once by someone who claimed they lived in the area of California(?) where the Gilbert Ortiz case took place and the subsequent UM re-enactment filmed. In the re-enactment, there is a dramatic shot of an ambulance racing to Gilbert's aid sirens blaring. According to the poster, they recognized the street the ambulance was driving on and the street itself (in real life) was a dead end.

I always found that humorous.

[TracyLynnS]

Oh, I wish Cindy's sister's book would hurry up and be published. I was not aware (or had forgotten, you all know my memory is terrible) that she had a basement/downstairs tenant.

Was this the house where the fire was in the basement?

And wow, several discrepancies in the Orange Socks cases. I have a feeling that they filmed Bobbie's scene with her face down to minimize the horror for the viewers, but that's jmo.

If they were filming on location, in the winter, maybe they just went ahead and filmed Annette's scene in the snow, too, rather than going back to CA and getting a more accurate, but ultimately more expensive, scene. JMO on that too, of course.

Very interesting stuff. I'd love to see what other folks have come up with while watching for the descrepancies in the show. (And it's especially good "therapy" right now, since they've decided to bombard us with CSI marathons and what not on the spike channel again.)

[TracyLynnS]

I'm going to be "nitpicky" about this part of the Wacker case.

The show said that when Mrs. Wacker was attacked, she suffered skull lacerations. But I looked up the definition and found that lacerations are tears in the flesh or skin.

I felt like they used the phrase "skull lacerations" to make it sound more like Mrs. Wacker had skull fractures, or that they were trying to make her head injuries sound more severe than they really were.

I'm kind of thinking that she had "scalp lacerations", that her injuries were severe enough to break the skin and cause bleeding, but not severe enough to cause damage to the bone.

When a case involves something as disturbing as an attack that involves head injuries, I think UM should have been much more careful in their presentation of the facts.

[Oldschooler81]

Cool topic, Dynoguy.

Personally I've always nitpicked things (it's just in my nature) and I think with UM it's actually more fun to spot differences merely because they were pretty thorough and accurate.

One that comes to mind is the Roger Dean case. Suburban Denver in November and it wasn't snowing at all! Also, some of the cars in the neighborhood were those rounded models they started making in the early '90s (as opposed to the boxy kinds from before) when this was from 1985.

P.S. That always stuck with me because when I first saw it (in '94) their neighborhood reminded me ALOT of my favorite childhood house where I'd lived a few years earlier (it was "older looking" than mine but similar).

[Cori aka ChrisSCrush]

Thanks for starting this topic. I've been waiting for a place to put nitpicks which don't fit anywhere else.

I think I've mentioned before, on the Pennsylvania UFO case: the incident took place in December. Kids riding bikes in t-shirts under trees with full green leaves is NOT December in Pennsylvania!

In the segment where the evil relative (grandmother?) forced the young mother to give up her three and five-year-old daughters...she had to sign death certificates so the girls could be adopted...I keep asking what case this was and whether it was solved, but no answers. Anyhow, this took place during the early 1960s and showed the younger girl, who the grandmother favored, unwrapping a stuffed animal. Two things wrong: the toy still had the tag on it, when toys come with big fat warnings to remove all tags before giving to a child, and the tag had a BAR CODE about twenty years before those were invented! I had the feeling it was returned to the store the minute the segment was shot!

[dynoguy88]

Originally Posted by TracyLynnS

Oh, I wish Cindy's sister's book would hurry up and be published. I was not aware (or had forgotten, you all know my memory is terrible) that she had a basement/downstairs tenant.

Was this the house where the fire was in the basement?

No. That was two houses later, I believe. Cindy moved 4 times I think the last several years of her life. That first attack happened at a house she lived in very briefly. In fact, she was packing up the last of her belongings that night because she was moving the following day.

It was a different house she lived in during the second attack where she was found on the kitchen floor with a knife through her hand.

Then the next house (which was a duplex) was the one where her basement was set on fire. After the fire, Cindy's landlord sent her an eviction notice with a letter of apology saying she was sorry that the police had not yet caught this person but she could no longer risk the safety of her other tennants. So Cindy was forced to move yet again.

The Unsolved Mysteries segment made it seem like Cindy moved only once but that was far from the case.

[dynoguy88]

Here's another nitpick to the extreme. Jane, the pregnant woman who was stabbed 20+ times by the New Hampshire/Vermont serial killer yet lived - When she pulled into the parking lot where she was attacked, she was there longer than what appeared in the UM segment. She put money into a pepsi machine but the machine ended up not working and ate her money in the process. So, she went back to her car and looked for some loose change, then walked around the corner of the building to a coke machine, got her drink and went back to her car before the killer pulled up next to her.

It kind of makes you wonder if her attack might have been avoided altogether had the first pepsi machine not been broken. Then she might not have been alone in the parking lot as long as she was.

[MegtheEgg86]

Great topic, dynoguy--I find these sort of things infinitely interesting.

The entire exchange between Jane and her attacker was altered in the reenactment. At some point Jane had accidentally kicked out her driver's side window during the altercation. After she had told her attacker that hers was a "New Hampshire car" rather than a "Massachusetts" one, he began to walk away back to his vehicle--contrary to the UM segment. It was after Jane yelled out after him asking what was to be done about her window that he rushed and attacked her. As well, she drove a 1986 Pontiac Firebird in reality, not the car used in the segment. She also named letters in addition to the "662" of the license plate of the attacker's Wagoneer under hypnosis.

Concerning the Orange Socks murders, Jeff Oberholtzer had actually driven into Breckenridge searching for Bobbie upon discovering she hadn't returned home by 2. I believe I recall reading that he actually climbed to the top of the building where his wife worked in order to peer through a skylight situated over her desk, as that was one of the few places he knew to search for his wife.

[Oldschooler81]

Whoa, I didn't realize the Jane segment was so different. I can see why they'd maybe cut out the trip to the adjascent machine (just to save storytelling and airtime), but the attack being so different is surprising since it had something to do with the story firsthand.

I assume he was trying to attack her initially (explaining why she kicked out the window by mistake), but he didn't stab her until afterwards? Still a sad, senseless case all around.. I'm glad she survived!


P.S. One thing that instantly came to my mind when I first saw the segment was how the Pepsi logo outline was on the machine but blurred out. I still didn't know about product placement reasons on tv shows back then, so it confused me at the time, lol.

[TracyLynnS]

RE: product placements

I've noticed that in tv movies or other shows where companies haven't paid to sponsor the use of their products, the pop machine will have a big professional (but generic) looking sign on it, that says "SODA" or some such thing.

After being so used to seeing pathetically blatant product placements in movies, it's really obvious when they try to avoid showing a specific product and replace pop and beer cans with "cola" "beer" etc, for the actors to use. Too funny.

One of the worst is when they use the real name brand item, but paint or tape over one of the letters on the box. That looks sooooo cheap and cheesy.

[MissFit29]

There were a few reenactments where the weather didn't match the time of year that the stories actually happened.

I remember the Anna Anton murder happened in December, yet the reenactment was clearly shot in the summer in Nebraska.

[MegtheEgg86]

Originally Posted by Oldschooler81

Whoa, I didn't realize the Jane segment was so different. I can see why they'd maybe cut out the trip to the adjascent machine (just to save storytelling and airtime), but the attack being so different is surprising since it had something to do with the story firsthand.

I assume he was trying to attack her initially (explaining why she kicked out the window by mistake), but he didn't stab her until afterwards? Still a sad, senseless case all around.. I'm glad she survived!


P.S. One thing that instantly came to my mind when I first saw the segment was how the Pepsi logo outline was on the machine but blurred out. I still didn't know about product placement reasons on tv shows back then, so it confused me at the time, lol.

I was very surprised upon reading the Philip Ginsburg book about the case and found there was so much more to it. I apologize for not fully clarifying what happened; here it is, in a nutshell:

Jane pulls into the convenience store parking lot for a Pepsi. After the machine won't yield a can nor her money back, she returns to her car to hunt for change to use at the Coke machine--which she finds and is able to use successfully. She returns and sits in her car momentarily to open and take a sip on her Coke. Her window is partially rolled down. At this time a Jeep Wagoneer pulls into the space to the right of Jane's car. A man gets out and walks around the back of Jane's car and stops at her window.

"That phone working tonight?" he asks.

Before Jane can answer, he opens her car door and attempts to grab her wrist. Jane kicks and screams, and somehow ends up smashing her window with her foot. The man then pulls a knife and forces Jane from the car.

"What do you want?" Jane asks.

"You beat up my girlfriend" he says.

Jane says she did not, and the man appears confused.

"This is a Massachusetts car, isn't it?"

"No, it's a New Hampshire car," Jane says.

The man goes to verify Jane's claim. After he sees her license plate he begins to walk back to his car.

"Hey, what about my window?" she calls out.

The man turns and begins to charge her. The rest of the event unfolds basically as in the UM reenactment.


I'm going to nitpick the Son of Sam segment as well. Witness Caecilia Davis was not sitting at her kitchen table reading the paper when she heard the Moskowitz/Violante shooting--she was barely in her doorway, taking the leash off her dog after walking it (whereupon she saw David Berkowitz walking down the street). I never understood why UM did that. The Maury Terry conspiracy argument is better supported by the actual account, IMO.

[Cori aka ChrisSCrush]

Originally Posted by Oldschooler81

P.S. One thing that instantly came to my mind when I first saw the segment was how the Pepsi logo outline was on the machine but blurred out. I still didn't know about product placement reasons on tv shows back then, so it confused me at the time, lol.

Yeah, companies don't like their products used in any negative way. In a Brooke Shields movie about an office shooting, it was filmed at a Key Technology place but the logo was disguised. Also, in the movie about the Steven Stayner case, his mother bought him a G. I. Joe doll but they had to call it "Combat Mike."

[yellowVWchase]

Originally Posted by MegtheEgg86

I'm going to nitpick the Son of Sam segment as well. Witness Caecilia Davis was not sitting at her kitchen table reading the paper when she heard the Moskowitz/Violante shooting--she was barely in her doorway, taking the leash off her dog after walking it (whereupon she saw David Berkowitz walking down the street). I never understood why UM did that.

I think this is partly because there were three different accounts of her story in the newspapers, all embroidered or mangled by various reporters sharing various bylines. One account had her just coming into the apartment, unleashing the dog when she heard the shots; another had her turning on her air conditioner; and yet a third had her sitting down and opening up the newspaper when the shots were fired...