This post might be longer than some of our more recent entries. But we are going to put to rest nearly the entire "famous Brooklyn Series," the exceptions being Mr. Grossman's fixation on the infamous "yellow VW" - which will be covered in a stand-alone post - and a pitiful, whinefest video concerning Tommy Zaino which I simply lost interest in immediately.
We are not here to throw trash at your screen just to see what sticks. With this in mind we will focus on what the series is primarily composed of (a recap of sorts) as well as the mortar that holds so much of the whole ugly thing together.
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I am calling on Mr. Manny Grossman to remove every last "Brooklyn Series" video starring himself and Mr. John Catalano.
Why, you may ask?
As we discussed in this post, those two simply have no way of proving that Mr. Terry had access to every witness statement and police report pertaining to the Moskowitz/Violante attack now available on the People Vs. David Berkowitz website.
And even if Mr. Terry did, we do not know how much stock he
placed in them. Further, we have no way of knowing how many witnesses refused to speak to Mr. Terry for one reason or another, necessitating a reliance on said files.
Jumping to a single conclusion - "Maury lied" - betrays a shocking lack of sophistication for what is touted as a Ph.D-level presentation.
Above, we have what are the bricks for this nasty affair.
Now for the mortar.
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In the interest of fairness I will note that Mr. Grossman and Mr. Catalano did manage to mix it up a little in the third episode by admonishing Mr. Terry for not publishing police reports that had nothing to do with Mr. Terry's theory.
Sometimes, as I'm putting these posts together, I feel like I am being given an opportunity to explain things to Mr. Grossman, his guests and their audience.
You see, when someone writes a book, there needs to be a point to it.
The point of this book, The Ultimate Evil, was not to catalog all known police reports verbatim pertaining to the Son of Sam attacks. Rather, the point was to illustrate what Maury Terry believed to be the true story of the Son of Sam shootings.
The public had already been informed of the "official" story - the one about a loner who heard a talking dog and went on an extended, carefully executed killing spree.
Maury felt there was another possibility.
The End.
Next we have an example of why Mr. Grossman and Mr. Catalano need to slow down and think about what I just said.
John Catalano: (15:09) "Like I said, there was a lot more activity, uh, that night than The Ultimate Evil makes you believe…more cars coming and going, some people left, went to a store, came back…walking their dogs so..."
Manny Grossman: "Yeah it gets back to, it gets back to my point...of Maury being very monolithic about this story; this story, there was only cultists and and victims that's it, no other...nobody else was out on the streets that night."
John Catalano: "Basically, you know, when, when you, when you're at - all in - that chapter, you would think that it was just Violante, Tommy Zaino and the snuff film van."
Let's check.
Robert and Paula Barnes. Dominik Spagnola. Robert Martin. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Raymond. Mr. and Mrs. Frank Vignotti. NYPD officers Cataneo and Logan. Michelle Michaels. Donna Brogan and John Hogan.
All were noted as being nearby at important moments. None were listed as passengers of a snuff film van.
A rambling series of pages detailing every last pedestrian in the area, their grocery store receipts, not to mention gas station attendants who saw nothing, guys who fell asleep at their grandmothers, what time they all came and went from dusk until dawn would be unceremoniously cut by any editor worth their weight in rejection slips.
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What I have found is that when analyzing and critiquing the work of Mr. Grossman, you can easily fall into the trap of nit-picking: the idiosyncratic way he misreports things, misinterprets things, contradicts himself in the span of a few minutes, and so forth.
However, these small things add up and often make up a notable portion of his video productions, video productions Mr. Grossman believes "demolished" the work of Maury Terry.
Manny Grossman: (7:04) "The-the-the-the story that Maury put together about Brooklyn was foolproof and thus hoodwinked an entire generation of true crime fans. We got hoodwinked, guys, we got bullied, manipulated, lied to and abused."
This is preposterous.
Again, we are presented with a teachable moment: Maury Terry was a writer, an author. He had a theory. He followed leads. He interviewed witnesses... and he wrote a book about the experience.
At no point was Maury able to strip anyone of their own free will.
I do not believe Maury intentionally tried to lie to anyone and if this blog has taught us anything it's that accusations of Mr. Terry intentionally lying fall flat under review....
Often Manny will comment that while reading The Ultimate Evil he was under the impression of something or another. So basically the problem is really with Mr. Grossman, his reading comprehension level and imagination (or lack thereof).
Starting at 1:05:57, Manny and his guest John Catalano took a look at witness “Robert Martin” and his testimony as portrayed in The Ultimate Evil:
Next Mr. Grossman moved on to an eye witness police report describing what witness Don Sheriman saw that morning. [Note: Mr. Gossman believes “Martin” and Sheriman are one in the same person and I see no reason to disagree.]
Where Manny takes issue with Maury’s version of events is…Maury omitted the words “under his arm”.
“So, so Maury gets the story right, sort of, there's one major problem that I have”, said Manny. “Maury says that he's carrying, sorry, Maury says that he is carrying a brown paper bag. Now I'm just going to say that when I read that I assumed that he was carrying it in his hand.”
It does appear that Mr. Catalano stepped in and changed the subject in a clear effort to keep this segment from descending into sheer madness. However Manny quickly steers the topic back to the way this brown paper bag was being transported.
“But listen,” Mr. Grossman interjects, “here is a major thing that I think he, he got, that Maury obfuscated. So he says, he’s, he writes in the book that he was carrying a brown paper bag but in the police report it says that the paper bag was under his arm…”
Later, in summary, Manny had this to say about Maury at 1:25:25:
“He [Mr. Terry] had to change times, he had to change, he had to make up words that weren't there, he had to put the guy carrying a bag in his hand when he really carried it under his arm…”
Watching Mr. Grossman get so adamant almost makes me want to rescind my request for the Brooklyn Series - or at least this episode - to be removed.
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Friends, enemies, I could easily go on. I've got so much of this: transcript after transcript, timestamp after timestamp. Oh my God, there's so much more.
Let me be clear. There is absolutely nothing wrong with fact checking Mr. Terry. I for one do not believe that a RUSH logo is necessarily evidence of a Satanic presence. But in my opinion, what these two did - with input and support from bitter ex-NYPD, bitter ex-Yonkers PD, lonely souls, bitter friends of a certain family, and hapless saps who think they have discovered the next Rising Star of True Crime - is completely vile. Sickening. Sad.
I need a long walk to clear my head after living in and rummaging around in theirs for so long.
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Thank you for doing this, it helped me clear up something.
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