So last night there was this thing on TV called "48 Hours: Mysteries'. The episdoe they did was on a guy named Michael Blagg who was convicted of murdering his wife and daughter. Without any hard evidence or even eyewitness testimony.
Apparently, he wife was shot in their home, taken to a dump, and left there wrapped in a tent. his daughter was never found. Blagg's alibi is that he was at work that day; he even left voicemail messages for his wife and child on their home answering machine.
They never matched the bullet in the wife to a gun owned by Blagg. They never said his alibi wasn't true. I mean, if he was at work, people would remember it, the timeclocks and surveillance video would prove it. The neighbors don't remember hearing a gunshot in the iddle of the night, or seeing the family van leave at odd hours. There is nothing connecting this man to his wife's murder except circumstantial bullshit.
The best part is, a witness for the prosecution (the wife's mother no less); admits to making shit up on the stand. She got up there and made up her testimony as it popped into her head, saying that Blagg choked his wife once. She continues to go on saying she never reported the incident, and has never spoken about it until that very moment in the courtroom. She got up on the stand and was allowed to make an unbased, unverifiable testimmony of something that may or may not have happened years ago. Shitty.
The media made him out to be a cheating (a claim later revealed to be completely unfounded and untrue) porn addict. The media reported all this shit for a year or something until the trial date, inundating this small community with all sorts of fucked up opinions. Needless to say, by the time jury selection came around everyone had already made up their minds. The public defender didn't stand a chance against such fools, and he went to jail.
I can't imagine coming home from work to find your wife and child dead. I can't imagine not being able to join the searches for them because the media made people think it would be a conflict of interest. I can't imagine being sentanced to life in prison with no hope of parole, when the two people you love most in the world aren't even alive to come visit you. It's like a fucking horror story.
Honestly, I'd kill myself before I'd ever go to jail for some shit I didn't do.
Posted by Id at June 15, 2005 04:55 PMI knew Mike Blagg personally for several years. I thought he was a great guy, but based on the evidence presented there is no question whatsoever that he is guilty. You should watch the story again, because you have many of the facts completely wrong.
**** Blagg's alibi is that he was at work that day; he even left voicemail messages for his wife and child on their home answering machine. ****
Uh, yeah, he did. While she was lying dead in the dumpster, having been killed in the wee hours of the morning preceding. Security video shows Blagg coming in earlier than normal. His coworkers report him behaving very suspiciously, dumping large boxes in the dumpster and refusing help with those boxes. He also went around the building emptying everyone's trash so that the dumpster would have to be emptied. His wife's body was later found in a pile of garbage from Blagg's workplace.
*** The neighbors don't remember hearing a gunshot in the iddle of the night, or seeing the family van leave at odd hours. ***
What is your point? The neighbors didn't hear a gunshot, yet one clearly occured, unless your theory is that all that blood got there by magic. What does that have to do with WHO fired the shot? Similarly, the van was obviously used to transport the body, since there was her blood in it.
Plain and simple, when strangers murder someone in their house they do not move the body. What would be the point?
JJ, thanks for shedding some light. You're right, I was only familiar with the facts as they were presented on TV. When I say it out loud like that, I realize now that may have been a mistake. I was reeled in by media sensationalism! I am a whore!
Mmm. I feel all cleansed now.
Posted by: shank at July 11, 2005 01:11 PM