In her new book, journalist Carolina Balbiani brings together the police incidents that most shocked the world. Some of them were adapted into films, literature and documentaries. Identification and fear serve as motivation for reading.
Carolina Balbiani. Shocking police cases.
[”True Crime” can be purchased, in its digital version, at Bajalibros.com clicking here]
Bobbie Jo recognized Lisa, whom she had seen once in her life, but there was not much time for her, as Lisa had barely turned her back and pounced on her. She wrapped a pink rope she had been carrying around her neck and began to squeeze hard and relentlessly until Bobbie Jo stopped struggling and fell heavily to the ground. In the struggle, the victim even managed to pull out clumps of her attacker's hair with her bare hands. With Bobbie Jo unconscious, Lisa turned her over. She put her on her stomach and used a kitchen knife to cut open her abdomen. Once the cut was large enough, she extracted the baby (who turned out to be a girl) and carefully cut the umbilical cord.
This is one of the scenes from True Crime, the new book by Carolina Balbiani –Exclusive content from Bajalibros.com-, in which the journalist and writer focuses on thirty police cases that shocked the world. “I despair over unsolved cases,” Balbiani tells Infobae Let's read He adds that he is passionate about thinking about what could be done differently to catch the criminal and prevent the victims from being killed. But the stories are shocking.
In more than 200 pages, with a unique pen and without morbidity, the book covers stories as shocking as they are real and that were a success in readings Infobae. They range from Polly Klaas, the girl who was kidnapped from her own room by a stranger and met with the worst possible outcome; the murderous nanny; Jonbenét Ramsey, the mini beauty queen who was killed on Christmas Day; and Amber Hagerman, whose crime inspired the United States' alert system.
Balbiani includes the story of the case of Nevada Tan, who at 11 years old and with the IQ of a genius, killed her classmate because she called her “fat” in Japan in 2014. This selection also highlights a case that made headlines around the world in 2013: that of Oscar Pistorius, the South African millionaire, renowned Paralympic athlete and femicideCuriosity killed the cat, the famous saying goes. And we need to know more.
The author of The day they killed me y (Dis)loves brief 1 and 2 It deals with true cases. Some of them managed to change laws in the countries where they occurred, others sparked controversy with their sentences, and others demonstrated that prejudices exist in all latitudes and in all social strata.
Learning about them invites us to reflect on games, fashion, fame and the role of social networks. But if there is something that all the cases in the book have in common, True Crime It is the intense media impact: most of them were made into films, inspiring docuseries and books.
Capable of everything
The leading writer of the French detective novel and screenwriter Pierre Lamaitre He was able to say in a note something like that we are all capable of anything if the circumstances are adverse. Along the same lines, Balbiani She believes that “fiction is often inspired by reality” and that “the human mind can be as wonderful as it is twisted and evil.” But, she adds, “what is most shocking are those cases that occur from one second to the next, in broad daylight, and that turn a family’s life upside down.” Readers are inflamed Identification alarms, the fear and the inevitable conclusion: this could happen to me too. So why do we want to keep reading more? The difference probably lies in how it is narrated. And she has a mastery in telling stories, which not only make your skin crawl but also arouse curiosity.
And why count them? Balbiani She watches the trials that were recorded, listens to the interrogations, investigates and even stays up all night, and believes that telling these stories is an important opportunity for society. “It is an excellent engine that helps us to make the victims visible, to raise awareness about the different abuses and to sensitize a numb society so that it gets involved and denounces what it knows,” she says.
Thinking of the victims
In his first book, The day they killed meBalbiani mixed fiction with reality and inverted the point of view. In her pages, the journalist imagined what the victim thought, saw and sensed. Thus, she took emblematic cases and narrated in a moving and heartbreaking way - especially those in which the protagonists are children - the moments prior to the murder.
In a way, the journalist offered a voice to those victims at the hands of perverse criminals. What would they have said? What did they think at that moment when they realized there was no turning back? What did their eyes see in the eyes of the murderer? Did they fight with their executioners? Did they give themselves up, deceived? “I am passionate about thinking about what could be done differently to catch the criminal and prevent the victims from being victims. Perhaps my frustrated vocation is to have been a detective,” she says.
In his new book, True Crime, focuses on a real case, without fictional elements, but returns to nine of the stories from her first book, this time to delve into the details of each case. “I like everything that has suspense. Complex love stories, psychological thrillers, life stories with drama,” she says. Balbiani She confesses that she feels moved by some of these stories. For example, that of the nanny of the Krim children - Lulu and Leo - because every parent's worst nightmare becomes reality: being mistreated, in this case, to death. "It is an atavistic fear made reality," she says, shocked.
Fear as a motivation
Balbiani makes a journey through readings that feed his curious and righteous personality and that inspire his books. From Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, the youngest non-binary author and the first born in the Netherlands to win the prestigious International Booker Prize in 2020, passing through Patrick Süskind, Lucía Berlin and Tom Wolfe, until reaching a classic like Dostoyevsky.
The emptiness in your stomach when you don't see your child on the beach, or when they escape your sight in the supermarket. The fear that a pedophile will take them away. How many times do we turn around when we walk alone in a dark underground parking lot? And the screams that can be heard between the walls of the thousands of buildings in the city - have you ever thought that you could be hearing a crime? True Crime He mixes up these emotions and throws them into a book, which is more than a book, it is an experience.
Excerpt from “True Crime. 30 police cases that shocked the world”:
Oscar Pistorius. The crime, the scene
The spotless beige porcelain en-suite bathroom of the house they shared was the last thing Reeva saw that night of terror. She locked herself in there to protect herself from her boyfriend's madness. There was no escape.
It was early on Valentine's Day when the furious shots rang out through the bathroom door. What happened before then? As with every crime, there are different versions. The only thing that is indisputable is that Oscar Pistorius fired his 9mm pistol four times through the closed door. Only one bullet missed the target.
When the police entered the house, they found his girlfriend dead (he had taken her body downstairs), lying in a pool of blood.
One of the many versions (and included in a book by the Mollets on the case) maintains that the body also had two blows on the back made with a cricket bat. It suggests that the marks on the bat would indicate that the two fought over it. According to this theory, Oscar, fiercely angry (this is a point of contention, because the real reason for the violent argument was never clarified, something that only Pistorius can know) chased her with a cricket bat. They fought to dominate the bat, the handle broke, he hit her while she fled, Reeva took refuge in the bathroom terrified, he furiously hit the door with the bat a couple more times. Then, the shooting.
The athlete said, however, that he had mistaken the woman for a thief and shot her by mistake.
Police officer Christian Mangema, who made the ballistic report and reconstructed the scene, described the possible ending as follows: At the time of the crime, Reeva was locked in the bathroom, standing, facing the door when she was shot first in the right hip, breaking the bone and falling to the floor. The second missed her. The third hit her right arm and the last went through her head. She was covering herself with her arms, defensively. The fatal bullet passed between the fingers of her left hand, hit her face and shattered her skull. According to this same report, the criminal Pistorius was sitting on the other side of the door on his stumps. That was what the height and angle of impact of the bullets said. At the trial, when this report was heard, Pistorius covered his ears with his fingers.
Pistorius' lawyers were fighting to prove that he had been mistaken for an intruder in a gated community with walls and alarms. But according to the account of the neighbour, Michelle Burger, who said she heard the shots in this sequence: "Pam (silence) Pam, pam, pam" - Pistorius could not have thought it was a burglar, he would have had to have heard his girlfriend's screams in the bathroom for help during that second of silence, as had five other neighbours. Radiologist Johan Stipp, who lived 70 metres across the street, said he was awakened at around XNUMXam by three shots, then heard three or four female screams followed by more blows that could have come from the bat and finally a man crying for help. When he arrived at the scene he says he saw Oscar kneeling over Reeva's body praying for her to survive and saying: "I shot her, I thought she was a burglar and I shot her!"
On February 17, the police found the bloody Lazer bat in the house. How had the events really unfolded? The defense was getting more complicated.
Carolina Balbiani basic
She was born in Buenos Aires in 1963. She did the first part of her primary education in rural schools in the province of Córdoba. She finished primary school at Colegio San Pablo, in the Federal Capital, where she also attended secondary school. She studied journalism at the University of Salvador, where she obtained a tertiary degree and, in 1988, she received a scholarship for the Latin American Graduate Program at the University of Navarra, in Spain. From 1983 to 2019 she worked at Editorial Atlántida. First at the magazine People and then in the titles For you, Show On y Ranch. Since his beginnings as a columnist, he held all the positions and came to direct the magazines For you y For you Deco for 17 years. In 2019 he presented his first book in digital format, The day they killed me (IndieLibros,2019), a series of true police cases that the author takes and reconstructs, giving voice to the victims. She is also the author of (Dis)loves brief 1 and 2She is married and has two children.