From The Burden

Bad Women: The Blackout Ripper

Pushkin Industries

History, True Crime

4.6 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 28 March 2024

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Detective Louis N. Scarcella was a legendary figure in New York City during the '90s. In a city overrun with violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. But the story changed when a group of convicted murderers-turned-jailhouse lawyers made a startling discovery that linked all their cases: Scarcella was the cop who helped put many of them away. They made a vow: Take down Scarcella. And with the help of a relentless New York Times reporter, they did just that. Thirty years later, 20 people who Scarcella helped put behind bars have since walked free. In the media, he’s known as the disgraced, rogue cop who hoodwinked an entire system. But was this really the workings of one person?

The team behind The Burden spent hundreds of hours talking with witnesses who were coerced, jailhouse lawyers, outraged attorneys, and righteous cops. Scarcella insists he didn’t do anything wrong. And after finally tracking him down, he agreed to take us into the belly of the beast... where justice is done (and undone). Listen to The Burden wherever you get your podcasts.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Pushkin
0:09.0	Hello, Malcolm Glabel here.
0:11.0	A little while back, I became obsessed with stories that fell apart.
0:15.3	Specifically, Hollywood projects that fell apart and why they did.
0:18.9	So I started calling up everyone I knew in Hollywood and asked them to pitch me their favorite idea, the one that broke their heart because it never got made.
0:27.0	These stories were so good, and we decided to turn them into a series on revisionist history.
0:32.0	We're calling it development
0:34.5	hell the dreaded phrase known in Hollywood ever wants to hear, the one that
0:39.3	describes purgatory, where once promising scripts go to die.
0:45.0	There's going to be name dropping, celebrity gossip, endless digressions,
0:49.0	a story that was way too shocking for the studios,
0:51.0	one that was told from the point of view of an exotic pet.
0:55.2	And about the wild ride we went on trying to adapt my book, Blink.
0:58.6	I can't wait to share it all with you.
1:01.6	Listen wherever you get your podcasts and as always you can listen to all
1:05.5	of Revision's History ad free by subscribing to Pushkin Plus.
1:11.6	Hello listeners. The Burden is a new investigative podcast. In the
1:17.6	1990s Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. New York City seemed to be overrun by violent crime, but Scarsela got results,
1:27.0	cracking the toughest cases and eliciting confessions that no one else could.
1:32.0	But then Scarsala himself became embroiled in controversy.
1:35.2	A group of convicted murderers turned jailhouse lawyers discovered that he was the man
1:39.9	who'd put all of them away and they vowed to bring him down.
	...

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