The Tragedy of True Crime
Opening Arguments
Opening Arguments Media LLC
4.3 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
OA1210 - This week we welcome journalist and author John J. Lennon, who is calling in from New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility where he is serving 25 years to life for murder. Lennon’s extraordinary new book The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us tells his own story alongside that of three other men whose crimes were sensationalized by the media--including Manhattan “Preppy Killer” Robert Chambers--after they were convicted for murders which they unquestionably committed. It challenges us to consider what life is like for the subjects of these documentaries and re-enactments after the credits have rolled, and to ask what our national obsession with true crime is costing them--and all of us.
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The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us, John J. Lennon (2025)
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The New York Times review of The Tragedy of True Crime, Pamela Colloff (9/23/25)
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“A Convicted Murderer’s Case for Gun Control,” John J. Lennon, The Atlantic (8/21/2013)
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“The True Crime Stories You See on TV Are Leaving Out Something Big,” John J. Lennon, Slate (10/13/2025)
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“When Your Crime Becomes a Dick Wolf Show,” John J. Lennon, Rolling Stone (7/19/2025)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Narrators have a lot of power. |
| 0:03.0 | We hear a lot today about the facts, the facts. |
| 0:06.1 | You know, that's like kind of all bullshit. |
| 0:08.4 | Like, it's all about narrative. |
| 0:14.0 | How it was in the 70s and 80s, you know this. |
| 0:20.5 | The average time served for Homestine. |
| 0:22.7 | It's 7 and 8 years. |
| 0:23.8 | Today it's about 18, 19 years. |
| 0:26.3 | But in New York, it surpasses that a bit. |
| 0:28.8 | That's a liberal state, but they will hold you to the sunburns out, as we like to say. |
| 0:59.0 | Hello. we like to say. Hello and welcome to opening arguments. This is episode 1210. I'm Thomas. That over there's Matt. How you doing, Matt? Hey, Thomas. I'm excited to talk about one of my favorite books of the year with the author of the book. This is a really special one. Yeah, you were really buzzing about this one. What's the book? Who's the author? Give it to us. So this is John Jay Lennon. He's an author and journalist who is doing 25 to Life in Sing Sing, and he has written the book, |
| 1:03.2 | The Tragedy of True Crime for Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us. And I tore through |
| 1:07.4 | this book. This is an essential read, I think, for nonfiction for 2025. And it is |
| 1:12.3 | talking about true crime from the other side, from what it's like as a perspective of someone |
| 1:16.8 | who's been the subject of a true crime documentary. And he's talking to other men, they're doing |
| 1:21.3 | time in Sing Sing with him, who are also subject of true crime one way or another, or somehow |
| 1:25.7 | involved in sensationalized media stories of the |
| 1:28.7 | kind that I'm sure many people listening like to follow. And I think it has a lot to say about the |
| 1:32.3 | true crime industrial complex and about the media today and how we handle things and how we could |
| 1:36.7 | be doing things better. Yeah. And you just dove right in with John Jay Leno. So let's cover some |
| 1:42.9 | background knowledge that I think people are going to need. First off, |
| 1:46.0 | you said he's doing time. What's he doing time for? So in 2001, he was a drug dealer on the streets of |
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