Come Closer

Get my list of essential true crime docs HERE

In 1992, a 17-year-old girl named Amy Fisher shot Mary Jo Buttafuoco in the face on her own front step. Within weeks, America had a nickname for her: the Long Island Lolita. Within a year, all three major networks aired competing made-for-TV movies about her, and roughly half the country watched at least one.

Almost nobody asked about the 35-year-old married man who had been sleeping with her since she was 16.

This is the story of Amy Fisher, Joey Buttafuoco, and Mary Jo Buttafuoco — a case that became the blueprint for how tabloid media turns a groomed child into a villain and a predator into a lovable rogue. We cover how Joey Buttafuoco met a 16-year-old at his Long Island auto body shop, the mechanics of grooming and how predators select and isolate a target, the DARVO playbook he ran when the story broke, and the sentencing gap that gave Amy Fisher seven years while the man convicted of statutory rape served four months.
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You've seen the iceberg videos. Surface level at the top, the unspeakable at the bottom. I like the format. I just think it's shallow.

So this is mine. Nine rings, not one iceberg, because when I sort a subject by how bad it gets, I use the system I know best. I've been to all nine and I know the bartenders.

The rules are simple. Ring one is the tip: the part you've heard of, the part that sounds almost reasonable. Ring nine is the bottom, and nobody goes down there voluntarily. Each ring is worse than the last. Three rings per episode, three episodes, all the way down.

We're starting with eugenics.

Not because it's the darkest subject I know, but because it's the one that most people think is finished. It isn't. And it didn't begin with a monster; it began with a statistician, a respectable institution, and a very reasonable idea about improving the human race.

It gets worse from here. It always does.

Come closer.

xx Rae Review
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Rae is joined by defense attorney Edward Cohn as they discuss the story of Nikki Addimando.

A woman told police, very calmly, that she'd just shot the father of her children. She was telling the truth and had been for years. Nobody listened. This was a complicated case about self-defense, violence, and toxic relationship dynamics.

Listen as Edward Cohn provides his insights about his experience in the legal system, his opinion on this story and how you can protect yourself.

⚠️ Discretion advised: domestic violence and s**ual abuse.

Find Edward Cohn Defense Attorney at cohnjustice.com.

Witness Library here:
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Get my list of essential true crime documentaries HERE

Christopher Duntsch, "Dr. Death", maimed 33 patients and killed two, and every one of them walked into his Dallas operating room voluntarily and said thank you.

This isn't a story about a bad surgeon. It's about how much benefit of the doubt a confident man gets for free, and who pays for it.

A true crime and dark history episode on medical malpractice, institutional cover-up, and the Texas Medical Board's two-year shrug — with a verdict, and a ring of hell for everyone who earned one.

Severe discretion advised: surgical injury and death.

I tell the truth. You decide what to believe. Come closer.

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Credits: Video editor / Sound Design: gavin.mc.cabe.sound@gmail.com
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My hand-picked list of the true crime docs that actually got it right. Get it ⁠HERE ⁠

Everyone knows what Lorena Bobbitt did with a kitchen knife in 1993. Instead of asking WHY it happened, most people laughed instead.

The world turned a domestic-violence and marital-r*pe case into the decade's biggest punchline.

In the very first episode of Come Closer, Rae: Aries Goddess and Keeper of Dark Stories, tells it the way it actually happened: Years of documented violence, a law that barely counted her as a victim, two trials, and a culture that laughed instead of looking.

And underneath all of it, THE REAL CRIME. Because marriage was never a love story. It's a 4,000-year-old scam, and Lorena Bobbitt is the proof.

Come closer. It's darker than you think.

⚠️ Content warning: this episode discusses domestic violence, sexual assault, and abuse. Please take care.

💌 IG, TT, YT- @rae_review

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Credits: Video editor / Sound Design: gavin.mc.cabe.sound@gmail.com

Chapters:

0:00 The 10 seconds everyone remembers

· 1:40 Meet Rae

· 4:40 The love story

· 7:00 The marriage turns

·12:30 The night it happened

· 15:00 The media circus

· 17:00 Two trials

· 25:00 Marriage: the real crime

· 30:30 The Verdict
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