When we last checked in with former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark, she was on the talk show circuit sharing her impressions about Ryan Murphy’s award-winning anthology The People vs O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story and promoting her crime novel, Blood Defense. Now that the dust from ACS has settled, Marcia is bringing her experience to a new docuseries hoping to shed some light on some of the nation’s most talked-about crimes.
Marcia Clark Investigates the First 48 is a new, seven-part series on A&E. On the show, Marcia takes a deeper look into the cases that have dominated the media over the past few decades, including the Drew Petersen, Robert Blake and Chandra Levy cases. The 64-year-old legal eagle is passionate about the project, telling The Daily Beast that, “my favorite part of being a prosecutor was being an investigator.” She has only the best intentions for the series, explaining,
“My mission in the show is to stand up for the victims, and I mean victims in the broadest sense. Those who have been wrongfully convicted as well as those who were wrongfully acquitted or never charged. Everybody who was done wrong in some way I want to be able to stand up for, and call bullshit where necessary, and get the truth out.”
The first episode of Marcia’s series, which airs tonight, deals with the Casey Anthony case. The show’s investigative team has found some evidence that sheds doubt on Casey’s acquittal in the 2008 murder of her daughter, Caylee. The Orlando Sentinel, who extensively covered the case, reported that Marcia found potentially damning evidence in the 2012 book Presumed Guilty, which was written by Casey’s defense attorney Jose Baez. In the book, Baez blamed Casey’s father for an online search for “foolproof suffocation.” The Firefox searches on the Anthony computer were deleted shortly before Casey’s arrest. At the time of the trial, the time of the search was misstated due to a technical glitch, and the search was conducted when Casey was the only person at home. Said Marcia,
“The timing of this can’t be dismissed. Her search history was deleted only after police had contacted her, driven her around to the addresses where she claimed where the nanny might be found. The nanny was never found. They drop her back at her house. During the time they left her in the house, before she was arrested, was when that browser history was deleted. Context is everything.”
Marcia also plans to address other findings that were uncovered during her investigation and speaks to many of the key players in the case, including former Judge Belvin Perry, who presided over the case; former prosecutor Jeff Ashton; and Cheney Mason, another of Casey’s attorneys. Casey’s lead attorney Jose Baez refused to be interviewed and Roy Kronk, the meter reader who found Caylee’s remains, wanted $1 million to appear, prompting Marcia to add, “He just didn’t want to be involved.”
I lived in South Florida during the Casey Anthony trial and am a major true crime buff, so I am 100% in for this series. Judging from the trailer, Marcia makes an engaging and compelling host, and she’s quite the pitbull as an interrogator. There’s also a companion podcast for the series, which should prove to be quite interesting. This ought to be a good one.
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