Парадиз: истинная история документальных фильмов, пончиков и ДНК

I made my first documentary in 2019 at the age of 35. It was about the first girl I ever danced with, Jessica Edwards, who died a few weeks before her 15th birthday. Once they questioned her boyfriend, Walter West, authorities were convinced he was responsible for the violent murder. A neighbor of Walter, Dennis Jerome Bartie, made a voluntary statement against him, affirming what Police surely knew. Shortly after, Walter was arrested and charged with her death. He took a plea deal and was sentenced to 60 years.In early summer 2019, Dennis was questioned again about another murder that also occurred in 1998, some 90 days before Jessica Edwards. This time, it was Rose Born, who was viciously slaughtered in her shop, Paradise Donuts. She was 45, and her homicide remained unsolved for nearly two decades. After an 8-hour interrogation, Dennis confessed to killing her. He was only 17 at the time.This book is a hybrid of a true crime novel and a documentarian's journal, along with the oddities that arise therein. It took almost 7 years to complete Paradise, largely because I had to wait for the adjudication process. This was being stalled by Dennis Bartie's criminal defense lawyers, exploiting causes like Black Lives Matter to acquit their client based on his minority status alone. And to that end, the book paints an accurate portrait of the actual state of race relations in our Country. As a white liberal, my involvement became problematic almost instantly.