A Mother's Tortured Journey: WaPo story on the Baylor basketball murder

For those looking for input from Bliss and others, there were four short sidebars to the story you may have missed.

Dave Bliss
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101587_pf.html

Dotson's great-grandmother:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101600_pf.html

Dotson's stepfather:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101568_pf.html

Dotson's attorneys, and the law-enforcement officials who investigated:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/21/AR2008062101569_pf.html

 

Thanks, H&R. I only saw the main article. I'll give these a read.

 

This project (main story, four sidebars, timeline, multiple photos) is a perfect example of how print trumps online.

Had I been holding a copy of today's Post, I would have seen the big picture of the story. But by only catching a link to the main story, I felt things were missing. They weren't. They were just limited by the inflexibility of online presentation.

Props to Mike Wise and his coworkers for a job well done.

 

You've got your links crossed, the one under Dotson's great-grandmother is the Bliss one again and the other isn't Dotson's stepfather, it is Dennehy's step father.

 

Loved the story, hated the ending. What was so different about the area ? Why did whatever those differences were convince the mother that Dotson brought Dennehy there to kill him? It left me with a sense of dissatisfaction with the story, which I thought had been masterfully told until that point.

It lost me in the last three grafs. It may have been intentional that Wise left out the context of those two quotes, but I didn't like it at all.

 

See, to me, that was exactly the point.

Wise could have said "Carlton Dotson is crazy, and so is his mom." But by SHOWING you how insane she is, either because of this situation or long before, you realize exactly that. In the most vivid way possible.

 

Fixed the links, hopefully. Thanks, Angola.

 

I can see your point, but I'd already gotten that message from the vivid detail in the story before the ending. The medication list, her mannerisms, her speech pattern and all those little details showed me she, much like her son, doesn't have all the puzzle pieces.

The ending just confused me. She's nuts, but was the area really different? If it was, was it different because of time or because he lied to his parents? It wasn't clear what prompted her reaction other than visiting the site.

 

Most welcome. I was too lazy to look them up myself.

Fantastic read and the sidebars really added a lot. A good sidebar is very underrated in this day and age.

 

Good stuff. Of great interest hereabouts, as it led Lawrence Roberts to leave Baylor and come to Starkvegas. (A deal which I still don't get.)

 

Great job again, Mike. Damn. What an ending.

 

I'm glad I'm not just some pathetic fanboi looser for being a huge Mike Wise fan.

Well, I am. But glad to see it's well deserved. And the fact he's a great guy makes it that much better in my mind.