Season 2: Episode 4: Resonating Eliza
ED. NOTE: It’s Eliza, not Emily. Apologies for the error.
Honestly, I didn’t want to talk about Eliza Fletcher – except to say, she should be alive. So should other homicide victims. But the same day that this podcast was recorded, the universe dropped this gem from WMC Action News 5.
Watch the investigate report.
“Has your opinion changed at all?” Asked the Investigators.
“It definitely has made us question if this was the right move for us,” said Beloin.
According to data made available by the City of Memphis, there have been nearly 130 kidnappings reported so far this year, which equates to one kidnapping about every other day.
To put that number into context, the Action News 5 Investigators looked through more than 100 of the kidnapping reports, which have been filed since January, and created a database and map to find out who is being targeted and where.”
To be sure, the report centered on a white woman, who recently moved to Memphis, as she played with her child and, even though the story focuses on the concerns of women, the data examined by WMC shows that men come up missing/kidnapped too.
Yet, while people come up missing quite regularly, for a variety of reasons, few, if any, have resonated in the public consciousness like Eliza, whose missing report turned into a kidnapping and ended in murder.
Maybe that explains it.
Maybe not.
Exploring the resonance is the focus of this episode of the mark up by mediaverse.
To discuss the topic, our guests were:
Eric Christensen, chief prosecutor for the Special Victims Unit in the Shelby County District Attorney’s office and one of the office’s assistant D.A.s
Steven J. Mulroy is the District Attorney for Shelby County, Tennessee. Previously, he was a University of Memphis law professor who served on the County Commission for Shelby County, Tennessee from District 5 from 2006 to 2014. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, he spent his high school years living in Gulf Breeze, Florida and studied at Cornell University, followed by William & Mary Law School.
DA Mulroy oversees a total staff of 238, including more than 110 prosecutors.
Mulroy attended Cornell University on a merit scholarship, spent one semester studying in Washington, D.C. through the Cornell-in-Washington program, and graduated in 1986. Mulroy graduated from William & Mary Law School in 1989 with the "Order of the Coif" honor.
Mulroy began his legal career in 1989 as a judicial clerk for the Hon. Roger Vinson, a federal district court judge in Pensacola, Florida. In 1991, through the U.S. Justice Department's Honors Program, he joined Department's Civil Rights Division as a trial attorney. He spent 1991-95 in the Voting Section, and 1995 through 1999 in the Housing and Civil Enforcement Section. From 1999-2000 he served as a Special Assistant United States Attorney (a federal prosecutor) in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Alexandria, Virginia. In 2000, he began teaching at the University of Memphis, School of Law, attaining tenure in 2006.
In 2006 he was promoted to Associate Professor, and in 2010 from to full Professor of Law. He taught and published in the fields of election law, criminal law and procedure, and constitutional law.
In 2006, Mulroy successfully ran for the Shelby County, Tennessee Commission, representing the 5th District. He served two four-year terms, leaving the Commission due to term limits in late 2014.
While on the County Commission, Mulroy drafted Shelby County's first ethics ordinance, animal welfare ordinance, and "cash for tires" ordinance, and the first ever legislation at any level in Tennessee which provided discrimination protection for the LGBT community.” He successfully pushed for substantial increases in county funding for homelessness and pre-K education.
During the body's 2011 redistricting, he led the successful effort to switch from 3-Commissioner multimember districts to single-member districts, arguing, among other things, that the latter led to more competitive elections.
Mulroy is the author of Rethinking US election law: Unskewing the System,which "offers comprehensive considerations of arguments in favour of and against proposed reforms of US election law." As an expert in comparative election law, he contributed to the Routedge Handbook of Election Law.
If you want to read more about the Missing White Woman syndrome, here are some links:
New York Times: How the Media Reported ‘Missing White Woman Syndrome’…
The New Yorker: The Long American History of “Missing White Woman” Syndrome
And here’s a research article.
Godspeed, Eliza.
