Post by gtoonsanimation on Nov 14, 2020 6:33:25 GMT
I'm sure most of you on this thread has either heard about or had come across the Ricardo Lopez Video Diaries on either this forum or elsewhere. And while as of today, all of the videotapes have surfaced (including the 10th tape in September 2017), there is still some pieces of media that remain lost. What I am talking about is his 803 paged handwritten diary. As far as I know, the original journal was said to be destroyed by the Hollywood Police Department in January 2007, however it is believed that there are remaining copies of the journals out there. In recent years, there has been an interest from the True Crime community as well as those who are just morbidly curious about the case wanting to know the whereabouts of the journals. So thus, I am posting about it to this forum.
I've contacted the following in regards to the journals but was met with minimal results:
- Hollywood Police Department - Broward County Sherrif's Office - Federal Bureau of Investigation - Oxygen [channel] (due to an episode of Mysteries and Scandals having an episode including stills of the original diary, prompting evidence of its existence).
Here's a still frame from the Mysteries and Scandals episode
Björk saw the videotapes. She said it was upsetting. She wanted to see the videos because she wanted to understand it rather than hide away from it. And because she watched the videos she noticed the date/time stamp and realized she was only blocks away from his apartment that day while on a holiday.
Post by forlornjackalope on Nov 15, 2020 1:12:40 GMT
If he's on social media, Sami Saif might be a person of interest since he had access to the tapes in order to do the Video Diary of Ricardo Lopez compilation.
I wouldn't hold my breath for this one, it is, like the basement tapes, tied up in the legal system. Let me give a criminologist's perspective on these open records. Don't hold your breath for the Hollywood PD to come through, California open records laws are not amazing. As for the Broward County Sheriff's office, it is possible since Florida is an open records state, but that is a double edged sword, if they had it, they would have been released by now. The FBI (and any of the feds for that matter)... good luck. It isn't that they are secretive, they are just a pain in the butt to deal with for anything that isn't immediately available online. Oxygen is a private company, they can do whatever they want, but are we sure that those were stills of the diary and not recreations?
The fact is that these would not really end up in an open record because nothing ever went to trial, he committed suicide and because it was an investigation and not an actual trial, that means that a lot of it may not be subject to open records. Additionally, in a lot of these cases judges just love to seal this stuff and I have no idea why.
That being said, my experience dealing with open records request is limited to bothering states for compstat data, so I could be wrong.
I should've mentioned this one. I am 100% sure that those are actual stills of the diary and not recreations. I took a clip from the episode where they were showing a bunch of the stills in a rapid frame-rate and I managed to divide each frame as a still to analyze it. Because I have all the videotapes in my procession through both a file sharing site and the Hollywood Police Department (in a slightly better quality than what's online today), Ricardo had shown excerpts from his diary in his tapes that were the exact same as some of the stills in that M&S episode.
In the episode, two of the multiple persons interviewed were closest to the case. Dr. Louis Schlesinger and a former Hollywood PD spokesperson who was involved in the case in 1996. I've contacted both about a year prior to that episode being released in 2018. What makes both of them common is that not only were they close to the case, but both read the actual diary. Dr. Louis Schlesinger managed to get an entire copy of the diary scanned for him (probably around 2002-03?) and the physical prints were seen in an ABC Primetime Thursday episode which can be found on YouTube.
I did e-mail Dr. Schlesinger in September 2017, and yes, he did confirm he had the diary "somewhere in his basement". But he's a dead-end because he did not reply to my follow up e-mail. I didn't bother to ask further.
As for Sami Saif; in late-2016, I had called briefly had a conversation with him via cell phone and asked him about the newscasts at the end credits of his film, but I have doubts he read the journals since the point of his film was to show a more human side of Lopez rather than what most tabloid journalists and filmmakers were showing of his footage around that time in the late 90's. What introduced him to Ricardo's case was a Danish show called Yderzoner which had an episode entirely about Bjork's case. He then saw the footage again in Tomas Gislason's film, The Patriots in August 1997, nearly a year after Ricardo's death. Which leads me to conclude that Saif was more geared towards Lopez's video diaries than his handwritings because those were the only materials publicized.
I only managed to obtain very few information over the years but nothing that is deemed interesting. That being the crime scene photos of his apartment I received in 2016 through Broward County, a few FBI records and notes, and an autopsy/medical examiner report. Nothing more than that. I should mention that I believe the crime scene pictures weren't meant to be released by them and some form of miscommunication happened along the way. I just so happened to be talking to the right people at the time who had access to that sort of thing instead of directly contacting that particular records office themselves. Some of the pictures I posted on a forum are floating on YouTube today as a compilation for some reason.
So the only lead I could get closest to is Dr. Louis Schlesinger. But that is a dead-end in itself. There's no way in hell I'm going to even think about bothering Ricardo's family.
I should've mentioned this one. I am 100% sure that those are actual stills of the diary and not recreations. I took a clip from the episode where they were showing a bunch of the stills in a rapid frame-rate and I managed to divide each frame as a still to analyze it. Because I have all the videotapes in my procession through both a file sharing site and the Hollywood Police Department (in a slightly better quality than what's online today), Ricardo had shown excerpts from his diary in his tapes that were the exact same as some of the stills in that M&S episode.
In the episode, two of the multiple persons interviewed were closest to the case. Dr. Louis Schlesinger and a former Hollywood PD spokesperson who was involved in the case in 1996. I've contacted both about a year prior to that episode being released in 2018. What makes both of them common is that not only were they close to the case, but both read the actual diary. Dr. Louis Schlesinger managed to get an entire copy of the diary scanned for him (probably around 2002-03?) and the physical prints were seen in an ABC Primetime Thursday episode which can be found on YouTube.
I did e-mail Dr. Schlesinger in September 2017, and yes, he did confirm he had the diary "somewhere in his basement". But he's a dead-end because he did not reply to my follow up e-mail. I didn't bother to ask further.
As for Sami Saif; in late-2016, I had called briefly had a conversation with him via cell phone and asked him about the newscasts at the end credits of his film, but I have doubts he read the journals since the point of his film was to show a more human side of Lopez rather than what most tabloid journalists and filmmakers were showing of his footage around that time in the late 90's. What introduced him to Ricardo's case was a Danish show called Yderzoner which had an episode entirely about Bjork's case. He then saw the footage again in Tomas Gislason's film, The Patriots in August 1997, nearly a year after Ricardo's death. Which leads me to conclude that Saif was more geared towards Lopez's video diaries than his handwritings because those were the only materials publicized.
I only managed to obtain very few information over the years but nothing that is deemed interesting. That being the crime scene photos of his apartment I received in 2016 through Broward County, a few FBI records and notes, and an autopsy/medical examiner report. Nothing more than that. I should mention that I believe the crime scene pictures weren't meant to be released by them and some form of miscommunication happened along the way. I just so happened to be talking to the right people at the time who had access to that sort of thing instead of directly contacting that particular records office themselves. Some of the pictures I posted on a forum are floating on YouTube today as a compilation for some reason.
So the only lead I could get closest to is Dr. Louis Schlesinger. But that is a dead-end in itself. There's no way in hell I'm going to even think about bothering Ricardo's family.
If these celebrities have it then it is possible a department that may have to keep the records still has a copy. It could be a simply matter of requesting the records from the right people. There are a few steps one should take. 1) determine who may have it, it may be a police agency, prosecutor's office, record keeping department for a locality, ect. 2) spam the hell out of any possible lead with open records requests. 3) Wait.....
Since we are still on step one, lets use this time to recap who may have it. So far
Hollywood PD
Broward County Sheriff's Department
FBI.
Given that 2/3 of these are in florida,
Broward County Sheriff's department (Who somehow managed to get Sheriff.org?) www.sheriff.org/LE/Pages/Request-a-Record.aspx Here is the publicly available information for the records custodian.
Reports may be requested by mail or in person. Phone, fax and email requests will not be accepted, nor will reports be faxed or emailed to requestors. Requests by mail must include the required fee along with a self-addressed stamped envelope. Prior to mailing your request, call the Records Unit to confirm the report has been received and to obtain a cost for the report. Please note that some reports may require redaction of restricted information. Please allow 10 working days after an incident or accident has occurred before attempting to obtain a copy of a report.
Please note that there is also a fee structure involved. 20 cents per double sided paper is the standard fee.
I should add, going through the official lines to get a record is probably the most important part. Don't just email the records department and say "hey please gib" make sure to go through the official channels or they may not even respond.
Would you know if the journals would count as a report or are reports basically just police reports. I do have the police reports and they've said that 'several pcs of paper (including journal)' were destroyed in January 2007. So a possibility is that they have a copy of the original or it's just destroyed. I also spoke to someone who had did a request similar to what you described (in person), and all he could get is the videos and the police report because they said that's all they had.
Would you know if the journals would count as a report or are reports basically just police reports. I do have the police reports and they've said that 'several pcs of paper (including journal)' were destroyed in January 2007. So a possibility is that they have a copy of the original or it's just destroyed. I also spoke to someone who had did a request similar to what you described (in person), and all he could get is the videos and the police report because they said that's all they had.
Every department is a little different but generally a police report is just that, a report. It isn't going to have evidence tied in beyond a few witness statements and description of other evidence. My expertise is in corrections, not policing but I have read more than a few police reports. If the journals were destroyed then that's it, but they would generally need a judges permission to do that