A Raging Son: An analysis of 48 Hours

In ‘A Raging Son’, 48 Hours ‘shows’ the story of Danielle Thomas and Jason Bohn. With this episode, 48 Hours attempts to show us a crime that occurred between an innocent, naïve successful beauty; and a heinous, ‘supposedly’ mentally ill man. While they talk about his mental illness, it is also torn down at the end. They attempt to show how this murder was so very much worse than so many others, and how little the NYPD did to help. This is the framework that 48 Hours uses to describe this murder.

As with every 48 Hours episode, it starts with seemingly serious music, attempting to illustrate the seriousness and realness of the episode. The show starts out with the detective displaying the apartment where Danielle was murdered, and discussing how this case drove him to retirement. He describes how he realizes that someone tried to manipulate the time of death, by using ice bags to preserve the body, and using a fan to blow the stench of decay out the window. This detective, Dennis Frawley, is told, “You’ve covered thousands of cases”, to which he responds, “Not quite like this, not quite like this”.  In this way, they set very dramatic expectations for the audience, perhaps making us sit up in our seats and pay a little more attention. Somehow, this murder was going to be more gruesome, more horrifying, than any of his other cases. In a morbid sense, the audience likely thinks, “this should be good”.

This detective is the only law enforcement they interview, and the only other evidence that they give about the police response is the 911 calls that no one responded to. In this, they are pointing to the police as the main reason that anything happened, neglecting the side of the officers. It is briefly mentioned that she decided not to press charges, which puts the officers in a difficult position, unable to do anything besides the order of protection. They clearly did not want to have any law enforcement officials besides the detective to give any reasons for not responding. It could have been set as a low priority call, and been too busy to respond. It could have been that someone drove by, and all seemed quiet. None of that matters, however, because in this episode of 48 Hours, they did not interview that side of the story.

They also describe how unusual this crime is, as it is committed by a lawyer, and the victim is a Weight Watchers executive. This clearly shows that the ‘typical’ murder is not someone who has any of these attributes, but someone who is likely poor, and uneducated. They emphasize that she was well educated, kind, adventurous person. While they do mention the fact that Jason is a lawyer multiple times, they do not describe him in a personal way, besides the abuse that he suffered as a child. In this, they are putting the victim on a pedestal, and putting the suspect in a role of mental health issues. They also mostly show Danielle in a positive light, with nice clothes, hair done well, and, again, happy. It is here that they show Jason, in his orange prison clothing, handcuffed to the wall, while talking.

Then, they set the scene for a history of violent outbursts and abuse. The neighbor to Danielle and Jason called 911 about a fight they were having, and how Jason wouldn’t let Danielle leave. This is when they discuss how the police never responded, and it wasn’t for another two weeks that they heard from her, when she went in to the police station. They document her bruises, still there after two weeks. Jason then calls her, and she puts him on speakerphone, where he tells her he’ll hunt her down like a dog. The police arrest Jason, but this is when she refuses to press charges, and all they can do for her is a protection order. This is where the producers begin to blame the NYPD, for not doing more.

  

Once they move past the detective and the police, they go on to Jason, and to Danielle Thomas’ mother and grandmother. They paint a picture of severe abuse and neglectfulness that Jason suffered in childhood, and how his own mother’s abandonment of him left him traumatized, and led to his mental condition of intermittent explosive disorder. They show a few pictures and videos of Jason, little of those are happy. At this time, they also show Danielle in many pictures, all showing her happy, fun, and adventurous side. They also show a serious of pictures, which display a highlighted section of words. This enables them to pick out the most dramatic words from that definition, rather than giving the ‘boring’ full definition. One example is here, when they are showing the definition for intermittent explosive disorder. They highlight words that create the most drama, while editing out the rest.

When, after only five months of dating, Danielle follows Jason to Queens, Danielle’s family wants assurances that Danielle was in good hands. At this point, Danielle schedules a trip for Danielle’s mother and grandmother to meet Jason’s mother. However, this trip is cancelled, seemingly without a reason. They never interview Jason’s mother, perhaps because she didn’t want to be interviewed, or perhaps they didn’t want her side.

At this point, they discuss how Danielle, who had been staying at hotels and friends’ places, had moved back in with Jason. They went out for drinks, and she told one of Jason’s friends that he was abusing her. However, she went back to the apartment, because Jason had threatened her dog. That night, she called 911, and they play a small clip of that, again omitting information that may put a different light on things. They emphasize the NYPD’s ‘neglectfulness’ here, saying “The police failed to respond”, and “That would be the last time the NYPD would have a chance to save Danielle Thomas”.

They use key phrases and video next, discussing how, hours after “brutally beating to death his girlfriend Danielle”, he was buying ice to preserve her body. He also attempted to cover his tracks by responding to texts pretending to be her. All of this, combined with how they have described the abuse she had gone through, her worry for her dog instead of herself, and how the police ‘failed’, creates ill feelings toward Jason, keeping you from truly believing his side of the story. They paint a picture of a saint, a truly innocent naïve girl, brutally tortured by a horrendous villain.

At a certain point, during the discussion of why Jason murdered Danielle, they mention that he thought that she was going to leave him, just like his mother did. This, combined with the emotional turmoil at having his mother back in his life again, supposedly led to his ‘snap’. They point to the psychological disorder as leaving him out of control, which caused him to kill her. The prosecution has a difficult time believing this, at certain points saying things like, “this makes a mockery of the judicial system”, and how ridiculous it is that they are blaming “his mommy” for a murder so many years later. The defense maintains, however, that it was all due to a fit of rage caused by his illness that led to her death. At this point, they bring up the prosecution, who have a key piece of evidence about the murder. It is a recording of the murder, made by an accidental cell phone call which went to voicemail. This voicemail proves that the murder of Danielle took an hour, which one jury member says is what convinced her that Jason wasn’t out of control.

At a point in this episode, they are about to break to commercial, and offer the audience a chance to interact, by asking them if they think that Jason’s childhood should diminish his responsibility for murder.

They also do this at the end, asking the audience if they think he should spend the rest of his life in prison. This allows the almost entirely uninformed audience the chance to give their ‘professional’ opinion, and discuss what is so clearly right and wrong. This episode is only 41 minutes long, and in that time, these people have been able to receive all the necessary information to make such a critical judgement about the crime they have been shown.

            They show quite a few close-ups of Jason during the trial, with almost no expression on his face, perhaps bored. It is not until after he is found guilty, and is at sentencing, that he seems to express any emotion, in this case remorse. Before this phase, Danielle’s mother and grandmother express their faith, and that the bible teaches forgiveness, but that it would be much easier to forgive if he expressed any remorse about murdering Danielle. At sentencing, he tells the family of Danielle that he is sorry for what he’s done, and seems to break down.

           

This entire episode clearly shows how ‘infotainment’ can influence our feelings towards crime, by making us feel that psychological illness is not a reasonable defense, by making us believe that there is always one innocent victim, and one guilty perpetrator, and by making us believe that we cannot count on police to be there when we truly need them. By influencing how we feel about crime, they can influence laws on crime. In truth, there is almost never any crime that is truly about one innocent naïve person, and one heinous one. However, that is how the media would prefer you to see it, to make the crime that much more horrible, and that much more dramatic.