In a meeting of the towns Board of Police Commissioners on Thursday evening, Police Chief John Drumm said that if the courts ultimately ruled in favor of releasing the records, it could create a precedent that would affect police investigations across the state. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The medical examiner's office soon concluded that Hamburg died from "blunt and sharp force injuries." Madison Hamburg. If you say youre going to keep a file closed forever on the chance that something might develop, that means the public in most cases will never get to look at these files, Schulz said Friday. The four-part series was released at the end of 2020. The first is to further understand his mother as a person because, as he says early in the first episode, children rarely know who their parents actually are. Murder on Middle Beach calls a handful of suspects into question. In the following years, they appeared in court together numerous times after Beach Hamburg said her ex-husband failed to make alimony and child support payments. Niemeyer appealed the decision with the Freedom of Information Commission. There's already inherent bias from my point of view. Conway and Ali are the ones who discovered the body and Conway said Ali acted "strangely." According to David Schulz, a lawyer representing the plaintiff, the department was only withholding the information on the off chance that new information about the case should come to light, and that there really was not an ongoing investigation. So I pressed everyone pretty hard, and I ended up with 160 hours of footage. Its not a normal father-son catch-up scene. If Barbara dropped Ali off at 7:47 am and the court hearing was at 9:30 am, perhaps the father had enough time to commit the murder. More than a decade after Barbara Hamburg was murdered outside her Madison home, the fight over whether the public should have access to the investigation into her death is continuing to escalate a fight that could have broad implications for access to cold case files across Connecticut. It was a really tough thing to balance with telling a compelling story, but I think it was knowing that the goal was to subvert the genre in a way, to lean in to those more kind of compelling conventions in order to eventually break them. So in a sense, it feels like we as viewers are coming full circle, which raises the question: What actually makes for a satisfying end for a true crime series? It's unknown just how many people Barbara had under her at the Gifting Tables, but she was accused of recruiting members from her AA group. It doesn't have a tidy ending, but grief rarely does. When my mom died I really was kind of orphaned and Savannah became like a home, and I turned to faculty, people I worked with, people in the community as surrogate parents in a way, and so I kept in touch. ------------------------------------------, details presented in "Murder on Middle Beach", killed by someone she had crossed through her participation in "The Gifting Tables,", "The Jinx," the shocking 2015 HBO docuseries, "true criminal justice" documentaries and docuseries. Throughout the mini-series, the main suspect seemed to be Barbara's ex-husband and Madison's father, Jeffrey Hamburg. But the Freedom of Information Commission has argued that police failed to prove the case was active enough to warrant withholding the file or that the investigation was heading toward an arrest. There are strong public policy reasons for denying the general public unfettered access to investigation files, while the police are actively investigating a crime and continuing to collect new evidence and pursue new leads, Klau wrote in his decision. Through interviews with family members and friends of his mother, Madison is able to come to a better understanding of who his mother was as a person. The Madison Police Department is appealing a court ruling upholing an order by the state's Freedom of Information Commission that the department release all records except signed witness statements related to the unsolved murder of Barbara Beach Hamburg. Madison Hamburg and his late mothers sister, Conway. As we see in the documentary, some even suggest that Conway was envious of Barbara because of the money, success, and love the latter was able to attain. One of two masterminds to be jailed for their roles in the Gifting Tables, was Hamburg's aunt Jill Platt. But Madisons is not a traditional true crime documentaryhe didnt want to fetishize or agonize over the gory details of the murder. "We miss her dearly, and it is a great loss to not have her with us," she said at a 2011 vigil, the New Haven Register reported at the time. Beach Hamburg had been expected in court, along with Hamburg, on the morning of her death, but never made it to her 9:30 a.m. appearance. 7: Caught in a Bad Romance, Brandon Sklenar is the Baddest Dutton of Them All, The 'Outer Banks' S3 Finale Is Intense as Hell. She totally got it and they made us an offer. She cites the fact that the teenager had a rocky relationship with her mother, which was only intensified by Ali's struggles with borderline personality disorder. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. The brutal crime was committed in 2010 when Madison was 19-years-old. The courts justices challenged both Dugas and Harmon with questions. We have to maintain the integrity for them, he said. The resulting documentary series was picked up by HBO, and the four-part Murder on Middle Beach premiered late last year. Im hoping that this comes through sooner than later so that the town can hopefully work with these two other agencies and not foot a tremendous legal bill, he added. She remained in class until Conway picked her up. In 2019, Madison Hamburg and Niemeyer requested the departments investigative files under the states public records law, but the department refused, claiming the case remains an open and ongoing investigation. At the end of the series, Madison wins his case with the Freedom of Information Commission to receive case files relating to his mother's homicide investigation. And we ended up pitching to Lisa Heller, who was one of our last pitches at HBO and it was just incredibly emotional. The case raises questions about exactly when a cold case is considered cold enough to release the investigative files publicly and likely is destined for much further debate by both the judiciary and general assembly, Klau reasoned. He never forcefully denies killing Barbara in the series. What details, if any, does Conway remember about the person she planned to hire to kill Barbara? The answer much like some of the details presented in "Murder on Middle Beach" is complicated. We still don't know who killed Barbara Hamburg, but with the renewed attention paid to the case thanks to Murder on Middle Beach, we could one day find out. Dowling said the Board of Police Commissioners and the Board of Selectmen were working on setting up a joint meeting, and that the lawsuit would be a topic of discussion for the meeting. We may earn a commission from these links. The decision also said police failed to prove that, even if there was a prospective law enforcement action, disclosure of the requested records would be prejudicial to such action.. HBO. The only way we can have oversight or accountability for law enforcement is to know what theyre doing.. In a statement ahead of the hearing, Hamburgs son, Madison Hamburg, who helped make an HBO documentary series about his mothers death called "Murder on Middle Beach," called for the records release. Copyright 2023 Salon.com, LLC. It is more than a reasonable possibility, pun intended, that the Connecticut Appellate or Supreme Court will review this decision. Through Madison's eyes and camera lens, we watch as his relationship with his father crumbles, as he has to inform Ali that Conway believed she was capable of killing her own mother, as he has to badger his local police department again and again (before finally escalating to a formal Freedom of Information Act appeal) for a 1,600-page case file with details about their investigation into Barbara's death. Here's everything you need to know about Beach Hamburg's death and "Murder on Middle Beach.". Madison Hamburg and producer Anike Niemeyer had requested the files while filming the series and were summarily denied by the department. "Murder on Middle Beach" adds to the genre as well. It is difficult to understand how denying public access to criminal files in perpetuity serves the public interest in solving crimes and bringing perpetrators to justice, wrote Judge Daniel Klau in his decision. The four-part HBO Max series, now available on Sky Crime and NOW TV in the UK, follows director Madison Hamburg as he investigates the unsolved murder of his own mother, Barbara Beach Hamburg, on . When Barbara Hamburg was brutally bludgeoned to death outside her home on Middle Beach Road in Madison, Connecticut in 2010, her sister Conway Beach publicly mourned her loss. Because of the case's mysterious nature, the Internet is full of theories pondering who killed Barbara Hamburg. Zach Murdock can be reached at zmurdock@courant.com. Throughout these four episodes, Madison Hamburg, and us, learned the truth about the life Barbara Hamburg really lived - that she was a recovering alcoholic who, at the . Barbara Beach Hamburg, Madison's 48-year-old mother, had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death, her body hidden under a pile of lawn-furniture cushions outside their Connecticut home. The day Barbara was found killed, she and Jeffrey were actually due in court to discuss Jeffrey's claim that he could not afford his child support and alimony payments. It's a sobering, overwhelming realization. By the end of the series, the only suspect who has a truly rock-solid alibi is Ali, anda number of questions about that, in my mind, remained unanswered: Who was the masked man who was allegedly seen lurking outside Barbara's window the day before she was murdered? While Beach's husband (and Madison's father) Jeffrey was questioned early on about his ex-wife's murder, there have still been no arrests made in the case. In 2022 Otte was awarded "Rookie of the Year," by the New England Newspaper & Press Association. How did you balance your craft and the desire to tell a captivating story from a film perspective with the personal elementworking with your own family members and telling your own painful story? "I was so messed up, I didn't know what to do. Im not trying to suggest anything was done improperly here, but theres no way to know without seeing what they did. She frequently cried when talking about her sister, and more than once, displayed anger towards what happened. That is as it should be. Drumm, however, told CT Examiner that his reasoning for appealing the decision was two-fold: the potential of damaging what he said were ongoing efforts by the department to solve the case, and the need to protect the interests of the family. "I can't get into details, but it's been extremely illuminating.". Ashlie D. Stevens is Salon's deputy food editor. I've written before about the trend of "true criminal justice" documentaries and docuseries the kind wherein the narrative is less about solving a mystery and more about turning the magnifying glass on the legal proceedings that surrounded it are an opportunity for filmmakers to present a fuller picture of criminality and victimhood. Beach Hamburg's sister, Conway, and her great-aunt, Jill Platt, are featured prominently in "Murder on Middle Beach," as is her mother. That all falls out of your test, doesnt it?. I know the case is still open. The director of HBO's true crime docuseries discusses the emotions of investigating his own mother's murder. On March 3, 2010, Barbara Beach Hamburg was found dead in her Connecticut house. The police could have an incentive to just not become the focus of second-guessing, Ecker said. I was so angry. Madison's's father, Jeffrey Hamburg, was presented as a main person of interest throughout the series. The personal gruesomeness of the murder and covering her body like he regrets it feels too personal to be a hit man. In the series, she denies killing Barbara while showing little to no remorse for her past crimes. Even asking these questions, it's just surfacing stuff that we were gonna have to work through and if we didnt work through it, this could end unresolved and cause more destruction than there was when we started. Jeffrey appears in Murder on Middle Beach where he repeatedly refuses to talk about Barbara's murder and insists that his ex-wife had dark secrets that he can't discuss. Unlike other true-crime documentaries, "Murder on Middle Beach" doesn't focus exclusively on Beach Hamburg's death. Why did Jeffrey's financial dealings make Barbara feel like her family's safety had been compromised? He also said that he had new evidence on the case that he did not want to share. The department claims the case remains active and releasing the file could hinder a prospective prosecution or even result in witness intimidation. A hired killer just wouldn't fit that description. . 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