Quick Take
"Line of Blood," the first of whose 10 episodes dropped Monday, follows from Jana Marcus' 2020 book about the 1941 murder of her great-uncle, though the podcast, she says, is "focused on the murder, the Mob and the justice system."
In 2020, longtime Santa Cruzan Jana Marcus had a story to tell. It was a story from her own family history, a shocking and lurid tale of murder starting with the gunning down of her great-uncle in 1941 in New York City. It was, above all, a cold case investigation that threw a light on organized crime practices in midcentury America, and even shaded into the supernatural a bit.
Marcus told her tale like most authors with a story do — with a book, called “Line of Blood: Uncovering a Secret Legacy of Mobsters, Money and Murder.” Now she’s telling the story in a different way.
On Monday, Marcus – already well-known in the community for her work as a photographer – unveiled her latest project, a new true-crime podcast based on “Line of Blood,” the true story of her great-uncle, Abe Babchick, who was killed in what used to be known as a “gangland slaying” while sitting in his car. The incident had been buried in family secrecy and scandal for years. But Marcus had a not-so-secret weapon in her quest to uncover the truth: her own father. She is the daughter of the late Morton Marcus, a celebrated poet and film critic who was at the center of Santa Cruz’s literary scene for decades before his death in 2009. Morton Marcus had been fascinated by the murder of his maternal uncle and how it affected his life as a child.
Jana Marcus first became intrigued with the story when she found an old newspaper clipping reporting on Babchick’s murder. Though her grandmother (the victim’s sister) refused to talk about the incident, Marcus, with the help of her father, embarked on a saga that touched on everything from the notorious crime syndicate known as Murder Inc. to an eerie encounter with the supernatural.
The book went deeper into some of the mysteries of her family and her relationship with her father, but the podcast, she said, “is really just focused on the murder, the Mob and the justice system.”
The story will unfold over the course of 10 roughly half-hour episodes (with a couple of more supplementary episodes to follow).
“It’s not me reading from the book,” said Marcus. “I had to write it in a style that I could repeat in a kind of relaxed, storytelling way. So, it’s really just Jana telling you a story.”
When the book was first published, Marcus attracted the interest of TV producers and filmmakers, and she considered making her own documentary, but all those plans were scotched by the COVID pandemic.
Part of the outline of the podcast is to keep audience interest with a “cliffhanger” approach. “People are already mad at me for Episode 1,” she said. “They’re like, ‘You left us hanging. We have to wait a whole week.’ The audience I’m trying to appeal to is that true-crime detective group, and they love stuff that’s interactive. So, every time I release an episode, I release all the documents that go with that episode on the website. So they can read all the facts, and who knows, maybe they can come up with something new.”
“Line of Blood” is available wherever you get your podcasts, or here. New episodes land every Monday.
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