g h o s t w r i t e r

this blog is outdated!

2007-01-08T11:56:00.000-08:00

if you're reading this, you've no doubt noticed that my blog is very outdated. if you're interested in contacting me, please write to brn [underscore] boucher at yahoo dot com. thanks for your interest.

i should patent this idea

2006-03-11T18:20:00.000-08:00

Woman Googles her date - finds him on Most Wanted List

"He was the nicest guy you could possibly want to meet," Pam Smith thought of Fain after they met on her birthday, February 24. "Now, I feel like a fool."

devin smith turns himself in

2006-03-06T20:35:00.000-08:00

for the last year and a half, since finding out the identity of my former roommate, i have been a little worried that his brother devin, still on the run, would show up and execute me. he's pretty sinister. just look at the FBI warning.

today, march 6, 2006 (coincidentally the same day my interview aired on NPR!), devin smith walked into the hall of justice in san francisco (i'm not kidding you, that's what it's called, you expect spiderman to come flying at any moment) and put his hands in the air, silently turning himself in. he has answered no questions. he will be arraigned tomorrow on charges of involvement in the lang jewelry heist. the assistant DA called me with the news today. not having witnessed devin, i will not be called to testify, he assured me in his phone message!

[epic sigh of relief]

the la times doesn't have anything on it yet, but here's america's most wanted's typically moronic take: "When cops cornered Dino Smith in New York, half of what police say is a high-profile pair of burglarizing brothers was taken off the street. Cops just got the [other] half, Troy Smith, after he walked right into the police headquarters in San Francisco." pretty heroic police work!

oh wait, check out the la times now.

the NPR interview

2006-03-06T05:30:00.000-08:00

"Steve Inskeep talks with Brian Boucher about how he discovered a roommate had stolen his Social Security number, credit card information and names of family members. It's a cautionary tale about how much our personal information is easy to collect. This conversation begins a series about privacy."

morning edition, take two!

2006-03-04T14:50:00.000-08:00

thursday night i got a call from a producer at NPR. they lost the tape of my february interview with steve inskeep! we taped it again on friday, and, according to NPR's jim wildman:

> It's slated for air Monday morning, March 6, at 5:20, 7:20, 9:20, and 11:20 EDT.

i will post a link to it here after it airs.

morning edition

2006-02-09T08:16:00.000-08:00

i just came from NPR's new york studio, where i taped a brief conversation with morning edition host steve inskeep. our talk will be part of a larger story on privacy. they expect that it will air monday, february 20th, but watch this space for updates.

content-generated hilarity

2006-02-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

look at the content-generated ads at the bottom of the nymag page online:
Roommates.com
1,000s of available roommates. Free to list, search and contact.
Need a Roommate in NYC?
New York's premier roommate service Free to list your apartment
Need A Roommate?
100,000 To Choose From Photos and Online Contact!
roommate new york
Rental and Roommate Searching! Find It- roommate new york.

unreality television

2006-02-08T08:07:00.000-08:00

so last thursday, i settled on the final cut with my editors at the magazine. that saturday, my friend amy wilson called me to tell me she already had a copy of the magazine, which led to a citywide search for the mag on sunday, with every newsstand worker telling me "tomorrow morning! we have it tomorrow morning!"

then monday, before my girlfriend could even find a copy of it, i got an email from the magazine telling me that either paula zahn or anderson cooper wanted to interview me on cnn. ("you'd be crazy to do this," my girlfriend said. "you'd be crazy not to," said everyone else.) i accepted their invitation and we set up a time for taping the following day.

tuesday morning, the invitations multiplied, coming from dan abrams on the abrams report as well as keith olbermann, both on msnbc; rita cosby; cbs's early show for a segment on 'the dark side of craigslist'; and the mother of all hosts, geraldo rivera. yikes. this was terrifying. a friend of a friend who works in pr for an arts organization heard the list and said "i'm a little scared for you." i got exactly opposite advice on the same philosophy from different people. my pr friend said, "you'll never regret not going on geraldo. you might regret actually doing it." my friend michael, on the other hand, advised, "don't be fifty years old and wondering, 'what if i had gone on geraldo?'!"

i went home that night and watched some segments online (i don't have cable). the decision was simple.

he's on fox. no thanks, geraldo.

i also declined the invitation from rita cosby, fox alum whose claim to fame is an exclusive with jermaine and tito during michael's child molestation trial. i accepted the rest of the invitations on wednesday morning. paula zahn, who was to interview me that night, put me on hold while they assembled supplementary materials...and then lost interest. i never heard from olbermann or the cbs early show. i guess the short attention span of television viewers afflicts the producers as well? (sorry, couldn't resist.)

before taping for the abrams report, i talked to jamie, a producer, and told her i didn't even have cable so i wasn't familiar with the show. 'oh that's okay,' she reassured me. 'we usually have two lawyers on, screaming at each other about something.' thursday morning they sent a car for me and brought me to a midtown studio, where the beautiful yoko made me up to look like a slightly more monochrome version of myself. what was so strange about taping it was how normal and unfrightening it seemed. i sat in a booth, looked at a camera, listened to an earbud and spoke into a microphone as if having a cell phone conversation. i wasn't on a set and i wasn't looking at my host, so it was not that intimidating. read a transcript.

the other night i watched the tape, which was truly a bizarre experience. who was this confident, un-terrified guy? whose was that unfamiliar voice? (similarly, when i look at my name in the magazine, on their pages, in their font, it's as though it's someone else's name. it's only when i see my face and my words that i can believe it again.) on tv i look like just another guest on the show. it's strange for a public-radio snob like me to be slotted into all the quick cuts and flashy graphics.

thank god, i tape an interview with steve inskeep for morning edition tomorrow. they are not sending a car. back to reality!

read the article online now at...

2006-01-31T09:25:00.000-08:00

http://newyorkmetro.com/news/features/15590/index.html

and see me in my first TV appearance on the abrams report on msnbc, thursday feb. 2 (or friday feb. 3) at 4 and 6 eastern time. wish me luck. hopefully i don't break out in flop sweat like albert brooks in broadcast news.

questions for SF assistant DA jerry coleman

2006-01-29T00:23:00.000-08:00

bb: while newspapers say that my former roommate is 47 years old, probation records make him 55. when will he be eligible for parole?

jc: dino smith has to do 85% of his 23-year sentence (minus whatever credit he has from his NYC capture in june 04), so about 18 1/3 years, or March, 2023.

bb: so he'll be either 65 or 73, at least, when he gets out. part of smith's journal that got cut from the article for space reasons read, "I should have called the cops as soon as he walked up to my car. Why did I even give MZ the fucking time of day. I know, the money right? Wrong, I knew something was wrong, something didn't sound right. And he's the only one going to make out with it all too, every dime." as you know, this may refer to mark zimmelman, the owner of lang antique and estate jewelry, suggesting this was an inside job. dino reportedly told SFPD inspector dan leydon that he and zimmelman had masterminded the job together, and as romney reported, the thieves "tunneled through the wall in the exact place from where safes had been moved aside with zimmelman's knowledge one week earlier."

jc: our office continues to pursue all criminal leads concerning this historic jewelry heist, but our primary focus remains on the actual robbery perpetrators, one of whom remains at large.

jerry coleman invites me to california

2006-01-29T00:18:00.000-08:00

when he sent me my e-ticket, the confirmation number was DFGBXC, and coleman helpfully supplied a mnemonic: dino freedom gone brian xray coming west.

"you'll be returning to new york on a late flight, arriving tuesday morning at 6," he wrote to me. "but there'll be a movie!"

"it better be a damn good one," i groused.

"i'll see if i can arrange for the great train robbery."

"you'll arrive saturday evening. i won't speak to you then because i'll be in line for star wars," he told me.

when i was then waiting in the courtroom, rutledge, the defense attorney, was late for the one o'clock start time. "i move that he be fined one million dollars for tardiness," inspector dan joked. rutledge walked in at about eight minutes after the hour. when he saw coleman, he asked, "so -- is the force with you?" apparently everyone knew the DA's weekend plans. just then dino walked in and the joking stopped.

inspector dan casts the cops for the movie

2006-01-29T00:11:00.000-08:00

when they were wrapping up searching my apartment, sergeant kane of the new york robbery squad joked that I should not go public with my story or a screenplay without checking in with them first. with that prompt, even the straight men couldn't resist: "okay, i'm gonna tell you who plays who," said gardner. pointing to sergeant kane, with his slicked-back black hair: "alec baldwin." indicating small, stocky fellow SFPD detective dan leydon: "sylvester stallone." he turned to strawberry-blond new york detective kevin flannigan: "any suggestions?"

"just not david caruso, please. no more david caruso!"

i joined in: "who plays gardner?"

gardner: "don knotts."

as you know, dino had cast the movie of his life, in a way flattering to himself, naturally. he pictured himself as an innocent man on the run from corrupt cops out to frame him. he even took notes on san francisco police accused of misconduct and practiced his alibi in his journal. presumably, the movie would have shown him to be a persecuted innocent, like samuel l. jackson in the negotiator or denzel's mistreated hero in john q, both in his dvd collection (along with goodfellas, the italian job, the usual suspects and so on). and who among us hasn't thought about who would play us and how our lives would be given a stronger narrative arc on screen?

gardner, on his way out: "oh, and by the way, do you have a sister named _____?"

i frowned. "no. i have a sister-in-law named _____ boucher who lives in ____."

"very good," said gardner.

bewildered, i asked, "what was that?!"

they laughed. "now, mr. boucher," said kane, "we don't go to somebody's house without doing a little digging on them first. we gotta make sure you are who you say you are! you could be one of the bad guys!" it was a test. gardner had asked me a question that someone impersonating me might have gotten wrong (i have no sisters).

"what did you find on me?" i asked.

"well, i hate to tell you this, mr. boucher," said gardner, "but you're pretty boring."

devin's letter to john walsh of AMW

2006-01-29T00:01:00.000-08:00

after america's most wanted aired their segment on the smith brothers, devin responded with a letter to host john walsh, accusing him and AMW of character assassination and claiming innocence. i'd love to stroll into police headquarters and work this out, he wrote, but he claimed that vindictive police and prosecutors (and his inability to afford good counsel) meant there was no way he would get a fair trial. "assuming i'm not murdered first, i know how they will turn on the courtroom theatrics along with prosecutorial misconduct," he wrote. "in the process, i'll get stuck with the dim-witted lawyer from my cousin vinny. i'd rather take my chances with hypertension as a fugitive."

welcome to ghostwriter.

2006-01-26T19:44:00.000-08:00

Seeking roommate for one-bedroom in Washington Heights. It's a bit small for two but I have to catch up on some bills. Two friendly cats, but we keep clean because I'm a little allergic myself. A little more than half of the $950 rent gets you the privacy of the bedroom.

with that simple craigslist ad, posted in august, 2003, started my adventure, published as the article "my roommate the diamond thief" in new york magazine. please read it and drop me a line. the full article will appear here on february 13.