Threads App, Life Insurance Lookups, VINELink, Confidential Name Chances, Restraining Order Violations

 I'm Adam Richardson, and this is The Writer's Detective Bureau. Welcome to episode 134 of the Writer's Detective Bureau, the podcast dedicated to helping authors and screenwriters write professional quality crime related fiction. This week we're talking about the new Threads app, whether detectives can find out if someone is listed as a beneficiary on a life insurance policy, victim notifications when an inmate is released from prison.

Confidential name changes and violating protective orders. This week, meta the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp released a brand new social media app called Threads. It's essentially their version of Twitter, which was officially launched on July 5th, 2023, and it's tied to your Instagram account.

And I bet I know what you're thinking. Oh, geez. Yet another social media account, the gurus are going to tell me to join in order to reach my audience. Right. Well, let me tell you why I am loving this app and why you should consider signing up as well. And let's start with what threads is not. In what it does not have.

It is not a live streaming video app. It does not have dms, which means no creeps sending you eggplant pictures. It does not have pre-scheduled posting. So as far as I can tell, it doesn't have an ad dominated feed as you scroll through it. So what is it? It is largely text dominated, and since it's tied to your Instagram account, it's primarily real people, not bots.

And since it's primarily text-based, I'm seeing the writing and reading community really show up. All the kids scrolling through TikTok seem to be lost when it comes to threads and they don't see the point, which is keeping it a perfect place to connect with other writers and serious readers of your genre.

Mel Robbins posted this today on Threads. She said, of course, Instagram launches threads app the week, my entire team, and I go on effing vacation. I know this is supposed to replace Twitter, but I'm effing confused. So could you help an old lady out? What exactly should we be doing here? Because if we're gonna do anything, we gotta have a hell of a lot of fun.

Please, dear God, share your best creative suggestions below, and my team and I will take them on. I replied with, enjoy being yourself. Enjoy that there are no dms and no pre-scheduled posts. It's 1996 up in here, and we're all just connecting. Apparently that registered with a lot of her followers because it garnered a bunch of likes and reposts, including a, like from Mel herself.

I can't remember the last time I saw someone with a huge following, even seeing something I posted much less interacting with it. Now, I can't promise that threads will stay like this for the long term, but right now, The writing community is really enjoying the app and I have yet to get a single negative comment or interaction.

It seems like the trolls don't get the same kind of hiding in anonymity here that they do on that Bluebird app, so I would highly recommend you join me on threads. The onboarding process is smooth, assuming you already have an Instagram account, and when you first join, you'll be prompted to automatically follow all the people that already follow you on Instagram.

So you won't start with zero followers most likely, and even if you do, just click on my account, click on my follower list, and start following those that follow me. That might be a good start because my followers are 95% writing community. Now the key to success on any new social platform is to make your land grab early and just be yourself.

Save the promo and lead magnets for your other socials. That's not what threads is about quite yet. I'd suggest talking about what you're working on, or what you're thinking, or what you're feeling. Help others with their writing struggles, and before you know it, you'll have your own following of real people on threads that can't wait to see what you're gonna post next.

Annette Dashofy annettedashofy.com. Who is a USA Today bestselling author and writer, detective School alum asks this excellent question, how does law enforcement find out about life insurance policies for a murder victim? Specifically how large a policy is and who the beneficiaries are. First, how would one find out which company holds the policy, and then would they need a warrant to access the details?

Great question. Annette, the National Association of Insurance Commissioners has a public tool for beneficiaries to check for any policies in which they're listed. And the N A I C will work with law enforcement to do the same thing. I'll link to the public version of the tool in the show notes for this episode@writersdetective.com slash 1 3 4.

If you need to use this tool, just know that it can take several months for the search to be completed, and the only ones that get notified of the policy are the beneficiaries. So if you do a search for your great Aunt Martha, on your mom's side, you probably won't get notified of the results unless you are listed on the life insurance policy as a beneficiary.

As I understand it, the N A I C acts as the hub to this network of state insurance commissioners who interact with all of these insurance companies. So when a request is made, that gets shotgunned out to all the companies, and if they find anything, they'll reach out if they don't find anything. They don't respond at all.

But for the law enforcement request, it's the same thing. When I used it last about 20 years ago, I had to reach out directly to the N A I C to make a formal request. And as far as I know, it is still that way. So it's not as simple as just logging into an app for law enforcement. But the N A I C will work with us to identify any life insurance policy, policy holders and beneficiaries.

Whether the police need a warrant to access the details depends on which company holds the policy and whether their legal department demands one. Realistically, the company shouldn't demand one because if the homicide investigation proves that the life insurance policy was a factor in the motive or a factor in whether a beneficiary is the suspect in the killing of one of their insureds, Then there's a good chance the company won't have to pay out.

So if you want to skip the whole warrant part, if this plays into a story that you're telling, By all means have the insurance company play ball with the detectives

author BL Brinkman, who is one of the authors I recently connected with through the Threads app, and you can find her work at blbrinkman.com. Uh, she connected with me after I asked if anyone had any questions I could cover for this episode. And BL wrote. Victim notifications, name changes for safety's sake.

How does it work? Violation of a protective order. I could go on. And then she added a little laughing emoji. Well, I could go on too, BL, so thanks for the suggestions. And let me do just that. Let's start with victim notifications. I'm assuming we're talking about notifying a victim that their perpetrator is being released from custody.

This is something the victim has to be proactive about. Mainly because we as detectives generally are not notified about the release either. So that said, the survivor or victim and the detective can proactively register for Vine Link notifications about this inmate. I talked about this way back in episode 72, but it's worth covering again and off of the Vine's website they write, vine is the nation's leading victim notification network.

It allows survivors, victims of crime and other concerned citizens to access timely and reliable information about offenders or criminal cases in US jails and prisons. Register to receive automated notifications via email, text, or phone. Call or check custody status information online at any time.

Available in 48 states and covering 2,900 incarceration facilities. Vine is a life-saving service that offers peace of mind to millions of people every day, and vine, according to that super trustworthy source. Wikipedia stands for victim information and notification every day. VINELink is the name of the app and website, vinelink.com or the Android or iOS app, VINELink.

So the way it works is when one of the participating custodial facilities is preparing to release an inmate, they notify Vine or. VINELink, which in turn notifies anyone signed up for notifications about that inmate for your stories. How could I see this being used? I could easily see VINELink notifications being used to quickly explain an inciting incident, especially for a book further into a series like Book five in a series where you want to reveal that an antagonist from a previous book has been released from custody kicking off the story that you're now going to tell.

As for BL's question about name changes, and I'm taking the liberty of assuming we're talking about the victim of a crime here, the rules will be specific to the state where the person changing their name lives. Since I live and work in California, I can tell you that according to the 2023 California Rules of Court, which is its own set of procedures, someone can confidentially change their legal name.

Essentially, the court records. About this name change gets sealed, but to do so, in addition to the name change application with the court, there must also be a petition to the court that the order be sealed. So you can't just decide on a whim to have that name change be kept a secret. You have to convince a judge that sealing this order is necessary.

So if I was the attorney for the victim of your story, I would submit an affidavit to the court that explained what happened with a stalker or a violent. Former partner or whomever the perpetrator was, including mention of any crime reports and previously issued court orders such as an emergency protective order or a restraining order, that kind of thing, and basically explain that the name change needs to be kept secret and order to protect the petitioner from physical harm.

Any logical judge would grant the ceiling order and this order would be asked for at the same time as the name change. So I will be sure to add a link to the California court rules for this in the show notes as well as for violations of protective orders. Basically, if a court order is in place and the restrain party violates that order, like the stay at least 150 yards away from this person, um, that kind of term, or the shall not molest.

Annoy, threaten or harass terms, then that violation of the order is its own criminal offense for which the suspect can be arrested and charged with a new crime of violating a court order. I hope this helps with your writing BL and thanks for connecting with me on threads. So what questions do you have?

Send them to me no matter how small the question by going to writers detective.com/ask. I'd also like to thank my Patreon patrons for sponsoring this episode, especially my Gold Shield patrons, Debra Dunbar from debradunbar.com. CC Jameson from ccjameson.com, Larry Darter, Natalie Barelli, Craig Kingsman of craigkingsman.com.

Marco Carocari of marcocarocari.com. Rob Kearns of knightsfallpress.com. Robert Mendenhall of robertjmendenhall.com and Kayleigh for their support, along with my silver cuff link and coffee club patrons. You can find links to all of the patrons supporting this episode in the show notes at writersdetective.com /134.

Thanks again for listening and write well.