ABSTRACT
A report in the <italics>New York Times</italics> on August 9, 1989, almost three years after Jennifer Levin's murder, begins: "There was a body sprawled beneath a tree. There were clusters of detectives and an ambulance parked behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And there was the suspect, graciously giving interviews. Beneath a bright blue sky yesterday, Central Park again became the scene of an ugly crime". Common sense dictates that a sensational crime is one that exhibits an increasing distance between the representation and the actual event, usually through the registers of "entertainment" value. The fantastic nature of Chambers's confession provided ample fodder for the tabloid press. Mike Hepworth's and Bryan Turner's invaluable work, <italics>Confession: Studies in Deviance and Religion</italics>, takes the essentialist position to task, demonstrating the historically specific determinations of confession and the way in which confession legitimizes hierarchies of authority. Controlling the movement between the inside and the outside is an important application of social power.
