Review: ‘The Curious Case of …,’ starring Beth Karas

January 18, 2025

by Carla Hay

“The Curious Case of …” (Photo courtesy of Investigation Discovery)

“The Curious Case of …”

Culture Representation: The documentary/reality series “The Curious Case of …” features a predominantly white group of people (with some people of color) talking about crimes that took place in various parts of the United States.

Culture Clash: Various people are the accusers and are accused of crimes.

Culture Audience: “The Curious Case of …” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in true crime documentaries, but the show’s tabloid approach lowers the quality of this series.

“The Curious Case of …” is a spinoff series to “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace,”  a three-season series that became one of the biggest ratings hits for Investigation Discovery. Instead focusing on one case for the entire series, “The Curious Case of …” features a different case per episode. This shoddily made program is exploitative reality TV pretending to be an investigative docuseries. The only thing viewers will learn is how this tacky show enables attention seekers of dubious credibility.

“The Curious Case of …” is produced for Investigation Discovery by Hot Snakes Media, the same production company behind “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace.” The third and final season of “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace” devolved into antics and meltdowns with reality show editing. “The Curious Case of …” seems to be continuing that tone, to the detriment of the show’s subject matter.

Legal analyst Beth Karas, who was prominently featured in “The Curious Case of Natalia Grace,” is the host and narrator of “The Curious Case of …,” a show that seems to be way beneath her talent and expertise as a former assistant district attorney in New York City. Karas also used to be an on-air correspondent for Court TV in the 1990s and 2000s. On “The Curious Case of …,” she doesn’t do interviews or hard-hitting investigations. She’s just relegated to doing analyses and recaps of some of the cringeworthy shenanigans on display.

The first episode of “The Curious Case of …” (the only episode available for review before the series premiere) is nothing but a bait and switch that can be considered insulting to viewers looking for a real true crime story. The episode, titled “The Curious Case of … Bam Margera,” is advertised as a close look at the legal troubles of former “Jackass” star Bam Margera and whether or not he should be under a guardianship. This episode is more of a pathetic spectacle than a real investigation.

Margera was born in West Chester, Pennsylvania, on September 28, 1979. His birth name is Brandon Cole Margera. He is a former skateboarder and TV personality whose fame peaked in the 2000s. Margera has been publicly battling addictions to alcohol and other drugs for several years. He has had various arrests over the years and has been in and out of rehab.

Instead of being about Margera, the episode is really about a feud between entrepreneur Lima Jevremović (who was Margera’s guardian from June 2021 to July 2023) and YouTube personality BJ Corville, a lawyer who is the self-proclaimed leader of the Free Bam movement that believes he should not be under a guardianship. Karas says about the topic of the episode: “This is a story about the right to make your own decisions.” Actually, it’s not. It’s more about people making fools out of themselves on camera.

Margera is not interviewed for this show. Instead, the only exclusive footage the show was able to get of him are two brief clips (less than five minutes each) of Margera shouting angrily while he’s outside of the home property called Bam Castle that he owns in Pocopson Township, which is near West Chester. In the first clip, which is the episode’s opening scene, Margera and an unidentified female companion (whose face is blurred out on camera) are seen confronting Jevremović. This female companion is most likely model/actress Dannii Marie, who was Margera’s girlfriend at the time, but they got married in May 2024, after dating each other for less than a year.

It’s later explained that Jevremović’s guardianship of Margera had ended at the time this confrontation video was filmed, but Jevremović called police to report that she heard Bam threaten his older brother Jesse Margera, a musician who rents a home on the Bam Castle property. A Pennsylvania state trooper has arrived at the scene. Bam, wearing a black outfit and a long black towel over his head, walks over to Jevremović and says loudly to her: “Why are you so evil?”

Bam’s female companion, who is also hostile, points angrily to Jevremović and yells some choice words, including, “Get the fuck away from me!” Bam and his female companion both get into a car and leave. Ultimately, no one was arrested or detained in this incident.

In the second clip, Bam is seen ranting by himself about his brother. Bam is behind a fence on the Bam Castle property, after Bam has spray painted a wall with graffiti. Bam, who is wearing sunglasses and furry animal slippers, appears to be under the influence of an unknown substance. Whatever his state of mind is in this footage, it’s obviously not good.

The day after this “Curious Case of …” episode aired, Bam and Dannii Marie posted an Instagram video on January 14, 2025, in response to the episode. In the Instagram video, they both denounce Jevremović and claim that she was dangerous to Bam’s health when she was his guardian. In the video, Dannii Marie says that Bam is now “doing great.” Bam adds, “I’m just glad that part of my terrible, terrible life is over, and I’m not dead from it.”

This episode named after Bam Margera goes off on a number of tangents, and it fails to really be an insightful look at Bam and his problems. There are brief mentions of his 2022 arrest for assaulting Jesse. The legal outcome of that case is mentioned in the episode’s epilogue.

In an interview for this episode, Bam’s former “Jackass” co-star Stephen Glover, whose stage name is Steve-O, talks about himself as much as he talks about Bam. “Jackass” (a show about people doing reckless, gross and/or painful stunts) originally aired on MTV from 2000 to 2001, and grew into a franchise that included spinoff shows and several movies. Bam starred in two of those spinoff shows: “Viva La Bam” and “Bam’s Unholy Union.”

Glover says that when he and Bam first started working together, Bam wasn’t into drugs and Glover was heavily addicted to drugs. Glover (who says he’s been clean and sober since 2008) comments in the interview about Bam’s downward spiral: “Over the course of 20 years, we’ve had an almost total role reversal … It’s been so hard to watch.” Glover also questions the legitimacy of Jevremović being able to help Bam with Bam’s problems.

Bam’s mother April Margera gives a very short and tearful interview about her family turmoil. Bam’s father Phil Margera is not interviewed. According to Jevremović, Bam’s parents hired her in 2021 to be Bam’s unpaid legal guardian because they believed her alternative rehab therapy methods could work for Bam and because none of Bam’s family members or friends wanted to be his legal guardian. Jevremović is not a licensed therapist and does not have any medical credentials to treat any health issues.

At the time, Jevremović was the founder of Aura, a small Los Angeles-based business that used virtual reality as a way to treat addiction and mental illness. She babbles some explanation about how Aura uses software and virtual reality scenarios that users can see by wearing virtual reality headsets, in order to identify clients’ self-destructive “triggers.” Karas compares Jevremović’s murky methods to what convicted con artist Elizabeth Holmes tried to do with Holmes’ fraudulent Theranos company.

Why did Bam’s parents think Jevremović was a legitimate healer? Apparently, they heard about her so-called “rehab success” with a drug-addicted woman named Amanda Rabb, who was featured on the YouTube channel Soft White Underbelly, which interviews people with major problems—usually addictions and serious criminal activities. Jevremović and Rabb (who was born in 1995) went on Soft White Underbelly to talk about how Rabb was able to recover from her addictions with help from Jevremović and Aura.

Rabb died in 2021 of cardiac arrhythmia. But when Jevremović posted a video online to state Rabb’s cause of death, Jevremović said that Rabb died of a seizure disorder. Soft White Underbelly founder Mark Laita, who is also a photographer, says in an interview that Jevremović was in no way responsible for Rabb’s death.

By this time, Courville (who operates the YouTube channel BJ Investigates from her home in Princeton, New Jersey) had become an ally of Bam and already launched a campaign to discredit Jevremović. Courville’s followers are part of an online community called That Surprise Army. One of the followers, identified only has Jaimie, admits in an interview that she was one of the people who participated in online bullying of Jevremović by “doxxing” her. (The word “doxxing” is the term used for publicly revealing personal contact information about someone else without their permission. Doxxing is usually done with malicious intent.)

The episode mentions the Free Britney movement in comparison to the Free Bam movement. It’s a weak comparison because these are two very different legal situations. The Free Britney movement, which began online in 2020, was about fans of Britney Spears protesting against Spears being under a conservatorship that was overseen by her father Jamie Spears since 2008. The conservatorship ended in 2021.

Karas explains that a conservatorship involves control over many aspects over someone’s life, including financial control. Bam was under a guardianship, which consists of control over medical decisions in someone’s life, not financial control. Still, the Free Bam movement often mislabeled his guardianship as a conservatorship.

Courville says that after Bam reached out to her and met her in person, he began to publicly speak out about hating his guardianship and no longer wanted Jevremović or any guardian to be a part of his life. The episode shows multiple clips of Bam and other people describing Bam as the “Britney Spears of ‘Jackass.'” Karas points out that although Jevremović was not paid to be Bam’s guardian, Jevremović benefited by all the publicity and other perks that she was getting for being his guardian.

As an example of how off-topic this episode gets, there’s a large amount of time showing Jevremović’s family problems. Jevremović says she grew up in an abusive household where she, her younger twin sisters Dahlia and Dia, and their mother Linda were all abused by a family member who is not named. Dahlia and Dia have mental health issues, according to their sister Lima. At one point, Dahlia goes missing, so there’s footage of Linda, Dia and Lima looking for her.

Courville talks about her own family problems. She says that her father died from a methamphetamine overdose when she was in her first year of law school. Courville comments that her father’s death is why she has empathy for people who struggle with drug addiction. She also admits that she ramped up her efforts to prove that Lima Jevremović was a fraud after she saw that Lima stated a cause of death for Rabb that was different from the official medical examiner report.

Linda claims that she and her twin daughters had to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to flee from the harassment they were getting from That Surprise Army. Dahlia had a mental breakdown and Linda called the police because Linda said Dahlia attacked her. Police body cam footage shows Dahlia ranting about Linda forcing her into sex trafficking.

When Courville got ahold of this body cam footage, she posted it online. Accusations flew and gossip spread about Linda being a sex trafficker, which are allegations that Linda vehemently denies. All of this feuding is just so sordid and is not about Bam at all. Casey Fowler, a former member That Surprise Army, says he quit the group because he didn’t agree with how Courville and That Surprise Army were going after the Jevremović family. An epilogue in the episode says that Lima sued Courville for libel and that the case is “pending.”

And do we really need to know what are these feuders’ favorite movies? No, but “The Curious Case of …” tells us anyway. Courville says the comedy film “Legally Blonde” inspired her to become a lawyer. Lima says the movies that inspired her the most were the gangster dramas “The Godfather” and “Scarface.” You can come to your own conclusions about what that all means, but it’s an example of how the episode goes off the rails into irrelevant topics.

The editing, music and cinematography in “The Curious Case of …” reek of techniques used by trashy reality shows. For whatever reason, there are multiple and repetitive closeups of Courville (who wears fuzzy pink cat ears in her interview) pursing her lips in a smug manner or putting on lipstick. “The Curious Case of …” doesn’t seem to care about treating sensitive issues with dignity. This show ultimately embarrasses many of its participants for the sake of “entertainment.”

Investigation Discovery premiered “The Curious Case of …” on January 13, 2025.

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