A Call for Accountability in True Crime
Once considered an uncontrollable phenomenon, serial murder is unique among criminological concepts in that it has retained that image and status long after a pronounced decline in its prevalence. As Dr. Philip Jenkins explains in the seminal text Using Murder: The Social Construction of Serial Homicide, serial murder statistics have been manipulated for personal gain since the construction of the phenomenon in the 1970s. Back then it was the Justice Department who overinflated the prevalence of serial murder to justify funding what was then called the Behavioral Science Unit. But today, private individuals use wildly inaccurate figures to bolster their own personal brand while marketing themselves as crime-fighting superheroes. One author has ridiculously positioned herself as a “fearless and fierce” monster slayer before the release of her new book. Some are so desperate to revive long dormant cases that they create false scenarios as a veiled attempt at selling more of their own books. Others yearn to cast offenders into the serial killer mold and attribute motives to them without knowing the entire fact pattern.
As part of a promotional agenda for his recently released book, Unmasked: My Life Solving America’s Cold Cases, former Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Office investigator Paul Holes cited an unsubstantiated figure related to the current prevalence of serial murder in the United States. In light of previously established data on the subject, the number of serial murderers quoted by Mr. Holes as roaming the nation — at least 2,000 — is astronomical and strains credulity given how far it is from our current reality. Another effort that bends statistics to suit a theory comes in the form of the upcoming book Killers Amidst Killers: Hunting Serial Killers Operating Under the Cloak of America’s Opioid Epidemic by Billy Jensen. Jensen uses unsubstantiated assumptions put forth by Murder Accountability Project data to support a thesis that several serial murderers are operating in a small geographic area and killing with impunity. While ignoring that serial murderers have been luring victims into sex-for-drug exchanges for decades, Jensen positions his discovery as a ‘new kind of murder’. But modern serial murderers are not cloaked by anything other than the same apathy we have shown each other since the formation of society. In fact, these offenders have been shown to be far more brazen, impulsive, and incompetent than their counterparts from previous generations and — as a result — are not as capable of capitalizing on phenomena such as the opioid epidemic as many assume them to be.
As evidenced by the 2020 movie trailer for the needless Chronicle of a Serial Killer which relies on enormous prevalence estimates to justify its existence, Jensen and Holes are far from the only people to overblow statistics to fit an agenda. The difference is that Jensen and Holes are both what has become known as a ‘true-crime personality’ — someone with a manufactured persona who latches themselves onto a cause or purpose with the expressed goal of bolstering their fanbase and driving them to buy their products. There is an important distinction between people like Jensen and Holes and others in the true-crime landscape. The former will do anything to amass wealth, power, and fame while the latter care deeply about helping the missing and the murdered. It can be difficult to tell the difference in the age of self-promotion where everyone is trying desperately to get their message across. Andrea DenHoed writes in The My Favorite Murder Problem that some efforts in true crime intentionally create a “recklessly limited worldview” where certain hosts prepare viewers and listeners to be perpetually on high alert for the boogeyman in the shadows. Even though crime rates have been falling for decades, the proliferation of true crime can make it appear that murderers and rapists are lurking around every corner. Fearmongering, of course, is a deliberate tactic which keeps consumers returning for more content and reciting catchphrases and slogans that conveniently fit squarely on t-shirts and water bottles available for purchase.
Those who have only a cursory exposure to the topic often claim that serial murderers are omnipresent and untraceable experts in their craft who sneakily troll for victims and mechanistically kill others without remorse, consequence, or oversight. They question how, under those conditions, we could possibly know what occurs in the ‘dark figure of crime’ that they inhabit. But empirical research demonstrates that these views are based on longstanding myths. One such myth, that serial murderers stop at nothing to acquire victims and easily dispatch them repeatedly over their long careers, undercuts how difficult it is to surreptitiously kill someone and get away with it in the 21st century. It was recently discovered, for example, that longevity is based on several factors, many of which are difficult or impossible to reach in today’s modern world. Still, that does not stop people from believing that serial murderers can kill scores of people over their lifetime even if those totals rarely prove to be true.
Research has also shown that the newest generation of the serial murderer is far too incompetent and impulsive to string together even enough homicides to meet the lower boundaries of the definitional requirements of some scholars, let alone enough killings to constitute a lifelong career. Recent cases over 2021–22, for example, demonstrate that the majority of series begin and end within weeks’ time. Our heavily surveilled world, better connected law enforcement agencies, and vigilant potential victims ensure that serial murderers encounter far more obstacles than those who killed during the Golden Age of serial murder (1970s, 80s, 90s). Samuel Little, the most prolific serial murderer in United States history, is often given as an example of a typical, stealthy, and successful killer. But Little, who killed during the height of serial murder, was an anomaly who unwittingly capitalized on America’s blind spot for both offenders and victims of color and benefited from the one-time widespread disregard for the lower-class individuals he favored targeting. Serial murderers are not evil geniuses; many simply get very lucky in their attempts to evade capture.
It is easy to see how someone like Mr. Holes, who spent decades of his life searching for the same individual, would believe that all serial murderers behave the same way that Joseph DeAngelo did in his heyday. Pair this myopic tunnel vision with a blind acceptance of other wildly asinine prevalence estimates and the ongoing societal obsession with the same decades-old stories about Bundy, Gacy, Dahmer, Berkowitz, the Behavioral Science Unit, and criminal profiling, and who can blame those who fail to see how the phenomenon of serial murder has evolved since the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. After all, authors have intentionally focused on Golden Age killers — given the wide breadth of knowledge already amassed from which they can cull — often due to a personal aversion to the blandness of modern-day murders. In the foreword of his new book, Butcher’s Work: True Crime Tales of American Murder and Madness, author Harold Schechter proclaims that “only a tiny fraction of heinous killers [have] achieved…enduring infamy…while once notorious killers have been completely forgotten.” Part of Schechter’s motivation in writing Butcher’s Work was to offer “accounts of four highly sensational murder cases” because they “deserve to be rescued from the near oblivion into which they have fallen.” But did they truly need to be rescued? Should we, as scholars, be advocating for the enduring infamy of killers? What can be gained from resurrecting these stories, aside from providing the writer with notoriety? Butcher’s Work is reminiscent of another of Schechter’s tomes titled Did You Hear What Eddie Gein Done? in that it exists purely to revive the specter of long dead and buried killers — offenders society has forgotten for a reason — solely to benefit those retelling these stories.
The allure of the serial murderer remains incredibly strong fifty years on from their first noticeable appearance in modern society. As one writer states, serial killers are “super cool” and have left an indelible mark on us. They are still so profitable that battles are waged in court over their estates. A reliable moneymaking formula today often finds a podcaster using their audience to launch a book about a serial murderer in the hopes that it will become a television show. Another scheme finds executives repurposing old real-world cases for entertainment while updating them for a modern audience, made popular by two profiteering brothers who have become celebrities after forming a production company upon retiring from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Both brothers worked on Criminal Minds, a popular program that will make its return to the air this year after being cancelled in 2020. The premise of the revival is not only incredibly contrived and ridiculous but follows the same beat as Kevin Bacon’s equally insane The Following: “The FBI’s elite team of criminal profilers come up against their greatest threat yet, an UnSub who has used the pandemic to build a network of other serial killers. As the world opens back up and the network goes operational, the team must hunt them down, one murder at a time.” In a sign of the times, families can gather around the TV with their loved ones on Thanksgiving Day and make watching murder and mayhem a new family tradition. If one prefers to spend time with a serial murderer on Christmas, Yule Log is available to make it a violent night.
Serial murderers have been used for a variety of reasons over the decades, mainly as a means to profit from their crimes, but we are approaching the point of total saturation with this genre. Still, there are reliable gimmicks that continue to work such as featuring serial murderers as part of a marketing ploy to sell beer, card games, video games, board games, insurance, and festival tickets, or a plot device to make the premise of entertainment edgy, progressive, funny, topical, unique, or fun, or as the centerpiece of a movie or book that interrogates generational issues, or as either a desperate play to explain an equivocal death or to inject doubt into an ongoing narrative, or as a means to rehabilitate an actor’s career. The serial killer title is even invoked as a marketing tactic to describe regular criminals and illustrate just how depraved they are in comparison. Imagine making a horror comedy such as When the Screaming Starts where the main character aspires to become a serial murderer and marketing it as a hilarious take on how would-be serial killers stumble on the way to their first murder. We live in a day and age where it is in vogue to attend crime festivals and consume drinks named after notorious murderers all while its hosts sit smugly behind the scenes amassing wealth, power, and notoriety. But these self-serving behaviors only confuse the public who unknowingly view the distorted manner in which serial murderers are portrayed across these mediums as an accurate representation of how they behave in real life. Worse yet, maintaining the relevance of Golden Age serial murderers through entertainment also has real-world consequences in the form of handing serial killer fanatics a roadmap, providing aspiring serial murderers fodder for their own deviant desires, giving killers role models to emulate, or allowing everyday people to make hurtful comparisons that end in bloodshed.
When writing Killer Data: Modern Perspectives on Serial Murder for Routledge, it became readily apparent that the modern-day serial murder phenomenon is far different than what transpired during serial murders’ Golden Age. Not only have the offenders altered their behavior patterns, but the commodification of serial murder has exploded — shifting from the news media’s one-time fixation with whatever homicide series occurred that week to the constant churn of streaming services who recycle the same stories across their platforms. The Oxygen network intends to bring the umpteenth hour of Bundy to airwaves this winter and will put on display the “twisted thoughts of a killer and the chilling insights…pulled from their minds” all while either exploiting or omitting the experience of the victims and undercutting just how banal these individuals actually are. Netflix and Ryan Murphy have delivered yet another Dahmer biopic to the airwaves (the second such effort in five years), this time featuring popular actor Evan Peters. Not to be outdone, Joe Berlinger released Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes on Netflix, boasting “never-before-heard audio interviews between Dahmer and his defense team, delving into his warped psyche” all — to the jubilation of serial killer fans — just in time for Halloween. This program follows Berlinger’s other unnecessary — yet supremely profitable — recent efforts to replatform both Bundy and Gacy. Berlinger’s unceasing hyperfocus on age-old serial murderers — coupled with unscrupulous gatekeeping behavior — is the ultimate example of the purposeful alchemization of the offender’s bad actions into personal gain by resurrecting the spectacle surrounding these cases. There is no insight left to muster here, except that which exposes the innermost desires of the creators who parasitically attach themselves to killers in the hopes of syphoning the last vestiges of their fame. All this accomplishes is a hijacking of the news cycle, clogging it with mentions of decades old cases:
Other programming highlights just how sadistic particular killers can be but offers such exposure for the shock value while giving the illusion that this type of offender is ubiquitous and can be understood merely by chatting with him. Another byproduct of generalizing from one set of offenders is the myth that all serial murderers drive white panel vans. This type of pandering by hosts eager to prove they are something special has regressively altered the way modern-day offenders are viewed while connecting a network of fans who relish in the deeds of their predecessors. Fans of the Silence of the Lambs can now book a holiday stay, even on Mother’s Day, while adorned with a t-shirt dedicated to the fictional Hannibal Lecter or Buffalo Bill. One woman with an admitted obsession for Netflix documentaries about serial killers secretly married a murderer after telling her family she was vacationing at Disney. Another woman covered her body in 2,000 dollars’ worth of Bundy and Dahmer tattoos.
The allure of the likes of Bundy, Dahmer, and other Golden Age serial murderers is unlikely to fade anytime soon. Although the Bundy movies featuring Zac Efron and Elijah Wood ignited a fervor at the time of their releases, the intensity of that blowback was minimal compared to Murphy’s Monster. A unique aspect of Monster was the mixture of explosive outrage and incessant adulation that followed. While some expressed disgust at blatant efforts to cash in, such as a nightclub’s desire to hold a serial killer themed party for Halloween, others have given Dahmer and his ilk new life in the 21st century by adding him to popular video game Grand Theft Auto, dressing as him on Halloween, pretending to be him for a day, or trying to purchase his glasses. Even after knowing that the creation of true crime as entertainment torments victim’s families, some on TikTok complained that the Netflix series was not gory enough for their tastes even after they helped make it the second biggest English Netflix show ever to air. There is no end in sight for this phenomenon especially since Seventeen Magazine has begun to pitch serial killing programming to its teenage audience to “keep them on the edge of their seat.” Other magazines churn out articles focusing on Golden Age serial killers and erroneously state that there are traits that they all have in common. The news media recently gave credence to a preposterous idea that there are astrological signs shared by serial murderers and that answers to their motives can be found among the stars. It is disconcerting that serial murder may forever be used as a marketing tactic to drive listeners to profitable podcasts in the hopes they will also purchase merchandise. Online university Outlier.org even offers a gimmicky class titled serial killer profiling. Given the resurgence in interest in the lives and crimes of serial murderers, tickets will always be available to tacky faux educational events where the audience can “play psychological games to see if they have the mind of a serial killer” because, as TV critic Jen Chaney noted, serial murderers have transcended their time and become intellectual property.
But relying on the profile of the Golden Age serial murderer can lead to erroneous assumptions. One ‘profiler’ claimed that Debbie Collier was killed by a budding serial murderer until it was revealed that her death was the result of suicide. Numerous theories surround the murders of four University of Idaho students with most grounded in the profile of the Golden Age serial murderer. Another ‘profiler’ believes those homicides to be the work of a potential serial murderer. An ex-FBI agent, with no affiliation with the profiling unit, is confident that the suspect has killed before. Some have stated that the individual who skinned a dog miles away from the crime scene — which the police have since ruled unrelated to the homicides — is indicative of someone with serial killer tendencies. Others have compared these homicides to Golden Age serial murderers Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling. A private investigator posited that the offender in the Idaho killings is directly replicating Bundy’s crimes and should be thought of as a copycat killer. But what do these assertions accomplish aside from dredging up old ideas and applying them to modern offenders?
The draw of the Golden Age serial murderer is still strong enough to excite students and influence discussion in college level homicide courses:
articles in academic journals:
podcast episodes:
and books:
One must simply read this Tweet in order to understand how religiously authors adhere to the timeworn stereotypes of what they continue to believe a serial murderer should be:
As evidenced by their continued popularity, the allure of the likes of Golden Age serial murderers such as Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer may never dissipate. In 2022, their stranglehold on American society appears to be stronger than ever — and is precisely what they would have wanted. Golden Age serial murderers are seemingly ever-present, as they have carved out real estate on our bodies, are invited to our weddings, and are hopefully, to some, lurking in the shadows and killing indiscriminately. An upcoming book by a respected professor stokes fear of the Dark Figure of Crime in stating that “…many [homicides] were never reported and disproportionately perpetrated by offenders like Bundy.” The author fails to mention, however, that offenders like Bundy are in no way representative of modern-day serial murderers as they are relics of the bygone era of the Golden Age of Serial Murder. But that sentiment falls on deaf ears today. Even when modern-day serial murderers are discussed, they are positioned as being anomalies because the presenters are often unfamiliar with current data and inevitably compare current killers with their Golden Age counterparts. For example, the serial murderer who recently operated in Stockton, California was referred to as an aberration even though he is quite stereotypical of offenders from the modern age.
But we cannot expect the entertainment realm or those in society who consume such programming to change their habits if those who conduct the research adorn their walls with the faces of the most notorious Golden Age serial murderers just like the killers themselves. These types of individuals herald that they are ‘changing the science’ behind serial murder but eventually abandon those pursuits after not amassing enough fame for themselves. Ironically, it is this type of behavior — the celebration of Golden Age serial murderers masquerading as research — that has stalled real efforts to advance the field. While the science behind serial murder is changing, it is a result of serious researchers who shun requests to appear in docuseries with eye grabbing names like Santa Claus The Serial Killer. Forward progress is built on the backs of those who refuse to push false narratives and support myths and stereotypes, the most ubiquitous of which is the supposed supreme intelligence these offenders possess.
Despite all the evidence to the contrary, serial murderers continue to be depicted as individuals with something to offer society beyond the destruction and misery they cause. Mixed martial arts fighter Jeremy Stephens recently stated that he feels “like a goddamn serial killer that needs to kill…there’s something about that adrenaline, that feeling, that power…it’s a blood-quenching thirst that I need.” Television shows and movies perpetuate the myth that serial murderers have a use but only if we better understand them first. Mindcage, an upcoming movie starring Martin Lawrence and John Malkovich, presents the serial murderer as someone with a “brilliant but twisted psyche” who is uniquely qualified to assist investigators who are “lured into a diabolical game of cat and mouse” with a copycat killer where they must stay “one step ahead” — a tired trope relied on a hundred times before. One popular television program, You, would have its audience believe that its protagonist can transform from a mild-mannered bookstore employee into a member of an elite institute of higher learning in a matter of a year.
It seems as though, in 2022, the entertainment industry is determined to introduce a new generation of viewers to the Golden Age of serial murder with the arrival of Ryan Murphy’s ‘Serial Killer Cinematic Universe’ and his continual hagiographic approach to the topic. Even when efforts are made to introduce modern ideas, such as the decline in the phenomenon, Golden Age serial murderers are the highlight of the conversation. What, you may ask, does Jack the Ripper have to do with the decline in serial murder? Nothing, except to demonstrate the limited knowledge that some podcast hosts harbor while presenting themselves as experts on the topic. In the end, none of these bad acts will change given that the actors involved in these projects describe their experiences mimicking serial murderers as a “…wonderful…delicious…dream” and express their desire to “hold and hug” these offenders.
We live in a society that has fetishized serial murder to such a degree that popular children’s characters are being corrupted and turned into murderers. Some children’s toys have kids talking about killing and murder. Not surprising given the legacy of the original homicidal doll, Chucky, who boasts about being “the MVP of serial murder” in a new television show dedicated to his crimes in the modern age. Families pose for murder-themed photos where young children hold a tea party over a dead body. In some corners of the Internet, comical memes are disseminated and laughed at all at the expense of the victims. Many in society still believe that serial murderers have physical characteristics that are intrinsic only to them, a myth perpetuated by celebrities who use the term to describe someone who has the ‘look’, the ‘eyes’, or a lack of emotions.
Consuming serial murder as entertainment may be a vile, grotesque, and unhealthy pastime to some but it is a modern hobby that is seemingly all well and good to others. That is, until the ‘true-crime personality’ takes advantage of this mentally facile audience and intentionally trumps academic studies to sell their wares. To help them come across to their fans as someone with credibility, many ‘experts’ have been known to don a persona to make themselves more palatable. One such individual egregiously stood on a grave during a photoshoot while pretending to be a crime-solving superhero. Another wears a fedora and trench coat to deliberately hark back to the old-timey image of the crime-fighting G-man. Some pose for the camera with a stern demeanor as if serial murderers should be afraid of their peering insight. Many play pretend to give the appearance that they are gurus who should be followed. Others position themselves as criminologists even though they often lack any legitimate academic training. Several undeservedly call themselves criminal profilers. Many think they are detectives akin to a modern-day Sherlock Holmes and behave as if they were rockstars who should be idolized. Others overlook the fact that they are entertainers and conflate the role of podcaster with investigative journalist. A few allow themselves to be sexualized so that all that is needed to get ahead is a wink and a grin. Regardless of their chosen scheme, the commonalties among each “true-crime personality’ is their penchant to wildly embellish their accomplishments while attaching themselves to others more successful than them to syphon some measure of fame for themselves. Sometimes the charlatan’s story unravels, and they are exposed and canceled. But most of the time their behavior continues unabated. What is ironic about this particular facet of crime is the fact that, by now, most fans of serial murder have been exposed to more information on the topic than the ‘experts’ themselves. But in the end, dissecting age-old cases for a modern audience does nothing except convince women that similar types of offenders are at large and present a looming threat to their safety.
My own experience with becoming a “personality” in the realm of crime occurred six years ago when Boston Magazine ran a piece called Profiler 2.0 which served to bring attention to me and the homicide collaborative that I run. At the time, I saw this opportunity as a means to gain legitimacy in the eyes of naysayers and establish ourselves as the one-stop-shop for all things serial murder. I envisioned that this exposure would allow the group to expand their reach in a multitude of spaces. Being young and naïve I was excited when production studios and literary agents began to reach out with ideas for television shows and books. But since then, I have grown weary of efforts to brand one person or group as the arbiter of a specific topic - especially one where someone had to die to jumpstart your involvement. True, I did sit for the interview and allow the piece to run in the magazine. Admittedly, I was caught up in the idea of publicly receiving credit for work to which I had dedicated my life. I now strive to be more professional by striking a better balance between engaging only with reputable members of the news media and conducting research to appear in academic journals. I include this vignette here to show that it is possible to shun fame and recalibrate one’s purpose to focus on more pragmatic objectives such as the scientific study of a subject.
All that being said, as someone who has spent the better part of the past two decades entrenched in serial murder data, I believe I can speak to how disingenuous and irresponsible it is for those with limited knowledge of the data related to the modern-day serial murderer to offer their input or, worse still, quote a prevalence estimate to a cult following knowing it will be believed without question. Adding to the confusion surrounding serial murder data, our work with the Murder Accountability Project offers a glimpse of just how poor of a job we do as a society in accounting for the who, what, when, where, how, and why behind homicide. But this knowledge, when juxtaposed with law enforcement’s low clearance rates, has been advantageously weaponized to surmise that serial murderers are responsible for a large portion of the nation’s unresolved homicides.
We now find ourselves in the era of the ‘citizen sleuth’, those who willfully operate somewhere in between the fiction deliberately told to spotlight past serial murderers and the truth sought by only a handful of modern-day scientists. Ordinary citizens are desperate to identify the suspect in longstanding unresolved serial murder series given the exposure and notoriety those findings would bring. Recent efforts include the Chicago Tribune’s hounding of Tylenol murder suspect James Lewis, Jarett Kobek’s naming of Paul Doerr as yet another Zodiac Killer suspect, and investigative journalist Susan Zalkind’s belief that one of the Boston Marathon bombers also committed a triple murder in Waltham, Massachusetts. While each of these theories is built on circumstantial evidence, the accusations are aimed with deadly accuracy.
True crime fans can be so rabid about their belief that a serial murderer is active in the community that they make connections between homicides that are not supported by evidence. Such claims recently led one family member of a missing person in Kansas City, Missouri to state, “It’s not true — please don’t call us and send us links with that information, we already can think the worst on our own. All we can ask is your prayers are needed and to not send the links. It’s not helpful, we understand the outcome of negativity on society. We don’t need anyone to embark that on us with titles or web links.” In another instance, true crime enthusiasts misdirected an investigation by suggesting that a homicide victim was killed by notorious serial murderer Tommy Lynn Sells when in fact the victim was killed by someone else entirely.
Some of these efforts are easier to see for what they are than others. The author of the LAmag Zodiac story, for example, may be trying to generate the same type of attention heaped on Michelle McNamara after her piece on the Golden State Killer ran in LAmag and eventually became the book I’ll Be Gone in the Dark. In essence, the ‘true-crime personality’ has helped to orchestrate and then capitalize on the most opportune time in history to dupe a swath of like-minded people. These personalities are more willing than ever to compromise their integrity while existing in the grey zone between fiction and truth, comforted by the knowledge that they will be celebrated and adored by the ever-expanding, yet despicable, fan base of ‘murderinos’. After all — no matter what controversy they court or how detestable they are — a lavish payday awaits them in the form of book deals, documentary interviews, television program hosting gigs, merchandise sales, and podcast ad revenue. Just as soon as they wash the blood from their hands.
Given that Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) Awareness Day recently passed, it is important to at least put the audacious claim of 2,000 freewheeling serial murderers into perspective. During the Golden Age of serial murder, false prevalence estimates were made to bolster funding efforts for fledgling government agencies like the Federal Bureau of Investigation and their behavioral investigatory units. Today, such figures are promulgated by individual persons looking to sell books, collect donations, and/or attain fame. This type of fearmongering is designed to herald a return to those early days in an effort to justify the monger’s own existence as an ‘expert’. Any discourse on the subject of serial murder reveals that those who dedicate time to convincing others of the supposed large modern-day threat these offenders allegedly pose are motivated only by a need to deepen our reliance on them. It is reminiscent of the writings of the early ‘mindhunters’ who proclaimed that they were the sole individuals on the planet capable of understanding the serial murderer, a morbid type of job security. It is vitally important to remember that falling back on the use of serial murderers to explain away the MMIP phenomenon only serves to mask the real problem: decades of alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and other systemic issues that contribute to disappearances and homicide in this community.
This process of inflating the true presence of the serial murderer is unfortunately needless in today’s day and age given the tight stranglehold serial murderers are already allowed to have on the public’s consciousness. There may still be those who think critically about serial murder, but their voice is drowned out by the incessant yearnings of fans who wish to ascribe charm and sophistication to mild-mannered investigators while transforming them into idols merely for doing what amounts to their job. The omnipresence of the ‘true-crime personality’ and outlets such as CrimeCon — where falsities are spread with unabashed glee — have ensured that the myths and stereotypes surrounding serial murder are to be transmitted to a new generation and will continue to live on, making it easier for killers to hide from those who search for them. But this may be what true-crime fans ultimately want — an enduring mystery to be solved over a series of weekly episodes.
But how can one nonchalantly overlook the bloodshed and misery it took to bring their next podcast obsession to their eagerly awaiting ears? And how can fans ignore the detriment to their own mental health? Thankfully, a whole host of articles questioning the ethics of the programs that hoards of people fall asleep to have cropped up in recent years. With titles such as Why we have to stop the ‘true crime’ obsession, Is our true-crime obsession doing more harm than good?, The issue with murder as entertainment, The ethical dilemma of highbrow true crime, We’re watching more true crime than ever. Is that a problem?, Why our true crime obsession is bad for society, True crime podcasts: why our obsession is problematic, The killer question: Are true-crime podcasts exploitative?, the tide may be turning against a parasitic industry built on the pain and suffering of victims and their families.
What is utmost dispiriting for me as a serial homicide researcher is that this review appears almost three years to the day of my previous one titled ‘Who is Culpable in the Promulgation of Serial Killer Myths and Stereotypes’. I am discouraged to report that, since then, nothing has changed. One might say that the serial murder entertainment complex has only grown in scope over these past three years, fueled by unscrupulous ‘professionals’ with an unquenchable desire to profit off of the dead while keeping the memory of notorious murderers alive. Celebrities have elevated the serial murder film from one-time B movie fare to blockbuster status for streaming services: Keanu Reeves will lead Hulu’s Devil in the White City about serial killer H. H. Holmes, Taron Egerton stars in Apple TV’s Black Bird about serial killer Larry Hall, Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne will co-headline Netflix’s The Good Nurse about serial killer Charles Cullen, Kevin Bacon performs in They/Them about a fictional serial killer at a gay conversion camp, and Steve Carell will appear in FX’s The Patient about a fictitious serial killer. Anna Kendrick is set to direct and star in the true-crime thriller The Dating Game which is based on the life and crimes of Rodney Alcala. To refocus attention on far more important and relevant societal issues such as MMIP, we must hold such profiteers at bay and disregard their pleas to keep us in their orbit. Remember that these types of individuals are similar to the offenders they claim to know as both aim to manipulate us, cloud our judgment, and siphon what they can from us before moving on to the next person.
In the end, we are the only ones who can exert control over to whom we dedicate our attention and to what issues we choose to support. Please allow me to petition you to think critically about who benefits from the existence of the ‘true-crime personality’ before consuming their products. We have allowed a select few individuals to elevate their stature on the backs of the dead. But it is not too late to reverse course and demand, at the very least, adherence to an ethical code of conduct when dealing with such sensitive matters. Remember that those who posture and grandstand for victim’s rights probably do not care as much as they want you to believe they do. While there are certainly examples of good that can come of an honest review of unresolved criminal acts, they are few and far between in the realm of true-crime. Michelle Dean wrote for The New Yorker that one appalling effort “embodies every problem that arises when online obsessives are infected with delusions of detective grandeur.” Because it is beyond time that the world of true-crime face a reckoning, please consider joining me in a call to end the reign of the ‘true-crime personality’ and all they have come to represent.
Enzo Yaksic is the author of Killer Data: Modern Perspectives on Serial Murder
