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True Crime: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly (Essay) (Patreon)

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2024-04-29 18:00:06

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2024-07

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This is a script that I wrote last year but will be filming in the coming months. It's perfect for 90s True Crime and Serial Killers, plus it serves as a foundation for a future revamp of It's A Mystery.

Three years ago I was approached by a production company about starring in a true crime series because they saw my interest in telling the stories of black victims in my It’s A Mystery series. With my limited budget and resources, I can’t do hardcore investigations into the murders and disappearances of black women, so I was of course excited to potentially get good backing, and hoped to collaborate to create a respectful, informational, historically potent, and black-woman focused pilot that could be picked up by a network. For months I offered names of black women whose stories should be told, and we crafted a unique project idea that eventually led to a contract for me to film a pilot. I was devastated when the company informed me that the network that ordered the pilot requested a story about a white woman’s murder from the 1990s— one that had been covered multiple times. They loved me and my energy they said, but they had a “specific vision” for a pilot to see if the show could go further.

Annoyed and angry, but hopeful that my foot was still in the door to bring my history lessons to the next level, I filmed the pilot. It was a great experience, surrounded by a mostly black crew and a directed by a black woman. However, it was enraging that so many of us were putting in so much work to tell the story of a woman whose murder, while unfortunate and important, had been discussed in various ways since it had occurred. I was very proud of the resulting project, but I wish that the money spent on a cinematographer, assistants, grips, my hosting position, the camera operators, etc, would have been for a black woman’s story-- one that humanizes her, probes for answers, and places her story into the historical context for which it belonged. But like so much of the media in true crime history, there is a preferred victim and a preferred narrative.

The network passed on the pilot and the project fizzled. In the meantime, I’ll be rebooting my own true crime series (and I'll go more into depth about my experience in my memoir)... But the experience, along with viral social media musings about true crime as a negative, made me want to explore the genre in a video. The genre has become so popular that nearly every major network or streaming service has its own true crime show or documentary series— and some have even made it their bread and butter. Remember when Oxygen was all about bad girls club, not murder? One survey suggests that 58% of American women partake in true crime media, by book, tv show, movie, or podcast— and clearly they have a big selection to choose from. Theorized psychologist Stacey Nye, “I think it helps women feel a sense of control if they can learn how you know how to not enter in dangerous situations or things like that.” But it’s gotta be deeper than that, right? Why is it so popular and how has it evolved over time? What are the origins? How have true crime stories— which are non-fiction mediums— been accompanied by fictional crime tales? Is true crime historical or exploitative? How have recent forms of true crime media both reinforced old problems and introduced better ways to report crime? In this video, I’m going on a short historical rant about true crime… the good, the bad, and the ugly!

Pre-Modern True Crime Genre

According to Joy Wiltenburg, in 16th century Germany, the core of the printing revolution since the mid 1400s, “broadsheets and pamphlets were primarily used by the mid sixteenth century to recount crimes and the executions of the condemned.” In centuries prior and after, the executions or punishments of condemned men were often public affairs, such as the case of gladiators, whose fights and deadly beast hunts were forms of entertainment and political manipulation for Roman citizens who didn’t have the magic of mass literacy of printing presses. It wasn’t uncommon for the crimes of the condemned to be told to the audience before they met their fate. But the German “warhafftige nice zeitung” or “truthful new report” was the literary dawn of the obsession with reading about a crime and reading about the perpetrator’s resulting punishment. Murder within the family and multiple murder within the family were the most common kinds of stories. Such reporting would grow everywhere as access to printing technology grew, like in Britain, where hundreds of short crime pamphlets were published between 1550 and 1700. Most of these printings were available to high status and literate people and utilized shock and emotional appeals, long before such sensationalist devices (and the term sensationalism itself) would come to be associated with the lower class in the 19th century.

Crimes were also recounted in ballads, songs, and poems that were printed and orally traded. The early true crime reporting in printed media usually connected to Christianity in some way, advertising the crime stories, for example, “as relevant to all christians because they gave warning of the consequences of sin.” Thus, in its earliest and most similar form, true crime was religious propaganda, meant to warn the reader about committing violent sin— rather than serving as a warning for how to navigate the world’s violence. Said a 17th century catholic pamphlet recounting the story of a man who murdered his family about the inevitable punishment of sin: “no one will be spared, and he sows so shall he reap, no one can escape this.” According to Wiltenburg, the focus on stories and songs told from the criminals point of view showed that consumers were more interested in the criminals than the victim— an early precedent for modern fascination with violent killers or criminals.

By the 19th century, a number of changes would lead to a formalizing true crime genre in the next century. In Judith Flanders’ tome The Invention of Murder: How The Victorians Reveled in Death and Detection and Created Modern Crime, the rise of homicide investigation coincided with a public desire for salacious crimes— by newspaper, by play, even by puppet show. Along with the reporting and dramatization of real crimes, there was the rise of penny dreadfuls, cheaply printed one cent stories dealing with everything from crime to supernatural phenomena (some of which were purported to be non-fiction, like Sweeney Todd, the fictional demon barber of Fleet Street). The Newgate Calendar published biographies of the infamous prison’s most infamous prisoners— and they blended fact with a bunch of fiction. These books, newspapers, and moralizing stories that featured biographies of notorious criminals, were popular especially among men and blue collar laborers in the UK, Europe, and eventually America, and demonstrated a tamer desire of human’s tastes for displays of violence— minus gladiator coliseums. There was also a rise in detective fiction like Sherlock Holmes. Also, there was the formalization of policing, like the creation of police departments in Boston in 1838 and New York in 1845, coinciding with the infant technologies of fingerprinting and ballistics. The authority granted to police to be unquestioned tellers of criminal stories and arrests would become the norm in subsequent sensationalist journalism meant to sell as many papers as possible. “The Illustrated Police News”, a sort of crime blotter, was established in 1864.

In addition to the fast paced world of headlines, the people at the center of them were becoming larger in death than they were in life by sparking obsessive true crime enthusiasts. In 1841, the body of Mary Cecilia Rogers was found dead in the Hudson River. She was described as pretty and worked at an upscale cigar shop, so the press dubbed her The Beautiful Cigar Girl. Numerous theories about her unsolved murder abounded, and the resulting news coverage inspired the writer Edgar Allen Poe to investigate and pen a story called The Mystery of Marie Roget— making it the first documented murder mystery based on the details of a real crime— but certainly not the last. The unsolved murder or disappearance of a pretty white victim would be a recurring true crime theme that generates constant speculation and coverage— up and through the 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey or the 2005 disappearance of Natalee Holloway, for example.

Another case that signaled a new type of true crime writing and interest was the Lizzie Borden Trial of 1892. The murder of Andrew and Abby Borden took place in August 1892, and blame was quickly placed on Andrew’s daughter Lizzie. Andrew was extremely wealthy and had a number of enemies. Police didn’t use fingerprint testing on an ax found in the basement, and when Borden went on trial in June 1893 there was very little evidence tying her to the crime. There was even a “Free Lizzie “ movement. Papers speculated on every angle of the murders and the resulting “trial of the century.” Much of it was false, like when one reporter for The Boston Daily Globe, who claimed to spend six weeks investigating, falsely claimed that Borden was pregnant. Borden was acquitted, but the desire to quench public thirst for shocking crime continued into the 20th century— and so did media sensationalism.

Before we go into the modern era, let me bring up another example of early true crime documentation: the work of Ida B Wells. Her 1890s pamphlets, Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in all its Phases, and A Red Record, documented the gruesome lynching of black men and challenged the racist notion that all lynchings were of criminals. She confirmed names, occupations, and experiences of lynching victims and provided details about their attacks. It amazes me that this is left out of true crime histories. Ida B Wells began this important work after the arson of the co-operative People’s Grocery in Memphis Tennessee, co-owned by Ida’s friend Thomas Henry Moss and 10 other black Americans. The grocery had opened in 1889 and quickly became successful, pissing off a local white grocer and other whites. Moss and two of his workers, Will Stewart and Calvin McDowell, were lynched by the mob who burnt down the grocery. This led to Ida interviewing victim’s family’s across the south to tell the real story of lynching in America. Thomas’s last words were, "Tell my people to go West, there is no justice for them here." For Ida’s efforts, a white mob destroyed her newspaper office in Memphis, Tennessee and the US government would call her a “race agitator”, placing her under surveillance by World War 1.

The Rise of Modern True Crime

From the end of the civil war until the 1950s, when the lynching of mostly black men by white mobs was common, yet underreported and under-investigated until the watershed Emmet Till murder, the victims of the bulk of true crime stories were unsurprisingly white. As for black women, often the victims of gender-based intimate partner violence, their stories were kept out of papers too— except for in extreme examples, like when there was a suspected serial killer of upper class black women in Atlanta in the 1910s. As penny papers and pulp fiction novels of the 1900s and 1910s entertained readers with unverifiable tales of white slavery and murder, the 1920s brought true crime detectives confession and story magazines like True Detective (1924). Such magazines were often informed by single sources of police letters or opinions. They kept sexuality and rape to a minimum in such pieces, and the magazines flourished alongside major stories being reported widely in mainstream news like The Lindbergh Baby Kidnapping.

Meanwhile, certain crimes were sensationalized in order to perpetuate bigotry, like in the case of the murder of Mary Phagan, which led to anti-semitism in the coverage and trial of Jewish businessman Leo Frank— discussed in this episode of It’s a Mystery. And though it happened in 1939, the story of Robert Nixon further illustrated the media’s inclination to promote racist coverage and questionable police statements to give credence to racist stereotypes. Nixon was a 19-year old dubbed “the brick moron” after confessing to murdering a mother and child with a brick in Los Angeles, and was linked to other crimes, later earning the horrible honor of being described as of the nation’s first reported black serial killers. The coverage and murders inspired Richard Wright to write Native Son, a 1940 novel about a poor black 20-year-old named Bigger Thomas living in the Chicago Southside in the 1930s. The book was even made into a 1951 movie starring Richard Wright and filmed in Argentina.

So speaking of Chicago, in the 1920s there was the media coverage of “murderess row” in Chicago, which would inspire a 1927 play by a journalist, Maurine Watkins. As a Chicago Tribune reporter, she was inspired to write the play after covering the lives and trials of Beulah Annan and Belva Gaetner. Annan had allegedly shot her lover, got drunk and danced around the apartment for two hours before calling her mechanic husband. Gaetner was a cabaret singer and three time divorcee who allegedly murdered her lover in a drunken blackout. If this sounds familiar, you’ve probably seen the 2002 movie based on the 1975 musical by Bob Fosse that was based on the 1927 play and a silent film. Glossing over the fact that Chicago is my favorite musical of all time and that I can recite most of the songs— Beulah and Belva were sensationalized by the 1920s news media during a turbulent time of illegal liquor, illicit jazz, and burgeoning women’s rights. To the media and to the juries that acquitted them, they were jazz age women corrupted by the age’s dangerous excesses. With Beulah called “the prettiest murderess” and Belva dubbed “the most stylish woman”, they received flowers, marriage proposals, and occasional dinners and gifts, . Like many of the other women who got similar coverage, they were acquitted. By the way, Beulah, who inspired Roxie Harts character, really broke up with her husband, who emptied his savings for her lawyer, the day after the trial. Between 1921 and 1930, 186 women were accused of murdering a partner in Cook County— and only 24 were ever convicted. Of that number, only 12 were unable to appeal and served their full sentences.

Another iteration of true crime from this 20th-century era is the documentation of racist violence committed against black Americans during Jim Crow. Continuing the work of Ida B Wells, the horrible stories of lynching, assaults, and/or rapes printed by black owned newspapers galvanized many black Americans into action. They may not have been the magazines and books you think about when you hear “true crime”, but the articles were essentially an updated form of pamphlets, weaving investigative journalism and narrative storytelling to make black trauma more visceral and appalling— to spur action. These stories weren’t for entertainment or legitimizing police speculation. For example, when Recy Taylor, who was kidnapped and gang-raped after leaving church in September 1944, activism by Rosa Parks and a front page story by the Chicago Defender disputed police opinion that Recy was simply a sex worker. This work catalyzed civil rights organization that would be even stronger by the time Emmitt Till was murdered in 1955. Speaking of, his case is entangled with true crime in a few ways. Emmitt Till’s depraved murder at the hands of Mississippi racists was one of thousands of lynchings that had occurred while anti-lynching legislation was ignored or opposed. Mamie Till’s decision to publish what Emmett’s corpse looked like was monumental.

The photos and accompanying articles that humanized Emmett and his family by Jet Magazine and The Chicago Defender weren’t just journalism. These were true crime exposes that strongly challenged the racist status quo and presumed innocence of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who themselves did an interview in 1956 admitting to what they had done. The flurry of media coverage, as well as the socio-political ripple effects of the photos of Emmett’s body would be the foundation of knowledge for investigative true crime history books and documentaries that would follow in the late half of the 20th century. I know firsthand that the vile details of the these stories are not comfortable to read, but whenever I think about the thousands of unnamed and/or undocumented black people who encountered racist violence, I wish we had the same kind of coverage for them that we do for major stories like Emmitt Till and Recy Taylor. Coverage that humanized them and their families.

Before true crime podcasts, there were true crime radio shows like True Detective Mysteries, Call The Police, and Deadline Mystery. But how true were these stories? There was a popular radio show called Gang Busters, which told dramatized tales of criminals who had usually turned to crime out of desperation and ran from 1936-1957. According to historian Elena Razlogova, it “appealed most to working-class and nonwhite men and children”, adding that it “benefited from the popular appeal of the gory details, the first-person eyewitness accounts, and the tough masculine style of crime writing.” But when GangBusters aired a story claiming that police accidentally killed a Mexican-American farmer, rather than accurately reporting that police had intentionally shot him, it caused a backlash among rural listeners, who stopped listening to the show, causing listenership to drop permanently in 1943. Wrote Razlogova, “Having seen officers mistake Adrian Medrano for an Indian bandit, shoot him, and cover up the murder, farmers in turn discovered parallels between lawmen’s and radio men’s indifference to their lives and opinions.”

By the 50s, True Detective and other true crime magazines were using more sexual elements and using more shocking photos, now that they were competing with a wider publication pool, the radio, and tv. By the 60s, sex crimes took dominance and magazine cover photos became much more exploitative and risqué, even while circulation was dying down By the 1980s there were two publishers and 11 titles in the true crime magazine genre— and the magazines toned down their covers. This period of decline from the 1960s to the 80s coincided with the rise of true crime non-fiction books. The seminal harbinger of the new genre was In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, which I made the mistake of checking out from my school library in the 6th grade. It was first published as a four part serial in The New Yorker in 1965, and was published into a book in 1966. For his magnum opus on the 1959 Kansas murder of the four-member Clutter family by two drifters, Truman Capote wrote over 8000 pages of notes and conducted extensive interviews with locals. By utilizing the conventional new genre of new journalism, which heavily laced emotion and imagery into the narrative, the book would become the “high brow” type of true crime that later works would attempt to replicate. But how much of it was “true” crime?

Grumbled Jack Olsen, “I recognized it as a work of art, but I know fakery when I see it…. Capote completely fabricated quotes and whole scenes…. The book made something like $6 million in 1960s money, and nobody wanted to discuss anything wrong with a moneymaker like that in the publishing business. In addition to the veracity of the books claims, critics wondered about the excessive quality of focusing so extensively on a single crime. Wrote a critical Tom Wolfe in an essay on what he called “pornoviolence,” “The book is neither a who-done-it nor a will-they-be-caught, since the answers to both questions are known from the outset... Instead, the book's suspense is based largely on a totally new idea in detective stories: the promise of gory details, and the withholding of them until the end.” Despite criticisms, this new true crime non-fiction would blossom in the decades come. The 70s saw rising inertia with the 1974 publication of Vincent Buglosi’s Helter Skelter: The True Story of The Manson Murders, becoming one of the best selling true crime books of all time. But the 80s was when the most modern form of true crime literature bloomed. In 1980, Anne Rule, a former cop and suicide hotline operator, published The Stranger Beside Me about Ted Bundy. Because Ted had worked alongside her at the suicide hotline center in Seattle Washington and they became “friends”, her chronicling of his crimes and trial, and her initial disbelief of his guilt, gave her a unique perspective and personal tie that signaled another evolutionary change in the genre of true crime. Rule would go on to write more true crime books, and is noted for saying that when choosing subjects, she went for “attractive”, “brilliant”, or “popular” people. Her and most of the rest of the creators and authors true crime genre.

The 80s was riddled with true crime stories heavily reported in the news that were fast tracked into books, tv movies, and tv miniseries— as documented in my video, I Love The 80s: True Crime. Most of the victims who received the most coverage and sympathy via narrative books and movies were white and women, and these stories garnered attention because of the rise in actual crime in the 1980s, and later, reports about “super-predators” that sensationalized crime. TV shows like 1987’s Unsolved Mysteries and 1989’s COPS would coincide with a slew of copaganda shows like Law and Order and NYPD Blue, similar to the 19th and 20th century rises of penny dreadfuls and police detective magazines.

In the 90s, true crime really evolved into a new era— one that not only continued promoting copaganda, but increased the faith in justice system and how court cases are handled. First, CourtTV launch in 1991. It really became popular with the broadcasts of the 1991 Menendez trials and the 1995 OJ Simpson trial. Both welcomed public interest because of the wealth of the suspects and victims. But what made the OJ trial enduring public spectacle and a key subject of true crime literature was the interracial marriage and OJ’s celebrity. Plenty of intimate partner violence murder cases got and get little to no coverage if the victim and murderer is black, poor, and/or conventionally unattractive. Remember what Anne Rule said? Other shows would emerge in the coming years, like 1996’s Forensic Files, whose entire premise was presenting true crime stories that were always wrapped up neatly by police and forensic investigation— not delving into cases where incompetence and corruption were key themes. Though importantly, Forensic Files did not use real victims and family names unless permission was given. In 2008, the Discovery Times channel became Investigation Discovery, and became one of the largest true crime networks. In 2017, Oxygen rebranded to 24/7 True Crime, after years of airing Snapped, about women who turned on mostly abusive partners and committed violent crimes.

In the years before the true crime tv boom, what stories reached the public was dictated by white privilege and control. For instance, for decades, the New York Police Department withheld passing stories to the press that weren’t about “white attractive female[s] killed in a horrible way in an interesting place,” as reported by Elon Green in The Enduring, Pernicious Whiteness of True Crime. The true crime coverage of the same white serial killers and the same white victims is paralleled by the news media’s focus on white women who are murdered or go missing. Missing White Woman Syndrome has been documented by various social scientists. In 2005 when Natalee Holloway was kidnapped and presumably murdered on a high school graduation trip to Aruba, her story was featured broadly on the news. There was little discussion of the disappearance of 24-year old Latoyia Figueroa from Philadelphia, who was five months pregnant at the time and the mother of a 7-year old. Media executives acted like this, and other uncovered disappearances and murders of women of color— Adrena Carter in 2003, Evelyn Hernandez in 2002— was accidental. Claimed the vice preident of MDNBC Mark Effron in a 2005 Los Angeles Times Article, ““It’s not like there’s a kind of cabal where MSNBC and CNN and Fox get together and say, ‘Boy, this is a good one. That’s not a good one,’Usually, there’s an involved family that tends to be sophisticated in how to use the media.” This was disputed by victims families, like Rebka Howard, a Miami PR executive who tried to publicize the disappearance of her 24-year-old niece Tamika Huston. Tamika’s story was recently covered by Erika Alexander. In addition to the lack of attention paid to women of color, men were also left out of many of the missing person news stories that dominate headlines. Obviously, this bled over into true crime— but because of 24/7 true crime networks like ID and Oxygen, and the rise of podcasting and youtube, there has been more opportunities for stories outside of the usual mold. But what about going deeper?

In The Enduring, Pernicious Whiteness of True Crime, Elon Green argues that the true crime genre should include police brutality, and the governments inhumane treatment of prisoners and immigrants, etc. I agree, but also believe it should include white supremacist crimes in the same fashion as Ida B Wells and civil rights activists of the mid-20th century. Stories about serial killers and missing people are important, but so are narratives that expose America’s vicious racist underbelly. But for most of true crime’s existence, and especially during the 80s-2000s, missing racial context has prevailed in narratives— though there were early attempts to step outside of the box. “There is far too much sermonizing here on the overall state of race relations in America and not enough digging into specific facts of the Atlanta murders,” wrote John Flaming for the New York Times when reviewing The Evidence of Things Not Seen in 1985. The author, James Baldwin, had prioritized the racial inequities that made the investigation flawed and the conviction of Wayne Williams in the Atlanta Child Murders questionable. Baldwin had talked to police, but didn’t take them at their word— in many ways setting a precedent for the next evolution of true crime. In crime beat reporting across the country, the narratives of cops is usually taken as the gospel truth— and this was especially true in the 80s. The 1985 James Baldwin book renewed interest in the Atlanta Child Murders and increased desire for reform of how missing child cases are investigated. In newer works of true crime media, especially ones with black authors or victims, the failings and corruption of police have become integral to the narratives.

With the rise of Improved technology and new media platforms for the common person like TikTok, Youtube, and podcast publishing, there has been a steady decrease in the public’s trust in government institutions. Whether it is leftists astutely pointing out the failures of the state or right wing white supremacist extremists falsely believing the federal government is bending to leftist will, trust barely exists. These new truth seekers of all stripes— particularly in the true crime genre— can produce their own media and consume it from peers. What’s the impact of so much true crime?

Final Thoughts

The impact of true crime depends on the type of true crime media being watched, listened to, or read. First of all, ingesting a bunch of true crime media gives some viewers an inflated sense of expertise of the legal system, and an inflated trust in the legal system’s abilities to serve justice. But on the other hand, when done right, true crime can give viewers a new understanding of the ways in which our legal system is flawed— and must continue to be shaped and fixed. Next, the habitual consumption of true crime, especially when the victims are mainly white, has increased a victim complex that does not always line up with actual crime statistics. Multiple studies show that black women are more likely to be murdered than white women, but, as my experience showed at the top of this video, white women make up the bulk of the stories told in true crime media. And in general, for everyone regardless of race, “increased consumption of true news reports actually decreased people’s objectives knowledge about the prevalence of crime-” meaning that every once in a while, you should mix up the negative media you’re consuming with positive stories and venture outside to touch grass. Also, looking at crime rates in your area OVER TIME may put some things into perspective for you. But I also acknowledge that by the same token, keeping yourself walled off from the realities of crime can be less than beneficial. Learning about survivors being empowered when justice is actually served, or the ways that criminals prey on vulnerabilities and exploit new technology or legal loopholes that need to be closed, can only make you more informed. Balance is key.

Lastly, the most negative impact of the true crime genre to me is the ways in which it exacerbates people’s idolization of sadistic offenders and hybristophillia, or sexual interest and attraction to people who commit crimes— specifically acts of sexual violence and/or murder. The re-tellings of true crime stories from the point of view of the murderer, in a somewhat romanticized fashion— is not new— think of the bit about Chicago and murderer’s row from earlier. But from the 80s onward, serial killers, mostly white, have been romanticized and examined from every angle, inspiring tattoos, song lyrics, and even copycat crimes. The 2022 release of the Ryan Murphy directed Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, is the streaming era’s most stunning example of glamorization and exploitation. None of the 17 families of the boys and men Dahmer killed were consulted for the making of the show. I personally don’t think true crime stories from recent history, especially ones that have been told over and over again, need to be dramatized. Documentaries and podcasts are one thing, but making film and tv shows that revel in violence and gore with pretty cinematography and good soundtracks is too often disrespectful to victims and/or their families. Pretty much any crime after 1980 involving non-public figures should be kept to non-fiction while victim’s families and friends are still alive. Now of course, this is never going to happen, but this is supposed to be a rant, isn’t it? And this brings me to a question I posed at the beginning of this video. Is True Crime: Historical or Exploitative? And should it exist? Its ok to feel uncomfortable with true crime, and how people inappropriately interact with it. However its not going anywhere— and it shouldn’t.

Many humans enjoy knowing about the world around them. True crime can be a conduit of important knowledge. As demonstrated by history, true crime stories reflect the social, cultural, and economic issues of a given society. How true crime stories are told determines whether or not they are propaganda— from the simplistic German stories serving as religious propaganda to the un fact-checked cop hero stories told throughout the genres history, stripping individual crime stories of larger context is a choice to lean into “entertainment” and simple narratives, rather than being educational and acknowledging things aren’t always black and white. Next, reactions to the stories told in true crime media (in court, in publications, in greater society etc) have the ability to impact legislation and/or become watershed/lightning rod moments that further complicate our world. True crime when done right, fundamentally exposes racism, misogyny, and flaws in the criminal justice system and policing. From early examples like Ida B Wells and James Baldwin to little old me and It’s a Mystery, its undeniable that black true crime stories are integral to our history. For people who are pressed to keep the world simple and black and white, this can be scary. Whether you’re a “blue-lives-matter” racist who can’t help but to be appalled at cop incompetence in true crime stories or you’re a “nobody belongs in prison” abolitionist who pretends to be comfortable with or ignorant of the evils that humans are capable of, true crime media, when done the right way, is illuminating and can be challenging. Hopefully, the right kind of true crime media— victim-focused, factual, sensitive, contextual, non-sensational— becomes more mainstream and draws attention to the ongoing problem of black femicide, but only time will tell.

That’s all for this video! I hope you learned something new. What do you think about the true crime genre? What true crime podcasts, authors, or shows are doing their subjects justice with empathy and care? Make sure you leave a comment, like this video, and subscribe! Thanks for watching.

Sources and Further Reading