True crime’s gain in popularity changes the way people interact with the subculture

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THE TRUE CRIME WAVE

True crime has seen rapid growth over the years and has changed the way people, especially women, interact with the subculture.

BY CAROLINE BISSONNETTE DESIGN BY JULIA GREENWOOD

The day comes to a close and stars illuminate the night sky. The tranquil light shines down on a young woman leaving work after a long day. However, the starlight does not soothe the woman feeling her way through the brisk night air. She constantly checks her surroundings, so as to not miss any lurking danger. She approaches the safety of her home but contemplates lengthening her journey to finish the last five minutes of the true crime podcast playing in her ears. This hypothetical young woman is not alone. As addictive as it is enticing, true crime has infiltrated the everyday lives of people everywhere, but what makes it so irresistible? Although true crime-related media has been around for much longer, a burst of excitement around the content has appeared to surface in the last decade or so. The number of content creators greatly increased as social media apps flourish, in addition to the involvement of streaming services like Netflix. With the almost inescapable increase of content, the number of true crime consumers naturally saw a large increase as well. Molly Wilson, a sophomore studying journalism at Ohio University, likes to consume true crime-related media. More specifically, Wilson is a regular listener of “Crime Junkie,”one of the internet’s most popular podcasts with more than 500 million downloads since its debut in 2017, according to their website. The two women who host “Crime Junkie” focus on telling the stories of crimes with the intention of keeping their audience on the edge of their seats. The hosts are longtime true crime consumers who found success in creating a true crime podcast themselves. The truth and tension of the stories they tell keeps the audience entertained and attracts listeners who crave suspense. “I think that what intrigues me the most [about true crime] is that this is something that actually happened,” Wilson says. “And also thinking about how we can keep it from happening again.” Despite “Crime Junkie” being available to everyone, a survey done by Media Monitors found that women make up about 85 percent of the podcast’s listeners. In fact, women make up an overwhelming majority of true crime content consumers. Whether they are reading, watching or listening, women are a big reason that true crime media gets so much attention. One popular podcast series titled “Mared and Karen: The WVU Coed Murders,” focuses on two college-aged women at West Virginia University who were said to be hitchhiking back to their dorm in 1970. They were never seen alive again. The podcast episodes discuss the murder, as the creators give the details of the story in hopes of discovering who really committed the crime. Despite Eugene Paul Clawson being convicted of the crime, podcast host and author Geoff Fuller did not believe that the professionals caught the right person. Fuller dedicated much of his life to studying this case, hoping to come to a conclusion that he found more believable. Eventually, he did. He partnered up with Sarah McLaughlin, who also had an interest in the case. Along with writing a book about it titled The WVU Coed Murders: Who Killed Mared and Karen?, the two joined forces with Kendall Perkinson as their narrator and co-creator, and the three launched the podcast for Mared and Karen that many listeners have grown to love. “Today’s true crime audiences want to both hear about a mystery and get involved in solving it,” Fuller says. “It helped that while I believed we’d found the perpetrator, Sarah was unconvinced. I think it was Kendall who first pushed us to lean into that difference of opinion, and both the podcast and the book are the better for it.” The difference in opinion between the two hosts as to who is truly guilty for the crime allowed for further conversation about the case. Listeners were able to soak up the information and draw conclusions for themselves, possibly different from Fuller and McLaughlin. This level of mystery is often what true crime-subscribers want to hear. Like other true crime podcasts, the listeners of Fuller, McLaughlin and Perkinson’s podcast, which is now titled “Appalachian Mysteria,” are mostly female. Younger female www.backdropmagazine.com 19

audiences likely appreciate not only the group’s storytelling, but the information and signs that come with learning about a murder and are more useful in their everyday lives. One reason why women have adopted a special interest in true crime over men is the fact that women are more likely to become victims of crimes that are the focus of many podcast episodes, according to McLaughlin. According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, more violent crimes are committed against women than men. More specifically, these crimes occur more often against female-presenting people. This means that true crime stories are more likely to be centered around the killing or disappearance of a woman than a man. “I’ve been put on hold at my [gynecologist’s] office and instead of the usual awful ‘muzak’, they play a list of tips for avoiding sexual assault,” McLaughlin says. “I would bet money that the urologist’s office sticks to the standard hold music. I don’t think it’s in the back of men’s minds as often as it is for us.” Because there is such an overwhelming majority of true crime podcast listeners being female, there are certainly multiple reasons why this is the case. Fuller has a slightly different take on the matter. An issue that may arise from a woman’s innate will to empathize is the risk of empathizing with the wrong person. With the rise of the true crime phenomenon, the community has also seen problems with the audience glorifying murderers and criminals. This takes the attention away from the victims and urges social media users to post about the killer rather than the victim. A popular and recognizable example of these situations is what the internet has done with Ted Bundy. Netflix is partially to blame because of their use of teenage heartthrob Zac Efron portraying Ted Bundy in a 2019 movie about his serial killing. This is not to say that Netflix is the reason people think Ted Bundy is attractive, but this arguably did not help in halting the discussion. “It’s definitely a fine line because it is hard to tell a story about a murderer without talking about the murderer,” Wilson says. “But one of the reasons I like ‘Crime Junkies’ is because it definitely has a victim-centric point of view.”

Sarah Horvath, a graduate student in OU’s Department of Psychology, brings a more professional point of view to the issues that come with the hype around serial killers. “For some individuals, receiving attention for their crimes might act as a form of reinforcement for these behaviors,” Horvath says. “Reinforcing behaviors only serves to encourage that behavior.” The idea of glorifying serial killers is a relatively well-known phenomenon. With the addition “I think women — and obviously I’m generalizing here because the reasons a specific woman or man would be fascinated by true crime are their own, not determined by gender — women are empathizing with and widespread the victims and looking for clues about popularity of TikTok in the what to be wary of, what behaviors to halt media scene, true crime fans have or avoid in others [mostly men] and how to been able to create and watch short stay safe,” videos relating to the subject. However, many GEOFF FULLER, PODCAST HOST AND AUTHOR of the videos are photos of Ted Bundy with music playing in the background, similar to fan edits made for admired celebrities. Another way that TikTok may negatively impact the true crime community is its ability to reach a much younger audience. When young teens see criminal cases as they are scrolling, it could instill a fear in them that may impact them for years to come. Despite the importance of young women being aware of their surroundings and being prepared in case of danger, many true crime cases get popular because of their rarity.

“True crime definitely affects mental health,” Perkinson says. “And I sometimes wonder how much fear and mistrust of strangers it’s engendering in audiences that consume it often.” Where it is arguably important to raise awareness, this obsession with true crime may be too strongly infiltrating the minds of young women. However, this can be and likely is seen as a good thing by people in many situations. In 2021, a young woman named Gabby Petito went missing after going on a cross-country trip with her fiancé. Before long, the internet got involved and the case became widely known. After the case started gaining traction online, thousands of women and other users interacted with TikTok videos about Petito’s disappearance saying they were creating a folder full of self-identification information, such as fingerprints, photos and other information. In September 2021, Petito was confirmed dead and in January her fiancé admitted to murdering her in his own suicide note. All in all, TikTok has been a useful tool in aiding with the growth and awareness of the true crime subculture. Because TikTok videos are so short, they allow people to talk about many different crimes and bring attention to situations that may not otherwise be widely known. Having thousands of people paying attention to crime cases can be massively helpful, like with the Gabby Petito case. Hundreds of thousands of people around the world were working together to sift through potential evidence they found online to help solve the case.

The popularity of the Gabby Petito case, however, raises the question of why her case got so much attention in comparison to the thousands of other women who go missing every year. Gwen Ifill once named this phenomenon “missing white woman syndrome,” meaning that the media more excitedly consume stories about victims like Petito: young, white and blonde. According to a report from the University of Wyoming, in the past 10 years, more than 700 Indigenous people were reported missing in the state. Imagine the expansion of the true crime subculture if content creators broadened their stories to include a more diverse population. Either way, the true crime phenomenon will likely continue to thrive in the coming years as media producers adapt storytelling methods that reach even wider audiences, audiences who want to simply listen or potentially get involved in solving crimes. “Evolution will probably come in the niches — stories that cover culturally, geographically or demographically specific crimes; stories that come with a built-in online infrastructure for listener participation and informationsharing, stuff like that,” Perkinson says. Nothing calms the mind after a long day like sitting at a computer and helping to solve an age-old mystery — besides actually solving it. As long as the true crime community can include massive audiences, young women will continue to take the long way home to hear the last five minutes of a true crime podcast. b