HOW DID WE GET HERE?

HOWDIDWE GET HERE?

TRUE CRIME

For nearly200years,we’ve been obsessedwith real-life tales of killing and deceit.What paved theway for our current Making a Murderer cravings? Here’s a brief investigation.

Law & Order debuts in 1990, with a ripped-from-theheadlines ethos that holds viewers for 20 years. This 1974 book by prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi on the Charles Manson murders takes the prize as the best-selling truecrime book of all time.

1842

Edgar Allan Poe writes The Mystery of Marie Rogêt, a detective story based onthe unsolved murder of New Yorker Mary Rogers. The public and the critics are hooked. “It’s the first significant attempt to retell an actual crime and take liberties with it,” says Michael Arntfield, a criminologist and a professor at Western University, in London, Ontario.

1888

Newspapers receive letters signed “Jack the Ripper” and ignite fear by printing them. (One threatens to “clip the lady’s ears off.”) Some researchers today believe a journalist penned the notes, but the mystery man inspires a genre now known as “Ripperature.”

1924

True Detective Mysteries magazine hits newsstands, feeding an appetite for “fact crime,” complete with case reports, investigation techniques, and buxom blonds. During the 1930s and 40s, True Detective reportedly sells 2 million copies a month.

1954

With televisions a fixture in more than half of American homes, the nation is captivated by reports of Sam Sheppard, an Ohio doctor convicted of bludgeoning his pregnant wife to death. The media is blamed for “prejudicial publicity,” and Sheppard is acquitted in a retrial in 1966. The case is said to have inspired the 1963 TV show The Fugitive.

1966

Truman Capote meticulously reconstructs the events of the murders of the Clutter family of Holcomb, Kansas, in his book In Cold Blood. The “nonfiction novel” is later named one of the 100 best nonfiction books of all time by the Modern Library.

1988

Errol Morris’s groundbreaking documentary, The Thin Blue Line, helps overturn the life sentence of Randall Adams, a man convicted of murdering a Texas police officer in 1976.

1990S

Court TV debuts in 1991, broadcasting live coverage of actual trials around the clock. In 1994, O.J. Simpson’s trial hits the airwaves and becomes “the trial of the century.”

2010S

A fresh crop of successful series call for justice. The popular Serial podcast leads to a new trial for Adnan Syed. HBO’s The Jinx captures and airs a bathroom confession on tape shortly before the arrest of real estate heir Robert Durst, in March 2015.

2016

A series from the creators of Law & Order about the 1989 case of the Menendez brothers is bought by NBC. The conviction of Brendan Dassey, one of the subjects of Netflix’s Making a Murderer, is overturned. In season two, the docuserieswill follow codefendant Steven Avery and his fight to challenge his conviction. Jury, please take your seats in front of the TV.

Written by N.Jamiyla Chisholm

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MILLIONPEOPLE REPORTEDLY TUNE IN TOHEAR THEO.J. SIMPSON VERDICT, ONOCTOBER 3, 1995.