How True Crime Damages Our Souls and Society

By Isabella Kelly-Goss

Between podcasts, documentaries, and biopic mini-series, true crime has become increasingly popular. There’s currently no scientific claim that true crime is desensitizing people to violence, but that does not mean real-life violence should be used as fodder and entertainment for those who crave it. After all, the appeal of learning more about the justice system, the history of serial killers, or what drives a killer is arguably enticing. But, something being enticing does not make it ethical. True crime may be intriguing and, sometimes, informational, but it does have real repercussions to our society.

Let’s start by looking at a few examples. 

The Families

Obviously, most everyone is aware of the Jeffery Dahmer mini-series from Netflix, starring Evan Peters. There’s no doubt it’s one of Peters’ most powerful roles, he puts on a great performance. From everything I have heard and seen, his likeness to the serial killer is eerily accurate. However, amongst all the noise and chatter about how wonderfully horrifying his portrayal was, there were voices drowned out by the morbid praise. 

Rita Isbell, sister of Dahmer’s nineteen year-old victim Errol Lindsey, slammed Ryan Murphy’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story when it aired. 

“When I saw my name come across the screen and this lady saying verbatim exactly what I said,” Isbell wrote in an essay for Insider, “If I didn’t know any better, I would’ve thought it was me. Her hair was like mine, she had on the same clothes. That’s why it felt like reliving it all over again. It brought back all the emotions I was feeling back then.”

She is speaking of the scene in which actress DaShawn Barnes portrays her court testimony. Isbell spoke at Dahmer’s trial, where he was later given 15 consecutive life sentences. 

In the essay, Isbell goes on to explain that not only was she given no compensation for her likeness and traumatic experience being exploited as entertainment, she was not even notified until the show was released. 

“I feel like Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. They didn’t ask me anything. They just did it,” she continued, “I could even understand it if they gave some of the money to the victims’ children… The victims have children and grandchildren. If the show benefited them in some way, it wouldn’t feel so harsh and careless. It’s sad that they’re just making money off of this tragedy. That’s just greed.” 

Isbell only watched the scene of her testimony, claiming living through it once was more than enough. 

It’s easy, in my opinion, to see how re-traumatizing victims of such heinous events could be unethical. Isbell wasn’t the only victim, after all, to speak out about Monster. 

Shirley Hughes, whose son Tony Hughes was killed by Dahmer in 1991, spoke with The Guardian in Oct. of 2022. 

She told The Guardian that it was still hard to speak about her son, who was just 31 at the time of his death. 

“I don’t see how they can do that, I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out there like that.” Hughes said, “I shed tears…It hurts real bad. But you just have to trust and pray and just keep going day by day.” 

Despite this public disparagement of Ryan Murphy’s other american horror story, Monster received awards, recognition, and a whopping 56 million views within the first two weeks. 

Dahmer’s victims and their families are, unfortunately, not the only ones affected by the uptick in a societal obsession with the macabre. An article from Time came out in April of 2020, shortly after COVID-19 helped kickstart the increase of true crime production. 

Time’s Melissa Chan spoke with Mindy Pendleton, the step-mother of murder victim Robert Mast. Robert Mast was only 25 at the time of his murder, which was committed by his then-girlfriend Lindsey Haugen. Mast and Haugen had only known each other one month when he was killed. Though Haugen plead guilty, and is almost ten years into a 60-year sentence, Netflix’s documentary I Am a Killer has a whole episode dedicated to her. An episode that Pendleton says paints her in a sympathetic light. This, being Pendleton’s “greatest fear,” caused an uproar from Mast’s family and friends. 

“As a parent, a fellow human being, I beg you not to do this, PLEASE don’t do this!” Pendleton wrote in an email to the producers who asked her– and Mast’s other friends and family– to participate. 

The producers ignored her pleas, and the episode was released on Jan. 31, 2020. 

In the same article from Time, Chan spoke with Mast’s stepsister, Jenna Wimmer. 

“When we continue to give these shows numbers, they keep making them,” she told Chan, “and real people living real lives keep getting re-traumatized every time.” 

Wimmer is, if we’re all honest with ourselves, absolutely correct. The interest in true crime is human nature. Violent crimes have occurred for thousands and thousands of years, and literature and art surrounding these crimes have come along with them. However, in a money-grab, capitalistic society of supply and demand, the more we watch the more they will produce. In this same society, when truly observed, we have devalued empathy and community more with each passing year. We’re moving towards a place where we’ve even begun to idolize these people who have committed these crimes. 

Idolization

Many people think this is untrue, that no one is walking around idolizing people who do things like cannibalism and murder. Yet, when people found out Gypsy Rose Blanchard was getting out of jail, they flocked to her social media. The mini-series, starring Joey King, was incredibly popular. Of course, there is controversy surrounding Gypsy Rose’s guilt– and everyone has their own opinions as to whether or not she deserves criminal treatment. But, it has seemingly paved the way for others to get similar treatment.

Very recently, Casey Anthony joined tiktok and quickly accumulated over 70,000 followers. Casey Anthony, though technically acquitted of the crime, is widely regarded to have murdered her two year-old daughter. Her very first video garnered nearly 7 Million views. While, naturally, that does not mean all of these people are idolizing Anthony, mere curiosity does give way to a platform. 

That’s not to say the idolization of violent criminals is a new phenomenon caused strictly by true crime. Ted Bundy had dozens of ‘fan-girls’ that would deny that Bundy was guilty, wait outside the courtroom, send him love letters, and offer their hands in marriage. Bundy, in fact, did marry one of these women–Carole Ann Boone. Technically, Boone knew Bundy before he was charged with any kind of murder. But, even after she became aware she denied the allegations, or perhaps didn’t care. In 1977, it’s believed she even helped him escape prison. This obsession with him being innocent, leading to his escape, led to the murders of three more girls. Boone still did not believe he was guilty, married him, and even had a daughter with him while he was on death row. 

So while idolization in true crime is nothing new, it does not mean it is getting better. If anything, there is a wider-spread variety of people to idolize. These documentaries, biopics, and podcasts talk often about the killers and who they are. They discuss their childhoods and traumas, their hobbies. They tell the story of how a violent criminal became the way they are, why they liked to commit these crimes the way they did. As I’ve said, it can be fascinating. But, when we focus on the inner-workings of evil, we forget one very crucial detail: the victims. 

Going back to Monster, the victims got around one episode a piece. Dahmer is present in every episode. Murphy was not telling the story of a tragic string of crimes that impacted communities and families. No, he was displaying Jeffery Dahmer’s crimes like the story of Dahmer’s livelihood, like his accomplishments. Which is exactly how Dahmer viewed them, himself. To someone like Dahmer, every kill is a trophy, and every “trophy” was given its own episode. Murphy’s goal wasn’t to showcase loss, to tell a story; he was selling gore, horror, and feeding on morbid curiosity to turn a profit. After all, why would someone want to watch stories on each individual victim without knowing what it was like for Dahmer? The victims’ stories make it feel real, make people feel sad and guilty. Watching someone commit crimes is much easier for people to feel good about themselves, to feel desensitized. 

Desensitization

Now, this essay becomes a bit more personal. When I began to think about and explore the dark(er) side of the true crime genre, it was not out of the blue. In my small town in North Carolina, just on the outskirts of the county, we have a prison. In October of 2017, four inmates tried to escape and brutally murdered four employees. It was a tragedy, one everyone knew about. Thankfully, I was not personally impacted by this horrific event. My personal stake lies in my work. The newspaper in my town needed a freelancer to cover the trial for the third inmate. 

In North Carolina, first-degree murder automatically gets a sentence of life in prison without parole. Unless, that is, there are extenuating circumstances. The DA’s office in my area did feel these murders were incredibly violent and extenuating. As such, a large jury will decide guilt– and whether or not the defendant will be sentenced to death. The first two defendants have already been given the death penalty. 

Fast forward to my involvement. For the better part of a month now, I have been sitting five days a week in the courtroom, 9:30-5:00. Eleven days of jury selection, from over two hundred county residents. Most were dismissed due to bias and personal involvement, but some were dismissed due to being unable to handle graphic photographs. 

What really made me think was the amount of potential jurors who laughed– yes, actually laughed out loud– when asked if they could handle seeing graphic photographs and video footage. What a strange thing to laugh about, I would think. Every single one of these people who laughed would always follow this by explaining they watch a lot of true crime. They would say they watch graphic videos of murders, listen to grisly details on podcasts, some even said it was relaxing to them. 

As a reporter, I sit on the defendant’s side of the courtroom. The prosecution’s side is reserved for people impacted by the event. Throughout the trial, these people can be seen crying, walking out of the room at times, when something their loved ones went through is shown or discussed. A quick glance to my right, and you can see many workers who were assaulted that day, in the audience. Most of them are there by subpoena only, made to testify. Most of them, once released from their subpoenas, leave almost immediately. 

Stabbed, bashed with hammers, cut by scissors the inmates stole from the sewing workshop. That is what these living victims explain they had gone through. Many of them cannot work anymore. One man, who barely survived, cannot even drive anymore because of the brain damage they caused. He walks with a cane on one side, and his wife on the other, to keep from falling over. Even if it isn’t physical, many of these people discuss their crippling PTSD. One man has such terrible PTSD, he brings a sweet golden retriever with him everywhere. His service dog. 

But, people laughed. They laughed at the idea that seeing these four people– mothers, fathers, daughters, brothers– be violently murdered on screen would affect them. That is what the true crime genre does. It causes people to be so far removed from the victims, from their families, that they laugh at the very idea of seeing video footage of a murder impacting them in any sort of emotional way. 

At the end of the day, true crime is entertaining. These crimes can be enthralling, something out of the ordinary from our everyday lives. But, the victims and their families? These are their lives. They wake up, everyday, knowing they don’t need to watch a mini-series or listen to a podcast to know what it’s like. They live it, every single day, and they know people use their pain to entertain themselves. So, next time you go to watch that new show that’s on streaming, ask yourself: Is being entertained worth causing someone else pain?