Did you watch Death of the Pastor’s Wife? Or perhaps binge the new series of Monster, following the case of Lizzie Borden more closely than you monitor your own inbox? Surely you watched Making a Murderer back in the day? Chances are, you have at least heard of all of these.
Call it educational, a genuine desire to overturn miscarriages of justice, or just morbid fascination, but our appetite for true crime stories has become increasingly reflected in streaming platforms and podcast charts. I’m an avid consumer of true crime myself.
My favorite books have always been thrillers, and I’ve been known to become deeply immersed while reading about historical murders. It might sound like rubbernecking or morbid curiosity, treating real crimes as entertainment fodder, but it’s not so simple. I—and others—seek a certain amount of validation in these stories.
Charlie Webster, host of the chart-topping true crime podcast Scamanda (about Amanda Riley, a woman who faked having cancer), first approached the genre as a consumer. “For me, it was definitely escapism. It absorbed my brain, because it took me away from normality.” Webster believes women in particular are drawn to true crime “because quite often, we see ourselves in stories.” “People can see their own pain in some of the storytelling,” she says. “I think that's why women love it so much, because it's a way to play out your vulnerability and your own pain.”
The idea of finding escapism in painful stories might seem off, but there’s a psychological logic behind it.
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