The Business of Murder: Reflecting on the effect of true crime media.

I’m excited to share that our research study into true crime has been published! This was a huge undertaking and I’m really happy (and relieved) that we were able to complete it and I think we found some important things.

I want to start by saying that this research project took a long time. Over two years, actually. It is the largest and most involved study I have ever worked on, and it is one of those projects that ends up reshaping you a little as a researcher. It certainly reshaped how I think about true crime media, and it made me much more cautious about how and why I engage with it.

This blog post is really about that journey. It is about how a passing interest in podcasts turned into a qualitative research project, how that project exposed tensions I did not fully appreciate beforehand, and why true crime sits at a strange crossroads between education, entertainment, advocacy, and exploitation.

When I talk about this in my forensic psychology classes, I frame it less as a judgment and more as an invitation to think critically. True crime is not going away. It is big business, culturally influential, and deeply emotional. That means we should probably understand what it is doing to people, especially those most closely connected to crime itself.

 What Do We Even Mean by “True Crime”?

Before getting into the research, we need to define what we mean by true crime. And yes, this is more complicated than it sounds.

Broadly speaking, true crime is a form of creative nonfiction focused on real criminal events. Usually it focuses on violent crime, often murder. There has always been a particular fascination with the most extreme cases, serial homicide, sexual violence, kidnappings, disappearances. That focus is not new. What has changed is the medium and the scale.

True crime has existed for as long as people have told stories. You can trace it through pamphlets, newspapers, court transcripts, and serialized reporting going back centuries. Nineteenth-century reporting on Jack the Ripper is a classic example. Those articles were not just informational. They were political, emotional, salacious, and often voyeuristic. Readers were horrified, captivated, and pulled into a narrative that blurred the line between news and entertainment.

Modern true crime inherits all of that, but now it lives in podcasts, documentaries, streaming platforms, live shows, and social media. It is portable, bingeable, monetized, and deeply embedded in everyday life.

 My Relationship with True Crime

I have been interested in crime, psychology, and forensic work since before high school. That interest was not surprising. My parents were police officers, and my mother was also a psychologist. Crime and human behavior were normal dinner table topics in my house.

As a teenager, I read extensively about criminal profiling and forensic psychology. The works of John Douglas & Roy Hazelwood, FBI profilers in the Behavioral Science Unit with VICAP, were of particular interest. Hazelwood’s book Dark Dreams in particular made animpression on me. That material felt different from what we now think of as true crime. It was clinical, disturbing, but clearly grounded in understanding behavior rather than sensationalizing it.

In the early days of the internet, I also wandered into places like The Crime Library, a now-defunct website that hosted lurid writeups of serial killers. I remember being interested and deeply uncomfortable at the same time. That discomfort stuck with me, even as I moved through college and graduate school and became more focused on clinical and forensic research.

For a long time, I did not really engage with modern true crime media. When podcasts exploded in popularity, I mostly listened to non-crime shows while running or doing chores. I assumed true crime podcasts would be inaccurate, overly dramatic, and detached from real forensic realities.

Then, a few years ago, I listened to a podcast about a missing persons case. Missing in Alaska. I listened to it kind of on a whim and was surprised at how well done and thoughtful I found it to be. It made me reconsider some my assumptions. That opened the door to exploring the genre more broadly, and what I found was both fascinating and troubling.

The turning point came when I realized just how much money and attention were circulating in the true crime space. Some of my friends attended live shows in Boston where hundreds of people paid to listen to podcasters discuss unsolved murders, and offer a bit of “true crime comedy” (gross). I kept wondering where that money went. How much of it supported victims’ families or advocacy efforts? How much simply stayed within the media machine? At the same time, I noticed how uncomfortable I felt listening to some podcasts. The focus on graphic detail. The casual humor layered over horrific events. The way victims sometimes faded into the background while perpetrators became the center of attention.

So, I asked whether anyone had actually studied this from a forensic or psychological perspective. The answer was: not much.

There was a growing body of feminist media research examining how women are portrayed in true crime media, which is critically important given that most victims are women and most consumers are also women. There was also research on media effects more generally. But from a criminal justice or forensic psychology perspective, I found the literature was surprisingly thin. That gap became the foundation for this study.

Why a Qualitative Approach Made Sense

I decided early on that this project needed to be qualitative. Most of my research is quantitative, which is convenient because computers do the math. But numbers were not going to capture what I wanted to understand here. I wanted to know how true crime media was experienced by people who actually live inside its orbit. Not listeners in the abstract, but those directly affected by it. So, I designed a phenomenological interview study focusing on three key stakeholder groups: true crime media creators, cold case investigators, and victims’ advocates. Over the course of about a year, I interviewed roughly forty-five people, ultimately retaining usable data from around thirty-nine participants. Each group included about thirteen individuals.

The first group consisted of podcasters and true crime content creators. These were people actively producing true crime media, many with substantial followings.

The second group was cold case investigators. Police officers, detectives, and task force members working on unsolved homicides and disappearances across the United States.

The third group included victims’ advocates and family members of victims, often representing organizations or advocacy networks connected to unsolved cases.

Each interview was recorded, transcribed, and systematically coded using established qualitative methods. I worked closely with co-authors to ensure reliability and minimize bias. This was slow, painstaking work, but it allowed patterns to emerge organically rather than being imposed from the outside.

 What Emerged: Citizen Detectives and Mismatched Expectations

One of the most prominent themes across all three groups was the rise of the so-called citizen detective. These are members of the public who become deeply invested in cases through podcasts, documentaries, and online forums. Sometimes, this involvement is genuinely well-intentioned. People want to help. They want justice. They want closure.

But investigators repeatedly described how this involvement can disrupt cases. Misinformation spreads quickly. Tips flood in, most of them unusable. Public speculation contaminates evidence and complicates prosecutions.

At the same time, victims’ advocates described feeling ignored by law enforcement while watching strangers dissect their loved one’s death for entertainment. That disconnect fuels resentment on both sides, even though both groups often want the same outcome.

 Ethical Versus Unethical True Crime

Another central theme in the data was how participants distinguished between what they saw as ethical and unethical true crime. No one claimed this distinction was clean or objective, but there was remarkable consistency in how people described it.

Ethical true crime, in participants’ views, centers victims rather than perpetrators. It avoids gratuitous violence. It prioritizes accuracy over suspense. It acknowledges uncertainty. It engages with advocacy, prevention, or reform rather than simply retelling harm.

Unethical true crime, by contrast, treats violence as content. It leans into shock, humor at inappropriate moments, and dramatic cliffhangers. It prioritizes audience engagement and monetization, even when that means simplifying facts or sidelining the people most affected by the crime. Unethical true crime wis seen as sensationalistic, perpetrator-focused, graphic, and primarily driven by audience growth and profit.

The problem is that these categories are not fixed. Podcasts evolve. Financial pressures increase. What begins as advocacy can slowly drift toward spectacle. This tension is intensified by the reality that true crime is now a business. Podcasts generate advertising revenue. Live shows sell tickets. Streaming platforms compete for exclusives. Several participants explicitly named this as a source of ethical drift. When livelihoods depend on downloads and engagement, restraint becomes harder to justify.

How Victims and Advocates Experience True Crime

Victims’ advocates offered some of the most powerful reflections in the study. Many acknowledged that true crime media can help keep cases visible and pressure institutions to act. Some families actively seek media attention for this reason.

But others described feeling erased or exploited by narratives that focused on killers rather than lives lost. Several advocates spoke about discovering podcasts or videos about their loved ones without warning, consent, or input. The harm, they explained, was not just emotional. It was ongoing. Each retelling reopened wounds, often without offering anything in return. This highlights one of the most uncomfortable truths of true crime media: the audience can log off but families cannot.

Does True Crime Help Solve Cases?

The answer is complicated. Investigators acknowledged that increased awareness can sometimes help. Cold cases are rarely solved without new information, and public exposure can prompt someone to come forward. But awareness is not the same as accuracy. In many cases, true crime media creates noise rather than clarity. It can distort timelines, elevate fringe theories, and harden public narratives that are difficult to undo. Victims’ advocates expressed ambivalence. They appreciated attention, but not at the cost of dignity or control over their loved one’s story.

Reflection

I think it’s important to say that I’m not “anti-true crime”. I understand why people are drawn to it. Fear, empathy, curiosity, and a desire for justice all play a role. But we should think about why we are drawn to this and what we are getting out of it. For example, over the course of this research, I had several people (participants and other listeners) tell me that they preferred true crime stories that had a definite end (the bad guy had been captured) because “they needed closure.” In straying from listening to something that could potentially help spread awareness or take action, we are seeking out something that is entertaining. But this isn’t a horror movie with make-believe thrills. Crime is not just content. It involves real people, real trauma, and long-lasting consequences.

That perspective was reinforced when I attended CrimeCon in 2024. It was a strange and revealing experience. Advocacy panels sat alongside merchandise booths. Families of victims shared space with fans seeking selfies. The atmosphere was not uniformly exploitative, but it was deeply uncomfortable at times.

True crime exists in a moral gray zone. This research did not resolve that tension, but it clarified it. True crime is not going away. The question is not whether it exists, but how responsibly it is created and consumed.  This study suggests that the question is not whether true crime should exist, but how it should exist. Ethical reflection cannot be an afterthought. It has to be part of production, consumption, and education.

As psychologists, criminologists, educators, and consumers, we all participate in shaping this ecosystem. The stories we tell, the way we tell them, and the attention we give them all matter

Here’s the link to our new research. Please share widely!

Gamache, K, Rice, K, Allen, A, & Pontbriand, W. (2026). The impact of true crime podcasts on cold case investigations and victims' advocacy. Journal of Psychology & Behavioral Science, 13, 163-179. https://doi.org/10.15640/jpbs.v13p13 

Further Reading (these are fantastic articles about the effects of true crime media)

Boling, K. S. (2019). True crime podcasting: Journalism, justice or entertainment? International Studies in Broadcast and Audio Media, 17 (2), 161-178. doi: 10.1386/rjao_00003_1 https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2265982

Boling, K. S. (2023). We can do better: Counter-narratives in true crime podcasts on domestic violence. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 40 (5), 363-380. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2023.2265982

Boling, K. S., & Hull, K. (2018). Undisclosed Information—Serial Is my favorite murder: Examining motivations in the true crime podcast audience. Journal of Radio & Audio Media, 25(1), 92–108. https://doi.org/10.1080/19376529.2017.1370714

Vicary, A. M., & Fraley, R. C. (2010). Captured by true crime: Why are women drawn to tales of rape, murder, and serial killers? Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1 (1), 81–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550609355486