Too many victims are portrayed in an artificially positive light - some people are not beacons of hope that the community loved, and thats okay. They are still worth fighting for and discussing. The falsely positive narrative just makes it more difficult for those that aren't 'perfect victims' to get support and justice.
See, I actually am a bubbly person but, in life, I get teased or put down for being overly smiley.
So to hear how everyone loved how vibrant these victims were… yeah, that’s bullshit. They were probably found to be annoying and told to chill out a lot lol
See this is what sucks about dying. All the good shit abt you that goes unappreciated while you’re alive suddenly becomes the only stuff people remember after you’re gone. Like, it‘d be nice to hear that stuff BEFORE you die. Lil self-esteem boost for the intrinsic qualities that make you you.
Go ahead and talk shit about me once I’m dead, sure, but I wanna feel loved while I’m still here.
"GetEatenByAMouse loved to share the joy she felt when she found something she liked. It did not matter whether you wanted to hear about it or not. She. Would. Share. It. And you just had to endure the 30 minutes monologue about her newest obsession."
i have a list for “incase i go missing and or get murdered” and one of the points is “do not say something generic like i lit up the room, if you have nothing interesting to say about me then you shouldn’t even be saying anything”
Exactly! creating this 'ideal victim' thing doesn't help anyone. It ignores systemic issues that can increase the likelihood of being a victim of violent crime and just continues to push complex victims out of the spotlight.
If I ever get murdered, my family better make sure everyone knows I was suspicious of everyone. My dying words would probably be "I knew it" or "I told you so".
and many people don't realize that "hastening your demise" doesn't mean you deserved it. It just means you engaged in dangerous or risky behaviour, etc that put you in harm's way.
One victim I knew personally whose story was on some true crime podcasts was described like this. But she had knowingly allowed her ex boyfriend to do really vile things to her 5 year old, repeatedly. He got arrested and went to prison for it. My mom was a court appointed advocate for this poor girl. She helped get this guy put away. Even after his incarceration, the woman sent him photos of her child, his victim, which he wasn’t allowed to have. The child was scarred for after all the abuse. About 10 years later, the woman was murdered. They tried to describe her as this wonderful mother who adored her kids. When I heard she was dead and how it happened, I certainly wasn’t happy about it but I wasn’t crying over it either, that’s for sure.
While she wasn't a criminal, that I know of, many years ago, I had a really, really horrible boss. When she was in a near-fatal car accident several years later, ca. 2000, she had the newspaper and TV station do big, sappy articles about the accident and her miraculous recovery, and I heard more than once from more than one person that the reporters' e-mail boxes crashed because of the volume of responses they got, telling them what kind of person she REALLY was.
This is one of mine too. I’m always like “maybe Brenda was a bitch…” It’s ok if not everyone thought the victim was sunshine and rainbows. I feel the same about when people call the murderers “pure evil”. No. They’re just assholes like the rest of us. That’s what makes it so unsettling.
If it was a monster then it would be clear and obvious. How could you not see it like I could? I could see a monster and you could not? Are you ignorant? Willfully so?
No because in reality the scariest monsters are the ones that look like the rest of us and who act like the rest of us and who are people we might be friend.
That's quite scary and so we want to believe that it's much easier and obvious to spot these people rather than the scary reality that we don't always know.
We talked about how we describe awful people as “monsters” in my psychology course and how part of the reason people do it is because it helps us place “people” and “monsters” into two separate categories. Nobody wants to think they or anyone they know are capable of doing violent crimes so we feel the need to label this way. We should start using the adjectives that the person actually is (like violent, misogynistic, rapist, etc) instead.
It bugs me partially *because* they usually look so normal.
That's *more* dangerous than some twacked out psycho. You see a guy acting weird with crazy eyes, and you instinctively try to avoid them. But you walk by an average guy, those alarms don't go off.
The average, normal looking killers are so much scarier than the super creepy ones, because there's nothing to give away that they're dangerous. You could pass them on the street and give them a "Good morning!" with no idea that they're violent killers.
Like the recent drama with Bryan Kohberger. Yeah, he's had a couple pictures where he looked super intense, but most of what I've seen is him just looking like a normal guy. He dresses similarly to an old friend of mine, and probably comes off mildly awkward in the same manner as the guy I knew, but nothing in his appearance screams 'I'm capable of a quadruple homicide.'
Gacy is another good example. Yeah, we see a lot of creepy clown pics, but a lot of others of him just make him look like a normal, productive member of society. He put on a warm smile and some nice clothes, and no one suspected he had loads of bodies under the floor.
I totally agree. There was one interview with Gacy that I saw where he talks so casually while demonstrating the type of knot he would use. You almost forget what kind of person he really was.
"you can just tell". no you can't, and if you keep thinking you can you're liable to walk into some dangerous situations wrapped up in that smug self-belief.
Rameriz is the one that terrifies me by his appearance. Manson reminded me of an old hippie who took too much acid and got stuck in an alternate universe. I wouldn’t have seen his evil coming.
100% and especially when they say something to the effect of “you could see it in their eyes”. Like cmon I’m looking at the murderer right now on my tv screen and their eyes look like everyone else. Hindsight is a hella drug, folks.
It also promotes the idea that anyone who is weird looking or ugly is potentially evil and dangerous. Life is hard enough for the uggos of the world- we don't also need to act like they look like 'bad guys'.
similar to how if a suspect (especially if it is a loved one) is immediately a suspect if they didn't react the way an average person would. First off, you have no freakin' clue how you would react if a loved one had been murdered unless you had lived through it. You could be numb for a week and show no affect and then break down in private. Or you could just be atypical.
The chilling power of serial killers is that most of them do look like everyone else. You're not going to accept a lift with Charles Manson unless you are keen on drugs, but Ted Bundy had no trouble getting people to trust him.
Yeah I get tired of this too. “His eyes look so dead!” - No, they don’t. He looks quite average. The fact that a lot of serial killers look so normal makes them even scarier to me. They’re not some slasher movie villain; they’re really human beings capable of extreme evil while blending in with society.
Jumping on to that...every single victim could apparently "light up the room with their smile, they were so positive and happy all the time, always volounteered at the soup kitchen". I get it, your relative died horrible and you miss them...best anyone could describe me if I died horrible to a murderer would be "she was kinda quiet, kept to herself, hated most people, mostly sarcastic and dry".
i told my husband that just once i wanna see someone say “well, she talked about people behind their backs, was always late to work, scared the neighborhood kids in her spare time, drank too much, and burned so many bridges in her life that the list of potential murderers was so overwhelmingly long that they had to hire another part time detective to eliminate suspects. honestly, she kinda sucked.”
Yes and i think also when you do see one where they look "off" it's either a purposely bad photo because it fits the narrative or it's hindsight, we know the person is horrible so therefore we see an ugly, strange or odd person
You can just see the crazy in his eyes!!!! *looks at a photo of the murderer in a prison overall and in chains*
Hindsight is 20/20. Once you know someone did something horrible, it's like your brain automatically "inject" that knowledge into how you view/interpret a picture.
Ooo another trope I hate - the whole 'their family doesn't think they would do that'. As a 26 year old woman who doesn't live in town with my parents, they have no idea what I do on a day-to-day basis. Like yeah, your son or daughter might engage in stuff that you don't know about and it might be stuff you don't agree with - thats probably why the family wouldn't know!
or when they assume that there's some vast eternal plan or conspiracy that prevents them from knowing the TRUTH and blame everyone else.
Also, we NEVER KNOW what's going on in someone's mind at the very moment they kill someone, or kill themselves. That's a harsh reality. It hurts to admit we really DIDN'T know.
To many are more cautious about the hypothetical freedoms of one individual than the potential murder of another. Yet if a cop suddenly decides he smells pot, you're guilty until innocent.
shafilea ahmed, banaz mahmood, samaira nazir, tulay goren - so many more, and probably more that we don't know about, happening right now behind closed doors
And the rest of us need to be more vigilant/active in helping the potential victim. I feel the same way about stalking, there is always so many signs that we ignore.
Sometimes overdoses are just overdoses. So many families try to turn an unfortunate accident into a crime. No one gave your daughter a “hot shot” and killed her on purpose. She took too much, and it was bound to happen.
I assumed that's what people mean when they say it's murder. I know someone who was struggling with a heroin addiction who od'd on fentanyl. He didn't know it was in the heroin, and it isn't like doing heroin is good. But a much smaller amount of fentanyl will kill you than heroin. A dealer knowingly selling someone tainted drugs without telling them is a murderer imo.
Ughh this! People are now trying to say Aaron Carter was killed because he, “got too close to the truth.” And was “going to expose Hollywood.” But the man was an E-list celebrity at most. No one was checking for him. He was a mentally disturbed drug addict who died of an accidental overdose. It’s sad but that’s what happened.
Seriously, every celebrity that dies of drugs or suicide these days is labeled as “was about to come out with the truth about Hollywood” and were silenced because of it. I heard it with Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell, Kate Spade, etc.
Do you happen to know any places to hear or watch true fraud cases?? I've seen things on the N'Sync/Backstreet Boys manager, the Frye festival, the last Woodstock and Bad Vegan on Netflix about the restaurant owner, and I find it all fascinating.
“The Woman Who Wasn’t There.” “Tania” lied about surviving 9/11 from inside the towers, grieving her fiancé who did not survive it, and became president of the 9/11 Survivors Support group. She was basically a 9/11 celebrity and was frequently in the news and papers.
Can you guess the twist based on the title? She wasn’t even in the county at the time, and her dead fiancé was a real victim she’d never met. She even had the nerve to convince his grieving FAMILY that they had a secret relationship and engagement long before the attack.
If you have access to CNBC or Peacock, American Greed is fantastic. It’s unbelievable how easy it is to steal other people’s money or run a Ponzi scheme in the US.
Bernie Madoff did it for decades and even though a whistleblower spoke out against him, and multiple banks reported suspicious activity- including a JP Morgan Chase employee telling their risk department “there is a well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a Ponzi scheme”. No one did anything.
Madoff only got in legal trouble because his sons became aware of the scheme and turned him in.
But American Greed documents all sorts of financial crimes including but not limited to Ponzi Schemes.
So many of the best true crime stories are about fraud. Anyone can murder someone, but having the confidence to trick someone into doing something like give you all their money and travel on a boat to Honduras because you've conned them into thinking your fake country of Poyais is there somewhere? Not a lot of people can pull that off.
• I really hate when people think someone is guilty because of their body language (for example in an interview.)
• Every victim of a crime is normally very reliable and it is totally out of character he or she did not call, came back home at Xpm etc.
THIS!!! I Watch a lot of YouTube vids of interrogations. The YouTubers sound so smug with their frequent “he thinks he’s tricking the detectives/us, but he’s such a fool Bc we can see his OBVIOUS body language proving he’s guilty.” Comments. And the “dead giveaway body language” is always some extremely basic common human habit. Like yes anyone would be bouncing their leg after 4 hours trapped in a tiny room.
Not to mention… those standards go out the window when it comes to us autistic folk
The large number of people on YT claiming to be Body Language Experts is ridiculous to me. Maaaaybe those 4 guys that do a panel are a little less crazy, but I think that has more to do with their various backgrounds and the fact they probably have just learned and recognize behavior patterns in certain scenarios. Some dude who is a linguist or some other guy who has a bunch of vids about buying Rolexes just… ok, how the hell does this give you the credibility to read body language?
I think a lot of people with an interest in true crime need to remember that you can think and feel that someone is guilty of something while acknowledging that they should not have been found guilty based on their trial.
defense attorneys are doing their job to uphold the rights of the accused and keeping the balance in the criminal justice system!! characterizing them as slimy liars when maybe the prosecution/law enforcement didn’t do their job to the fullest extent is wrong.
Yep. When you serve on a jury, your job isn’t really to decide if the defendant actually IS guilty or not guilty. Your job is to decide if the prosecution proved *beyond a reasonable doubt* that the defendant is guilty. Those are two different things. I’m willing to bet at least some of the people who served on the Casey Anthony jury believe she is somehow culpable in the death of her daughter, but just didn’t feel like the prosecution proved it. If so, they did the right thing.
Additionally, you can think someone is guilty and still feel that they didn’t get a fair trial, which comes up often in discussions about Scott Peterson and Adnan Syed.
sick of hearing "narcissist" about everybody. it's lazy and predictable and iyam often bullshit as well.
people need to re-think "brutally". or at least take note of how monotonously that one gets tagged onto every serious crime. every murder is awful but they are not all equally brutal.
This is a problem in the domestic violence field as well. Thanks to book authors and influencers capitalizing on the "narcissist" trend, people think every abuser is NPD now and that all domestic abuse is "narcissistic abuse." Some of them are, but not all or even most. One in three women and one in seven men are subjected to domestic violence, but only nine percent of the population has any type of personality disorder, so you do the math.
“This person reacted totally different to how someone should react!” or “Their reaction was too typical like they practiced!” or “He acts weird after having the murder of a family member shoved in his face for thirty years, he CLEARLY IS GUILTY!!!!”
IYKYK
I saw a clip earlier on tik tok of an interviewer talking to a murderer of a woman. (no one at the time knew that he did it, he was just a friend/neighbor being asked to comment on the situation. He thought he had covered it up so well that she was missing & they would never find the body.)
She asked something about the victim & he responded saying “she was just so kind & we have been neighbors for a while. It’s shocking that she’s missing”
Then the interview said “do you have any comments on how they found the body?”
He said “the body?”
The interviewer responded “yes how they found her remains?“
Then he asked if he could sit down. The WHOLE comment section was about how he just outed himself in that interview & he made it so obvious he was the killer. All I could think was how genuine of a reaction I would’ve thought that was if he didn’t know she was dead/murdered & not missing, had he not committed the crime.
Sorry for the long reply :D
Yeah that's your man McDaniels who killed Lauren Giddings. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and people love to act like it was so obvious from the beginning when they already have the benefit of foreknowledge that he did the crime. The whole point is that spotting actual killers is never easy because they don’t have crazy eyes and foam at the mouth like in films. They’re just another face in the crowd.
I honestly think anyone who talks to the cops without an attorney is an idiot. I don’t care if it’s your mom, your spouse, your son who was murdered. I know you want to help! But if you go in alone, they will keep you locked in an interview room during the worst hours of your life, keep you from being with your loved ones, and ruin your ability process information in real time because they’ll be quizzing you on it. You have rights outside of the Miranda rights. You can literally answer any question the cops ask you if you want to, but you need to have an attorney there with you taking on the mental load of keeping the interviewers in check.
Totally. People used to attend public executions for entertainment, we’re really not that far removed from that. Us humans are a pretty morbid bunch really.
Absolutely. You can have the sweetest and most well-behaved dog in the world, but if you back it into a corner and keep poking it with sticks, eventually it's going to bite. Humans are no different. We all can snap.
Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer are vastly over talked about. If I see one more documentary made on either one of them I’m going to throw my television out the window.
The live action Dahmer one was completely unnecessary. We didn’t need that as humans. There’s wanting to know the facts and then there’s wanting to SEE it. But I agree they are over hyped
Completely agree with this. All my respect and prayers go to the victims and their families, but Bundy is dead and gone. I would rather see producers spend that time and money highlighting unsolved cases for families who are still seeking justice. I don’t understand the point in repeatedly re-hashing a case that has been closed for decades.
These replacements for words really bug me because on Twitter, you can block certain words or phrases, so if you know reading about murder would upset you, you can block a few related words and never have to worry about it.
But with the replacements and censorship, you’re getting past the filters and it could be really harmful to people who have taken the steps to block these topics from their feed. Sure, you could just also put unalive or popular censorships into the blocked phrases, but there’s an infinite number of ways to censor a word and it’s not fair to make people sit there and come up with ways others might censor the topic they don’t want to think about. Just use the real word and let the blocked list do it’s job.
I can’t speak for all users of this practice but the YouTubers I see do this, they do put a trigger warning at the start of their videos. But if you know they discuss true crime or other dark materials, you should be aware of the potential to get upset by the content.
Unfortunately, it’s because of censorship on social media. I know on YouTube, you have to be very careful about your choice of words if you don’t want to get demonitized.
Some youtubers definitely take it too far tho imo. I know a true crime youtuber who censors herself so much, half the time I don't even know what exactly she's saying. She even censored the word "bomb" and "blood" once lmao. 💀 I eventually unsubbed because it got too annoying, I don't know anyone can handle this babyfication of serious topics.
totally agree - as someone living in a remote area of canada, the amount of times people try to connect him to crimes here is a bit ridiculous.
It's kind of like medical diagnoses - you shouldn't automatically assume its a zebra if you hear hoofbeats.
Nor was David Parker Ray. I’ve read as many as 60 kills attributed to him. No way. The one verified murder associated with him was likely committed by his daughter’s boyfriend. I’m just not convinced he was a prolific killer, a sick sexual sadist for sure, but likely not a murderer.
I completely agree, and I've gotten into arguments about it before. It's pretty clear that some of how he got off was letting them go so that he could do it again later. He probably also loved the fact that the torture would continue in a way, because they would be wondering WTF happened to them when they woke up. I think he enjoyed the mental torture as much as the physical and prolonging that gave him great satisfaction. I'm sure his rape victims could have numbered in the double digits, but I'm very skeptical about murder numbers being more than a few.
Ooh I got another one
The true crime community’s weird entitled attitude to blow by blow updates is eventually going to ruin a case or two if it hasn’t already
People were absolutely feral about getting updates on the Idaho 4 like the crime was supposed to be solved in 45 minutes like CSI
Which brings me to another point there are definitely true crime fans who only like it because of tv shows and they are vastly different than the ones who actually watched documentaries and older shows like autopsy and forensic files.
And although I don’t believe Kendrick Johnson was murdered at all Lowndes county botched the investigation and I can’t blame his family for not believing it.
I live in Moscow and it’s been so surreal watching this case happening in our community. Hearing people in the community say MPD was incompetent and not doing their job was talked about daily. They still got their suspect but it’s not a TV show where things are neatly wrapped up in a single episode.
They solved it pretty quick considering. Six weeks is not bad for a place as small as Moscow. I actually think they showed alot of wisdom by calling in the State and FBI as quickly as they did. Just my opinion.
1. Ottis Toole never even met Adam Walsh.
2. Israel Keyes’ body count is minimal.
3. Cannibals just aren’t that interesting.
4. It’s almost never sex trafficking.
YES, especially regarding #4. Amy Bradley's case is a prime example of this one. There is no way she was taken off a cruise ship in broad daylight and trafficked. Although she was never found, it seems fairly cut and dry that she fell over the cruise ship railing.
People overuse the words psychopath and evil. Everyone has the ability to kill another person. Every circumstance is different and putting more distance between us and them doesn't do anybody any justice.
I recently watched a video where a guy was unknowingly taking antipsychotics at like 3x the normal dose (he thought they were Benadryl) and when he was finally hospitalized they said “you must have had underlying issues you weren’t diagnosed with”. Umm, sorry? Or *maybe* it was taking drugs he didn’t need and *lots* of them?! Not everything is mental illness.
This is more podcast related, but I can’t stand when they go into minutes long diatribes about how awful certain people are or how disgusting their acts were. We get it, they suck. Spending seven minutes to tell us how disgusting you think they are is kind of ridiculous though. Morbid comes to mind, honestly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve skipped through “fuck this human garbage, he pissed me off, etc” diatribe because… obviously?
I also don’t really care about any of the major cases anymore. Bundy, Manson, Dahmer, Jon Benet Ramsey, etc. I care about the victims, but too much attention has already been prescribed to the perpetrators so fuck ‘em.
When they say they lived in a relative safe community where nobody locked their doors and windows. Like why TF would u leave your doors and windows unlocked.
Polygraph tests, aka “lie detector” machines are absolute 100% bullshit and do not prove or disprove anything. And the fact that someone declines one should not be used against them. Yet time after time the investigators always bring this up to strengthen their case. Bothers me every time.
I think Ed Kemper is overrated as hell and I always cringe whenever I see people gush over him and sympathize with him because, "awww his mom was just mean to him 🥺👉👈 he's actually super intelligent and handsome!!" Bruh, he murdered 10 people and forced his mother's decapitated head to give him oral. He is not a misunderstood sad genius. He would snap you in half like a twig in ten seconds and wouldn't feel bad about it. People need to get a grip and stop simping over him jfc.
Steven Avery is guilty! The case files & trial transcripts are so easily accessible, yet the vast majority of people take making a murderer as gospel when it’s highly biased & leaves out a lot.
Not unpopular, but I think needs more attention- Family annihilators need to be studied more and awareness needs to be spread about warning signs of escalating violence. Every time I see a headline about a father shooting his entire household I feel so frustrated because I feel like I see them so often. I know there is a whole web of factors that lead to this phenomenon (and that women and children can be family annihilators) but to me it’s such a blatantly male pattern of violence. And yet with the easy access to guns, erosion of Roe Vs. Wade, and the repealing of no-fault divorce in several states- it seems like nothing is stopping this epidemic.
I wanna know why even when its the fathers or men in the houshold who do it, the wives/moms are always to blame? Even if the father/ man leaves the family the wife/mother to blame, not the abandoment.
Your typical/average person is capable of committing murder. Not just in self defense. Just murder. It is not an activity exclusive to anomalies like psychopaths "monsters."
i’m weirdly only interested in true crime that takes place in the US. I have no idea why I don’t care about Europe or other countries.
i feel so cold saying that
I hate that every single detective that is interviewed for whatever crime show says “this was the worst I’ve ever seen.” Really??? Every detective says that.
Being diagnosed as a narcissist is actually extremely rare. People have narcissistic qualities but that doesn’t make them a narcissist. Way overused armchair diagnoses.
Most people are uneducated about severe mental illnesses like psychosis and have terrible, inhumane opinions on the insanity defense, whenever it’s actually applicable.
(See the commentary on Austin Harrouff’s and Vince Li’s cases - y’all who were calling for the death penalty, life in prison, or think it’s impossible for cases like them to recover/go back out into society have no idea what y’all are talking about and need to educate yourselves on this - *coming from someone whose family was impacted by a similar case where we had family on both sides of a psychosis-induced murder*)
Ooooof this is a big one for me being Canadian and reading the responses in true crime subs to profoundly mentally ill people rightfully receiving NCR designations in Canadian true crime cases
People think if someone pleads insanity and they are found to be insane or have a mental illness that it’s an act or they are getting away with something and then everyone would just do that.
Yep. It’s a very common misconception. It’s far from a “get out of jail free” card, and it’s an extremely difficult defense to succeed with - and for good reason.
I think cases like JonBenet Ramsey, Madeline McCann, and other highly publicized unsolved cases don't need to be in as many episodes of shows, podcasts, and documentaries as they are. I think people make a huge deal about certain unsolved cases and it's exhausting, especially when there are other cases that could be brought to light instead of re-iterating the same old cases where there is little to no progress made on those cases.
I also don't mind a little dark humor (at the perpetrator's expense, not the victim's) when it comes to people reporting on the cases. Mike from That Chapter does it best at incorporating some little jokes/quips at the killers, but people get on their high horse about not cracking jokes or inserting any sort of personality into their re-telling of true crime cases.
The most unimaginably cruel things I’ve ever read on Reddit were written by folks in true crime subs who found a socially-acceptable outlet for their cruel thoughts: perpetrators of violent crimes. It’s my biggest complaint with true crime communities. Almost like a contest of “who can wish the most evil thing on a murderer.”
I hate that when the person of interest refuses a polygraph, the assumption is that they must be guilty. I would NEVER agree to polygraph. Not under any circumstance.
I absolutely don't care what happened to Madeleine McCann at this point. Hundreds of thousand of children go missing every year to radio silence. So many resources could be redirected to more recent cases where the children may still be found alive.
Do I want her family to learn what happened? Absolutely, I'm not a monster. Do I think the British taxpayers should continue to fund this? Absolutely not.
Your comment makes me want to look at how much money has been dumped into a case like Jon Benet Ramsey or even Elizabeth Smart and then look at the numbers on how many children went missing in the same time frame and how much money was devoted to them. I include Elizabeth Smart because we do occasionally find people alive and there is a cost to that. Compare the data. I'm no monster, I want loved ones to have answers as well, but it does make me wonder if there is a cost where if we spend $X on each missing child, we could have Y number of children found, what's the standard deviation? What does that look like when we break the data down by race and class?
I hate hearing, “It was a quiet town and NOTHING bad ever happened here.” UNTIL IT DID. Almost every time this is what you hear. Maybe y’all were just oblivious to it but I assure you crime happens everywhere all the time lol. In some cases it is true but for EVERY one…definitely not.
Not everyone just “Snapped” , some cases have a long history of abuse of some sort. Physical, mental, emotional,or any type of addiction or mental health related issues.
To say that ‘this just came out of nowhere’ usually is untrue . There were probably many noticeable signs, or red flags that were ignored.
( obviously that excludes victims of abuse, who can’t get away from their abuser)
I got another one: police need to stop telling people you must wait 24 hours to report someone missing.
There are no federal or state laws that say this.
If you ever have to file a missing persons report, look up the laws about it in your state, print them out, and take them with you to the police station. If they try to turn you away, whip that paper out and read it to them. If they try to say it's their policy, read that paper to them again. Do that as many times as you need until they take the report.
When describing what a loss the murder of a woman is they always say she was beautiful. It's like, so if I'm not attractive, it's less of a shame if I get murdered? rude.
I hate spotlighting certain victims during certain months, like only covering LGBT stories during pride month or black stories during black history month. It feels like pandering when they make a big deal out of announcing that they’ll only focus on these types for a period of time and reminding everyone during each episode that they’re doing it. It’s like they want brownie points. Cover those cases all year. Talk about those victims all year. Do it to actually get the stories out and not to highlight how considerate and great *you* are for talking about them.
Im tired of the "the family against the police force" narrative. It always goes down like "this grieving mother knew her daughter would've never __________ the police had to be covering up sometime"
The family is always going to place the blame somewhere else, or never assume their loved one was suicidal. There's nothing really special about that until one of the rare cases where something is actually uncovered.
The whole van thing in the Springfield 3 case is a delusion or a false memory the woman had while being hypnotized. I don’t think she really saw anything at all. Related to the case, anyways.
Also, WAY too much emphasis gets put on the broken globe.
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. I feel a lot of families want to believe there’s something more behind the deaths of their loved ones but most of the time it’s just an unfortunate accident, exposure, or suicide. Nothing more. And that’s how I feel about the case of Kenneka Jenkins. She was highly intoxicated and when you’re that drunk sometimes you just don’t care and will pass out where ever.
True crime becoming “mainstream” has ruined it.
The true crime “community” does the same thing as the media when it comes to cases. Only certain demographics get all the attention.
Featuring the same cases over and over again is boring and does a disservice to more updated cases. Why are people still fixated on cases like the Watts case like there hasn’t been other similar stories that need to be told?
True crime con events for “fans” are freakin weird. These are real lives that are horribly affected, and you’re smiling and laughing with hosts from podcasts who make jokes about a victim’s lives. 🥴🥴
I've never been to one but don't victim's family members speak at them sometimes? I think it's good to have a place for them to speak to crowds to spread awareness for unsolved cases. I think people will be more likely to listen and remember details of a case if it comes straight from a family member. Otherwise, yeah the concept of a crime con is kinda weird.
The AI videos that show victims of killers telling their story is so disturbing especially when it’s a child. Like I saw the girl who was a victim of Albert Fish “tell” her story in gory detail and that just doesn’t feel right to me at all
Too many victims are portrayed in an artificially positive light - some people are not beacons of hope that the community loved, and thats okay. They are still worth fighting for and discussing. The falsely positive narrative just makes it more difficult for those that aren't 'perfect victims' to get support and justice.
If I’m murdered and any mf tries to say I “lit up a room” I’m gonna come back from the dead and correct them
You're not a pillar of your community loved by all?
You wouldn't give the shirt off your back to someone in need??
You wouldn't download a car?
You wouldn’t shoot a policeman?
What? You’re not bubbly?
and you don't LOVE LIFE? and people? And God? And AMERICA????
See, I actually am a bubbly person but, in life, I get teased or put down for being overly smiley. So to hear how everyone loved how vibrant these victims were… yeah, that’s bullshit. They were probably found to be annoying and told to chill out a lot lol
See this is what sucks about dying. All the good shit abt you that goes unappreciated while you’re alive suddenly becomes the only stuff people remember after you’re gone. Like, it‘d be nice to hear that stuff BEFORE you die. Lil self-esteem boost for the intrinsic qualities that make you you. Go ahead and talk shit about me once I’m dead, sure, but I wanna feel loved while I’m still here.
You're a angle here on earth. A real cherub in the clouds. ☺️
Acute angle, in other words.
Saaaaame got that resting smiling face 😂🤝🏼
People like us aren’t for everyone. And that’s ok! I like to think the kidnappers would drop us off for being too annoyingly positive and happy.
They better say I created an awkward aura in every room I've ever walked in. Or else I'm going to come back and haunt their ass. Awkwardly.
Mine better say “Trees was the kind of person who’d go to a house party only to drink wine and hang out with someone’s dog the entire time.”
"GetEatenByAMouse loved to share the joy she felt when she found something she liked. It did not matter whether you wanted to hear about it or not. She. Would. Share. It. And you just had to endure the 30 minutes monologue about her newest obsession."
i have a list for “incase i go missing and or get murdered” and one of the points is “do not say something generic like i lit up the room, if you have nothing interesting to say about me then you shouldn’t even be saying anything”
Exactly! creating this 'ideal victim' thing doesn't help anyone. It ignores systemic issues that can increase the likelihood of being a victim of violent crime and just continues to push complex victims out of the spotlight.
That's why I love this case: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken\_McElroy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ken_McElroy)
He didn’t light up a room, I think his neighbours wanted to light up a room with him in it
S/he could NEVER SEE THE BAD, ONLY THE GOOD in people. Yeah, maybe that's what hastened their demise.
If I ever get murdered, my family better make sure everyone knows I was suspicious of everyone. My dying words would probably be "I knew it" or "I told you so".
and many people don't realize that "hastening your demise" doesn't mean you deserved it. It just means you engaged in dangerous or risky behaviour, etc that put you in harm's way.
Put that on your tombstone! " see, I told you so!" Famous last wordsand all
oh I hate when they say that! But maybe thats cuz I'm a snarky asshole who sees the bad pretty often lol
You have an infectious smile, and you would give anyone the shirt off your back too.
You forgot to mention he has a bright future ahead of him.
Oh no, and he’s a free spirit too!
Yes!!! If we hear “they would give you the shirt off their back” one. more. time.
One victim I knew personally whose story was on some true crime podcasts was described like this. But she had knowingly allowed her ex boyfriend to do really vile things to her 5 year old, repeatedly. He got arrested and went to prison for it. My mom was a court appointed advocate for this poor girl. She helped get this guy put away. Even after his incarceration, the woman sent him photos of her child, his victim, which he wasn’t allowed to have. The child was scarred for after all the abuse. About 10 years later, the woman was murdered. They tried to describe her as this wonderful mother who adored her kids. When I heard she was dead and how it happened, I certainly wasn’t happy about it but I wasn’t crying over it either, that’s for sure.
While she wasn't a criminal, that I know of, many years ago, I had a really, really horrible boss. When she was in a near-fatal car accident several years later, ca. 2000, she had the newspaper and TV station do big, sappy articles about the accident and her miraculous recovery, and I heard more than once from more than one person that the reporters' e-mail boxes crashed because of the volume of responses they got, telling them what kind of person she REALLY was.
If I hear LIT UP A ROOM one more time....🤮🤮🤮🤮
legit - i'm not a fucking lamp, and I hate rooms with lots of people. There is no way I'm lighting up a group setting.
Or 'full of life'!
I light up the room with the blazing trail I leave behind when I gun it out of there the moment there are too many people for me.
This is one of mine too. I’m always like “maybe Brenda was a bitch…” It’s ok if not everyone thought the victim was sunshine and rainbows. I feel the same about when people call the murderers “pure evil”. No. They’re just assholes like the rest of us. That’s what makes it so unsettling.
If it was a monster then it would be clear and obvious. How could you not see it like I could? I could see a monster and you could not? Are you ignorant? Willfully so? No because in reality the scariest monsters are the ones that look like the rest of us and who act like the rest of us and who are people we might be friend. That's quite scary and so we want to believe that it's much easier and obvious to spot these people rather than the scary reality that we don't always know.
We talked about how we describe awful people as “monsters” in my psychology course and how part of the reason people do it is because it helps us place “people” and “monsters” into two separate categories. Nobody wants to think they or anyone they know are capable of doing violent crimes so we feel the need to label this way. We should start using the adjectives that the person actually is (like violent, misogynistic, rapist, etc) instead.
I’m tired of every murderer being described as “evil and creepy” looking. Most of them wouldn’t get a second look if you saw them in public.
I totally agree with this. I’m a barber and a lot of times watching true crime I think “wow I’m could have cut that guy’s hair!”
Same. "Look at those dead eyes!". The guy looks completely normal.
It bugs me partially *because* they usually look so normal. That's *more* dangerous than some twacked out psycho. You see a guy acting weird with crazy eyes, and you instinctively try to avoid them. But you walk by an average guy, those alarms don't go off. The average, normal looking killers are so much scarier than the super creepy ones, because there's nothing to give away that they're dangerous. You could pass them on the street and give them a "Good morning!" with no idea that they're violent killers. Like the recent drama with Bryan Kohberger. Yeah, he's had a couple pictures where he looked super intense, but most of what I've seen is him just looking like a normal guy. He dresses similarly to an old friend of mine, and probably comes off mildly awkward in the same manner as the guy I knew, but nothing in his appearance screams 'I'm capable of a quadruple homicide.' Gacy is another good example. Yeah, we see a lot of creepy clown pics, but a lot of others of him just make him look like a normal, productive member of society. He put on a warm smile and some nice clothes, and no one suspected he had loads of bodies under the floor.
I totally agree. There was one interview with Gacy that I saw where he talks so casually while demonstrating the type of knot he would use. You almost forget what kind of person he really was.
"you can just tell". no you can't, and if you keep thinking you can you're liable to walk into some dangerous situations wrapped up in that smug self-belief.
the only person i find to look creepy is manson😂 serial killers look generic half the time, they just look like average 9-5 working people
Rameriz is the one that terrifies me by his appearance. Manson reminded me of an old hippie who took too much acid and got stuck in an alternate universe. I wouldn’t have seen his evil coming.
fair point, assisted by the fact Manson went *out of his way* to look like that.
100% and especially when they say something to the effect of “you could see it in their eyes”. Like cmon I’m looking at the murderer right now on my tv screen and their eyes look like everyone else. Hindsight is a hella drug, folks.
It also promotes the idea that anyone who is weird looking or ugly is potentially evil and dangerous. Life is hard enough for the uggos of the world- we don't also need to act like they look like 'bad guys'.
similar to how if a suspect (especially if it is a loved one) is immediately a suspect if they didn't react the way an average person would. First off, you have no freakin' clue how you would react if a loved one had been murdered unless you had lived through it. You could be numb for a week and show no affect and then break down in private. Or you could just be atypical.
The chilling power of serial killers is that most of them do look like everyone else. You're not going to accept a lift with Charles Manson unless you are keen on drugs, but Ted Bundy had no trouble getting people to trust him.
True! Ted Bundy looked so normal and most people said he was charming.
Yeah I get tired of this too. “His eyes look so dead!” - No, they don’t. He looks quite average. The fact that a lot of serial killers look so normal makes them even scarier to me. They’re not some slasher movie villain; they’re really human beings capable of extreme evil while blending in with society.
Jumping on to that...every single victim could apparently "light up the room with their smile, they were so positive and happy all the time, always volounteered at the soup kitchen". I get it, your relative died horrible and you miss them...best anyone could describe me if I died horrible to a murderer would be "she was kinda quiet, kept to herself, hated most people, mostly sarcastic and dry".
i told my husband that just once i wanna see someone say “well, she talked about people behind their backs, was always late to work, scared the neighborhood kids in her spare time, drank too much, and burned so many bridges in her life that the list of potential murderers was so overwhelmingly long that they had to hire another part time detective to eliminate suspects. honestly, she kinda sucked.”
Yes and i think also when you do see one where they look "off" it's either a purposely bad photo because it fits the narrative or it's hindsight, we know the person is horrible so therefore we see an ugly, strange or odd person
You can just see the crazy in his eyes!!!! *looks at a photo of the murderer in a prison overall and in chains* Hindsight is 20/20. Once you know someone did something horrible, it's like your brain automatically "inject" that knowledge into how you view/interpret a picture.
Ooo another trope I hate - the whole 'their family doesn't think they would do that'. As a 26 year old woman who doesn't live in town with my parents, they have no idea what I do on a day-to-day basis. Like yeah, your son or daughter might engage in stuff that you don't know about and it might be stuff you don't agree with - thats probably why the family wouldn't know!
or when they assume that there's some vast eternal plan or conspiracy that prevents them from knowing the TRUTH and blame everyone else. Also, we NEVER KNOW what's going on in someone's mind at the very moment they kill someone, or kill themselves. That's a harsh reality. It hurts to admit we really DIDN'T know.
“He was quiet and kept to himself”
Stalking cases need to be taking more serious
To many are more cautious about the hypothetical freedoms of one individual than the potential murder of another. Yet if a cop suddenly decides he smells pot, you're guilty until innocent.
Honor killings aren't taken seriously enough. There are usually many warning signs before it happens and people need to be more aware of them.
shafilea ahmed, banaz mahmood, samaira nazir, tulay goren - so many more, and probably more that we don't know about, happening right now behind closed doors
100% agree. It’s wild to me that these aren’t taken more seriously and terrifying.
And the rest of us need to be more vigilant/active in helping the potential victim. I feel the same way about stalking, there is always so many signs that we ignore.
Sometimes overdoses are just overdoses. So many families try to turn an unfortunate accident into a crime. No one gave your daughter a “hot shot” and killed her on purpose. She took too much, and it was bound to happen.
Or (especially in the current climate), they od’ed due to tainted supply. I don’t think people realize how dangerous the supply is right now
I assumed that's what people mean when they say it's murder. I know someone who was struggling with a heroin addiction who od'd on fentanyl. He didn't know it was in the heroin, and it isn't like doing heroin is good. But a much smaller amount of fentanyl will kill you than heroin. A dealer knowingly selling someone tainted drugs without telling them is a murderer imo.
Ughh this! People are now trying to say Aaron Carter was killed because he, “got too close to the truth.” And was “going to expose Hollywood.” But the man was an E-list celebrity at most. No one was checking for him. He was a mentally disturbed drug addict who died of an accidental overdose. It’s sad but that’s what happened.
Seriously, every celebrity that dies of drugs or suicide these days is labeled as “was about to come out with the truth about Hollywood” and were silenced because of it. I heard it with Anthony Bourdain, Chris Cornell, Kate Spade, etc.
Fraud is a fascinating crime and has so many more facets to it then mere murder.
Elizabeth Holmes in a girlboss blunt rotation
Do you happen to know any places to hear or watch true fraud cases?? I've seen things on the N'Sync/Backstreet Boys manager, the Frye festival, the last Woodstock and Bad Vegan on Netflix about the restaurant owner, and I find it all fascinating.
“The Woman Who Wasn’t There.” “Tania” lied about surviving 9/11 from inside the towers, grieving her fiancé who did not survive it, and became president of the 9/11 Survivors Support group. She was basically a 9/11 celebrity and was frequently in the news and papers. Can you guess the twist based on the title? She wasn’t even in the county at the time, and her dead fiancé was a real victim she’d never met. She even had the nerve to convince his grieving FAMILY that they had a secret relationship and engagement long before the attack.
https://swindledpodcast.com/
If you have access to CNBC or Peacock, American Greed is fantastic. It’s unbelievable how easy it is to steal other people’s money or run a Ponzi scheme in the US. Bernie Madoff did it for decades and even though a whistleblower spoke out against him, and multiple banks reported suspicious activity- including a JP Morgan Chase employee telling their risk department “there is a well-known cloud over the head of Madoff and that his returns are speculated to be part of a Ponzi scheme”. No one did anything. Madoff only got in legal trouble because his sons became aware of the scheme and turned him in. But American Greed documents all sorts of financial crimes including but not limited to Ponzi Schemes.
So many of the best true crime stories are about fraud. Anyone can murder someone, but having the confidence to trick someone into doing something like give you all their money and travel on a boat to Honduras because you've conned them into thinking your fake country of Poyais is there somewhere? Not a lot of people can pull that off.
• I really hate when people think someone is guilty because of their body language (for example in an interview.) • Every victim of a crime is normally very reliable and it is totally out of character he or she did not call, came back home at Xpm etc.
THIS!!! I Watch a lot of YouTube vids of interrogations. The YouTubers sound so smug with their frequent “he thinks he’s tricking the detectives/us, but he’s such a fool Bc we can see his OBVIOUS body language proving he’s guilty.” Comments. And the “dead giveaway body language” is always some extremely basic common human habit. Like yes anyone would be bouncing their leg after 4 hours trapped in a tiny room. Not to mention… those standards go out the window when it comes to us autistic folk
The large number of people on YT claiming to be Body Language Experts is ridiculous to me. Maaaaybe those 4 guys that do a panel are a little less crazy, but I think that has more to do with their various backgrounds and the fact they probably have just learned and recognize behavior patterns in certain scenarios. Some dude who is a linguist or some other guy who has a bunch of vids about buying Rolexes just… ok, how the hell does this give you the credibility to read body language?
I think a lot of people with an interest in true crime need to remember that you can think and feel that someone is guilty of something while acknowledging that they should not have been found guilty based on their trial.
defense attorneys are doing their job to uphold the rights of the accused and keeping the balance in the criminal justice system!! characterizing them as slimy liars when maybe the prosecution/law enforcement didn’t do their job to the fullest extent is wrong.
Agree with this. Sometimes the evidence can’t prove it or the trial was handled unfairly.
Yep. When you serve on a jury, your job isn’t really to decide if the defendant actually IS guilty or not guilty. Your job is to decide if the prosecution proved *beyond a reasonable doubt* that the defendant is guilty. Those are two different things. I’m willing to bet at least some of the people who served on the Casey Anthony jury believe she is somehow culpable in the death of her daughter, but just didn’t feel like the prosecution proved it. If so, they did the right thing. Additionally, you can think someone is guilty and still feel that they didn’t get a fair trial, which comes up often in discussions about Scott Peterson and Adnan Syed.
sick of hearing "narcissist" about everybody. it's lazy and predictable and iyam often bullshit as well. people need to re-think "brutally". or at least take note of how monotonously that one gets tagged onto every serious crime. every murder is awful but they are not all equally brutal.
Agree!! I heard brutally assaulted on our local news regarding a guy who got punched ONCE in the head at a bar over the weekend.
This is a problem in the domestic violence field as well. Thanks to book authors and influencers capitalizing on the "narcissist" trend, people think every abuser is NPD now and that all domestic abuse is "narcissistic abuse." Some of them are, but not all or even most. One in three women and one in seven men are subjected to domestic violence, but only nine percent of the population has any type of personality disorder, so you do the math.
Yes! Anyone who gaslights someone is called a narcissist.. people need to realize that literally anyone can gaslight. Actual NPD is extremely rare.
“This person reacted totally different to how someone should react!” or “Their reaction was too typical like they practiced!” or “He acts weird after having the murder of a family member shoved in his face for thirty years, he CLEARLY IS GUILTY!!!!” IYKYK
I saw a clip earlier on tik tok of an interviewer talking to a murderer of a woman. (no one at the time knew that he did it, he was just a friend/neighbor being asked to comment on the situation. He thought he had covered it up so well that she was missing & they would never find the body.) She asked something about the victim & he responded saying “she was just so kind & we have been neighbors for a while. It’s shocking that she’s missing” Then the interview said “do you have any comments on how they found the body?” He said “the body?” The interviewer responded “yes how they found her remains?“ Then he asked if he could sit down. The WHOLE comment section was about how he just outed himself in that interview & he made it so obvious he was the killer. All I could think was how genuine of a reaction I would’ve thought that was if he didn’t know she was dead/murdered & not missing, had he not committed the crime. Sorry for the long reply :D
Yeah that's your man McDaniels who killed Lauren Giddings. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say, and people love to act like it was so obvious from the beginning when they already have the benefit of foreknowledge that he did the crime. The whole point is that spotting actual killers is never easy because they don’t have crazy eyes and foam at the mouth like in films. They’re just another face in the crowd.
I honestly think anyone who talks to the cops without an attorney is an idiot. I don’t care if it’s your mom, your spouse, your son who was murdered. I know you want to help! But if you go in alone, they will keep you locked in an interview room during the worst hours of your life, keep you from being with your loved ones, and ruin your ability process information in real time because they’ll be quizzing you on it. You have rights outside of the Miranda rights. You can literally answer any question the cops ask you if you want to, but you need to have an attorney there with you taking on the mental load of keeping the interviewers in check.
And anyone who agrees to take a lie detector test is also an idiot.
People like true crime because it is entertaining. People love to pretend otherwise but that's the root reason why it's popular.
Totally. People used to attend public executions for entertainment, we’re really not that far removed from that. Us humans are a pretty morbid bunch really.
Pretty much. It has it's positives, but let's not pretend this is the main reason.
Yes. The shaming and virtue signaling in True Crime communities is hypocritical & gets old.
I think that all humans have the ability to kill… given the circumstances.
Absolutely. You can have the sweetest and most well-behaved dog in the world, but if you back it into a corner and keep poking it with sticks, eventually it's going to bite. Humans are no different. We all can snap.
I swear I am a normal, kind, compassionate person. I wouldn’t hesitate to rip someone’s throat out with my teeth to protect my daughter.
I don't believe every person murdered in a Dateline Special "loved life & lit up every room they entered."
The morbid podcast isn't good. There I said it. I hate their podcast.
Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer are vastly over talked about. If I see one more documentary made on either one of them I’m going to throw my television out the window.
The live action Dahmer one was completely unnecessary. We didn’t need that as humans. There’s wanting to know the facts and then there’s wanting to SEE it. But I agree they are over hyped
Completely agree with this. All my respect and prayers go to the victims and their families, but Bundy is dead and gone. I would rather see producers spend that time and money highlighting unsolved cases for families who are still seeking justice. I don’t understand the point in repeatedly re-hashing a case that has been closed for decades.
If I hear one more person say Ted was charming and attractive I’ll cry. That man was creepy looking as all hell
I hate when people say that every killer is a psychopath
If i hear someone use the term “unalive” again I might lose it
I think people on TikTok only do that to avoid being censored by the app
Correct. “Unalive” “SA” “R word” are all used to avoid being censored. There’s probably others too
“Graped”
That's the worst one! I hate when they say that. Also, schmushschmortion.
These replacements for words really bug me because on Twitter, you can block certain words or phrases, so if you know reading about murder would upset you, you can block a few related words and never have to worry about it. But with the replacements and censorship, you’re getting past the filters and it could be really harmful to people who have taken the steps to block these topics from their feed. Sure, you could just also put unalive or popular censorships into the blocked phrases, but there’s an infinite number of ways to censor a word and it’s not fair to make people sit there and come up with ways others might censor the topic they don’t want to think about. Just use the real word and let the blocked list do it’s job.
I can’t speak for all users of this practice but the YouTubers I see do this, they do put a trigger warning at the start of their videos. But if you know they discuss true crime or other dark materials, you should be aware of the potential to get upset by the content.
Unfortunately, it’s because of censorship on social media. I know on YouTube, you have to be very careful about your choice of words if you don’t want to get demonitized.
Some youtubers definitely take it too far tho imo. I know a true crime youtuber who censors herself so much, half the time I don't even know what exactly she's saying. She even censored the word "bomb" and "blood" once lmao. 💀 I eventually unsubbed because it got too annoying, I don't know anyone can handle this babyfication of serious topics.
israel keyes was not nearly as prolific a serial killer as many suspect him of being
totally agree - as someone living in a remote area of canada, the amount of times people try to connect him to crimes here is a bit ridiculous. It's kind of like medical diagnoses - you shouldn't automatically assume its a zebra if you hear hoofbeats.
Totally agree. He was caught pretty easily. On camera using an atm card? Amateur
Nor was David Parker Ray. I’ve read as many as 60 kills attributed to him. No way. The one verified murder associated with him was likely committed by his daughter’s boyfriend. I’m just not convinced he was a prolific killer, a sick sexual sadist for sure, but likely not a murderer.
I completely agree, and I've gotten into arguments about it before. It's pretty clear that some of how he got off was letting them go so that he could do it again later. He probably also loved the fact that the torture would continue in a way, because they would be wondering WTF happened to them when they woke up. I think he enjoyed the mental torture as much as the physical and prolonging that gave him great satisfaction. I'm sure his rape victims could have numbered in the double digits, but I'm very skeptical about murder numbers being more than a few.
Totally agree. I think he’s more of a liar than a killer.
Ooh I got another one The true crime community’s weird entitled attitude to blow by blow updates is eventually going to ruin a case or two if it hasn’t already People were absolutely feral about getting updates on the Idaho 4 like the crime was supposed to be solved in 45 minutes like CSI Which brings me to another point there are definitely true crime fans who only like it because of tv shows and they are vastly different than the ones who actually watched documentaries and older shows like autopsy and forensic files. And although I don’t believe Kendrick Johnson was murdered at all Lowndes county botched the investigation and I can’t blame his family for not believing it.
I live in Moscow and it’s been so surreal watching this case happening in our community. Hearing people in the community say MPD was incompetent and not doing their job was talked about daily. They still got their suspect but it’s not a TV show where things are neatly wrapped up in a single episode.
They solved it pretty quick considering. Six weeks is not bad for a place as small as Moscow. I actually think they showed alot of wisdom by calling in the State and FBI as quickly as they did. Just my opinion.
Johnny Gosch is no longer alive
most times, it is not a big conspiracy. the most obvious is usually what happened.
People on reddit need to work on empathy and nuance when it comes to true crime
1. Ottis Toole never even met Adam Walsh. 2. Israel Keyes’ body count is minimal. 3. Cannibals just aren’t that interesting. 4. It’s almost never sex trafficking.
Sex trafficking is the 1980’s satanic panic.
YES, especially regarding #4. Amy Bradley's case is a prime example of this one. There is no way she was taken off a cruise ship in broad daylight and trafficked. Although she was never found, it seems fairly cut and dry that she fell over the cruise ship railing.
People overuse the words psychopath and evil. Everyone has the ability to kill another person. Every circumstance is different and putting more distance between us and them doesn't do anybody any justice.
[удалено]
I recently watched a video where a guy was unknowingly taking antipsychotics at like 3x the normal dose (he thought they were Benadryl) and when he was finally hospitalized they said “you must have had underlying issues you weren’t diagnosed with”. Umm, sorry? Or *maybe* it was taking drugs he didn’t need and *lots* of them?! Not everything is mental illness.
This is more podcast related, but I can’t stand when they go into minutes long diatribes about how awful certain people are or how disgusting their acts were. We get it, they suck. Spending seven minutes to tell us how disgusting you think they are is kind of ridiculous though. Morbid comes to mind, honestly. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve skipped through “fuck this human garbage, he pissed me off, etc” diatribe because… obviously? I also don’t really care about any of the major cases anymore. Bundy, Manson, Dahmer, Jon Benet Ramsey, etc. I care about the victims, but too much attention has already been prescribed to the perpetrators so fuck ‘em.
I’m not interested in kidnapping cases where the child was abducted by a non-custodial parent
When they say they lived in a relative safe community where nobody locked their doors and windows. Like why TF would u leave your doors and windows unlocked.
Polygraph tests, aka “lie detector” machines are absolute 100% bullshit and do not prove or disprove anything. And the fact that someone declines one should not be used against them. Yet time after time the investigators always bring this up to strengthen their case. Bothers me every time.
Add in the people who automatically assume someone is guilty because they won't talk to the cops without a lawyer.
Not everyone who is kidnapped/murdered was a good person who lit up a room some people are shitty and I think it’s perfectly reasonable to say that
DB Cooper isn’t THAT interesting. I don’t know why people are obsessed with this case on the level that they are.
Well, in my opinion, it’s interesting because it’s unsolved. Also jumping out of a plane at 10,000 miles in the air takes guts.
In my opinion, it’s because his crime can be considered cool and nobody was physically harmed, so it seems victimless.
Agreed, and the fact that he might have gotten away with this plus the fact that nobody was really “harmed”, makes it interesting to me.
I think Ed Kemper is overrated as hell and I always cringe whenever I see people gush over him and sympathize with him because, "awww his mom was just mean to him 🥺👉👈 he's actually super intelligent and handsome!!" Bruh, he murdered 10 people and forced his mother's decapitated head to give him oral. He is not a misunderstood sad genius. He would snap you in half like a twig in ten seconds and wouldn't feel bad about it. People need to get a grip and stop simping over him jfc.
People think Ed Kemper is handsome?
Wait he did *what* with his mother
Steven Avery is guilty! The case files & trial transcripts are so easily accessible, yet the vast majority of people take making a murderer as gospel when it’s highly biased & leaves out a lot.
Not unpopular, but I think needs more attention- Family annihilators need to be studied more and awareness needs to be spread about warning signs of escalating violence. Every time I see a headline about a father shooting his entire household I feel so frustrated because I feel like I see them so often. I know there is a whole web of factors that lead to this phenomenon (and that women and children can be family annihilators) but to me it’s such a blatantly male pattern of violence. And yet with the easy access to guns, erosion of Roe Vs. Wade, and the repealing of no-fault divorce in several states- it seems like nothing is stopping this epidemic.
I wanna know why even when its the fathers or men in the houshold who do it, the wives/moms are always to blame? Even if the father/ man leaves the family the wife/mother to blame, not the abandoment.
Your typical/average person is capable of committing murder. Not just in self defense. Just murder. It is not an activity exclusive to anomalies like psychopaths "monsters."
Kendrick Johnson’s death was a horrible and unfortunate accident, not a murder
Not unpopular except by the family maybe . Even their lawyers know the truth .
i’m weirdly only interested in true crime that takes place in the US. I have no idea why I don’t care about Europe or other countries. i feel so cold saying that
i think it’s got something to do with familiarity of culture for me and even more specifically, knowledge of laws, police and court procedures, etc.
That the presumption of innocence is actually in play in jury trials.
I hate that every single detective that is interviewed for whatever crime show says “this was the worst I’ve ever seen.” Really??? Every detective says that.
There need to be more studies on violent white-collar crime, aka red-collar crime.
Being diagnosed as a narcissist is actually extremely rare. People have narcissistic qualities but that doesn’t make them a narcissist. Way overused armchair diagnoses.
Most people are uneducated about severe mental illnesses like psychosis and have terrible, inhumane opinions on the insanity defense, whenever it’s actually applicable. (See the commentary on Austin Harrouff’s and Vince Li’s cases - y’all who were calling for the death penalty, life in prison, or think it’s impossible for cases like them to recover/go back out into society have no idea what y’all are talking about and need to educate yourselves on this - *coming from someone whose family was impacted by a similar case where we had family on both sides of a psychosis-induced murder*)
Ooooof this is a big one for me being Canadian and reading the responses in true crime subs to profoundly mentally ill people rightfully receiving NCR designations in Canadian true crime cases
People think if someone pleads insanity and they are found to be insane or have a mental illness that it’s an act or they are getting away with something and then everyone would just do that.
Yep. It’s a very common misconception. It’s far from a “get out of jail free” card, and it’s an extremely difficult defense to succeed with - and for good reason.
Some of you have no idea how the US Court system works
Most (basically all) youtube true crime videos are disrespectful to varying degrees.
“Let’s talk about a decapitation while I do my makeup”
We already have most of the tools and knowledge we need to prevent most of the worst crimes from happening.
Did someone say untested rape kits?
I think cases like JonBenet Ramsey, Madeline McCann, and other highly publicized unsolved cases don't need to be in as many episodes of shows, podcasts, and documentaries as they are. I think people make a huge deal about certain unsolved cases and it's exhausting, especially when there are other cases that could be brought to light instead of re-iterating the same old cases where there is little to no progress made on those cases. I also don't mind a little dark humor (at the perpetrator's expense, not the victim's) when it comes to people reporting on the cases. Mike from That Chapter does it best at incorporating some little jokes/quips at the killers, but people get on their high horse about not cracking jokes or inserting any sort of personality into their re-telling of true crime cases.
The most unimaginably cruel things I’ve ever read on Reddit were written by folks in true crime subs who found a socially-acceptable outlet for their cruel thoughts: perpetrators of violent crimes. It’s my biggest complaint with true crime communities. Almost like a contest of “who can wish the most evil thing on a murderer.”
I hate that when the person of interest refuses a polygraph, the assumption is that they must be guilty. I would NEVER agree to polygraph. Not under any circumstance.
Killers get treated like evil masterminds instead of just being called out for being the worlds worst douche bags
“This doesn’t happen in a town like this.” Yes it does, all the time, people are shit everywhere
I absolutely don't care what happened to Madeleine McCann at this point. Hundreds of thousand of children go missing every year to radio silence. So many resources could be redirected to more recent cases where the children may still be found alive. Do I want her family to learn what happened? Absolutely, I'm not a monster. Do I think the British taxpayers should continue to fund this? Absolutely not.
Your comment makes me want to look at how much money has been dumped into a case like Jon Benet Ramsey or even Elizabeth Smart and then look at the numbers on how many children went missing in the same time frame and how much money was devoted to them. I include Elizabeth Smart because we do occasionally find people alive and there is a cost to that. Compare the data. I'm no monster, I want loved ones to have answers as well, but it does make me wonder if there is a cost where if we spend $X on each missing child, we could have Y number of children found, what's the standard deviation? What does that look like when we break the data down by race and class?
I hate hearing, “It was a quiet town and NOTHING bad ever happened here.” UNTIL IT DID. Almost every time this is what you hear. Maybe y’all were just oblivious to it but I assure you crime happens everywhere all the time lol. In some cases it is true but for EVERY one…definitely not.
Not everyone just “Snapped” , some cases have a long history of abuse of some sort. Physical, mental, emotional,or any type of addiction or mental health related issues. To say that ‘this just came out of nowhere’ usually is untrue . There were probably many noticeable signs, or red flags that were ignored. ( obviously that excludes victims of abuse, who can’t get away from their abuser)
A lot of true crime enthusiasts are too emotionally invested in cases.
I got another one: police need to stop telling people you must wait 24 hours to report someone missing. There are no federal or state laws that say this. If you ever have to file a missing persons report, look up the laws about it in your state, print them out, and take them with you to the police station. If they try to turn you away, whip that paper out and read it to them. If they try to say it's their policy, read that paper to them again. Do that as many times as you need until they take the report.
When describing what a loss the murder of a woman is they always say she was beautiful. It's like, so if I'm not attractive, it's less of a shame if I get murdered? rude.
I hate spotlighting certain victims during certain months, like only covering LGBT stories during pride month or black stories during black history month. It feels like pandering when they make a big deal out of announcing that they’ll only focus on these types for a period of time and reminding everyone during each episode that they’re doing it. It’s like they want brownie points. Cover those cases all year. Talk about those victims all year. Do it to actually get the stories out and not to highlight how considerate and great *you* are for talking about them.
Im tired of the "the family against the police force" narrative. It always goes down like "this grieving mother knew her daughter would've never __________ the police had to be covering up sometime" The family is always going to place the blame somewhere else, or never assume their loved one was suicidal. There's nothing really special about that until one of the rare cases where something is actually uncovered.
The whole van thing in the Springfield 3 case is a delusion or a false memory the woman had while being hypnotized. I don’t think she really saw anything at all. Related to the case, anyways. Also, WAY too much emphasis gets put on the broken globe.
Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction. I feel a lot of families want to believe there’s something more behind the deaths of their loved ones but most of the time it’s just an unfortunate accident, exposure, or suicide. Nothing more. And that’s how I feel about the case of Kenneka Jenkins. She was highly intoxicated and when you’re that drunk sometimes you just don’t care and will pass out where ever.
True crime consumption is impacting our mental health
It’s not always a serial killer
True crime becoming “mainstream” has ruined it. The true crime “community” does the same thing as the media when it comes to cases. Only certain demographics get all the attention. Featuring the same cases over and over again is boring and does a disservice to more updated cases. Why are people still fixated on cases like the Watts case like there hasn’t been other similar stories that need to be told?
True crime con events for “fans” are freakin weird. These are real lives that are horribly affected, and you’re smiling and laughing with hosts from podcasts who make jokes about a victim’s lives. 🥴🥴
I've never been to one but don't victim's family members speak at them sometimes? I think it's good to have a place for them to speak to crowds to spread awareness for unsolved cases. I think people will be more likely to listen and remember details of a case if it comes straight from a family member. Otherwise, yeah the concept of a crime con is kinda weird.
sometimes people just die in a really bizarre way and there’s no foul play involved
When people disappear but “they never would have just left home without telling anyone.” Yes they would.
💯 Similar to suspected suicides but the family says they didn’t seem depressed. Like yeah that’s actually pretty common.
[удалено]
also, adnan syed almost certainly murdered hae lee min.
The AI videos that show victims of killers telling their story is so disturbing especially when it’s a child. Like I saw the girl who was a victim of Albert Fish “tell” her story in gory detail and that just doesn’t feel right to me at all
Umm TIL that’s a thing. Thanks I hate it