True Crime Research Articles

Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia by Jesse Sublett

Reviewed by: Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia by Jesse Sublett Jason Mellard Last Gangster in Austin: Frank Smith, Ronnie Earle, and the End of a Junkyard Mafia. By Jesse Sublett. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2022. Pp. 212. Illustrations, notes, index.) Jesse Sublett's Last Gangster in Austin hinges on a single dramatic incident: an armed robbery gone bad in an Austin salvage yard in 1976, leaving one man in a monkey mask dead on the floor. That is not what the book is about, though. This singular crime becomes a kaleidoscope through which to view the intricate and intersecting biographies, criminal endeavors, and political fortunes of the figures in the subtitle, underworld character Frank Smith and crusading district attorney (DA) Ronnie Earle. Frank Smith was a bail bondsman, auto parts dealer, and ne'er-do-well, a "Don Corleone as reimagined for Hee Haw" (16). Ronnie Earle was a 1970s reform wunderkind, the youngest municipal judge in Texas before his DA election put him in place to prosecute Smith. A constellation of [End Page 604] associates and nemeses swirl around the two, a cast plucked from the noir genre that Sublett renders so well as hardboiled nonfiction. Ike Rabb is the owner of the Austin Salvage Pool and target of Smith's ire. Sherriff Raymond Frank had been a reformer in his own right before ties to Smith exposed his corruption. A real star of the book, whom Sublett often channels, is Austin American-Statesman beat writer Bill Cryer, whose articles testified to the quality of writing and depth of relationships that local journalism once fostered. Beyond this cast, "significant" Texas history figures cameo throughout, including LBJ's brother Sam Houston Johnson, Allan Shivers, Ann Richards, and Willie Nelson. When such figures appear on the page, they put the book's accomplishment in high relief. It is a rollicking narrative of a criminal underworld, yes, but Sublett's attention to characters otherwise invisible in the celebratory accounts of modern Austin shows that histories aiming to capture the life of a Texas city miss much when they fixate on who performs on its central stages rather than, say, who guts out a living in a salvage yard. Earle is the protagonist here in bringing Smith to justice, but the work of telling history from Smith's vantage point on the margins (or in the shadows) fills in the blind spots of so many other Austin stories. Last Gangster in Austin adds to what has become Sublett's extended literary universe of nightlife and hustles, shenanigans and sleaze, across mid-century Texas. Individuals from his other books put in appearances here: the Overton Gang from Austin Gangsters, co-author Broadus Spivey of Homer Maxey's Texas Bank War, Eddie Wilson from Armadillo World Headquarters, and even allusions to the tome that started it all, Sublett's own memoir Never the Same Again. In fact, the origins of this book lay in that first, as Smith's legal troubles swirled in the newspapers in which Sublett was researching his own experiences of 1976, when he had been wrongfully suspected of a violent crime. That experience, and a familiarity with the journalistic sources of the time, helped spark this book and led Sublett to engage in extensive interviews with surviving principals that he deploys to good effect. On its surface, the book reads as true crime and succeeds as such. It is also an exemplary microhistory with close attention to currents that broader accounts of modern Austin have missed, if not outright ignored. Historians may reflect on moments where the book could have aimed for larger themes—the Smith case as emblematic of the institutional failures and political corruption of the 1970s—but that can be the work of other studies and is typically implicit in Sublett's telling. A riveting character study, The Last Gangster in Austin stands out as is, as bold and individual as Smith's bright green Cadillac speeding away from the scene of the crime. [End Page 605] Jason Mellard Texas State University Copyright © 2022 The Texas State Historical Association

Arsenic and Axes

Abstract Crime and murder, in particular, is a facet of Polonia history both misunderstood and very often overlooked. True crime stories, especially those involving murder, are among the most popular genres in popular culture. Fascination with murder is not a recent development but dates back to the beginning of journalism. For many readers, their first encounter with murder is in the pages of the daily newspaper. Between 1876 and 1925, the local press reported twenty-one murders involving Baltimore Poles as both victims and perpetrators. These real-life homicides from Baltimore's Polonia history offer an opportunity to explore how their contemporaries regarded perpetrator, victim, and the act itself. They also offer insights into the harmful impact of immigration within the Polish community. The loss of kin support networks found in the old country and poverty experienced in their new homes sometimes lead to dysfunctional families. This disorder could result in heavy drinking, juvenile delinquency, and both petty and significant crime. Murder, as the most atypical of crime, also generated more print in the local press. These case studies were selected because they were all given extensive newspaper coverage. Family reminiscences supplement the newspaper accounts. Even today, two of these murders still resonate in local folklore.

Mortality, moral regulation, and (im)moral entrepreneurship in My Favorite Murder

ABSTRACT As mediated death has become a staple of contemporary society, debates about the treatment of death in the public domain abound. This article examines the true crime comedy podcast My Favorite Murder, arguing that it functions to produce a collaboratively ‘provocative morbid space’ in which its hosts and audiences can engage in contemplating, discussing, and negotiating the politics of murder, victimhood, and their surrounding inequalities. My Favorite Murder explicitly positions itself as provocative and morally ambiguous, raising questions about who has ownership, legitimacy, and moral standing when it comes to discussing death. We argue that the podcast both reflects public fascination with death and functions to enact a socially progressive agenda through controversial and entertaining popular cultural engagement with the sensitive subject of murder. With the hosts acting as what we term ‘(im)moral entrepreneurs’ collaboratively producing with audiences ‘counter cultural (im)moral discourses’, the commercially successful podcast offers a version of the ‘cautionary tale’ that foregrounds the sociocultural inequalities that have contributed to the vast array of murders discussed across its 300+ existing episodes.

Putting a Collective Finger on the Pulse: The New Cadre of Latin American Women Writers

Putting a Collective Finger on the PulseThe New Cadre of Latin American Women Writers Veronica Esposito (bio) Guadalupe Nettel, Samanta Schweblin, Mónica Ojeda, and other Latin American women writers are responding to themes that particularly speak to a younger, female audience—bodily autonomy, redefinition of gender, the internet's mediation of identity, and brushes with the existential—in common ways, embracing conventions of the horror and true crime genres and bending them toward literary aims. OVER THE PAST DECADE or so, a new cadre of female Latin American writers has emerged in English translation. Although each is distinctive in her own right, these writers share enough overlapping themes, approaches, and styles that we might refer to it as a "school," if not a "movement." On their common ground are the misogynistic violence that pervades the lives of Latin American women; bodily autonomy, especially around access to abortion; the ongoing definition and redefinition of gender; internet culture and how it mediates identity and personhood; and brushes with the existential. These writers have responded to such themes in common ways; most notably, by embracing conventions of the horror and true crime genres and bending them toward literary aims. Their literature speaks particularly to a younger, female audience, and these authors seem to have a collective finger on the pulse of their readers' lives. Although I cannot pretend to have an exhaustive list of the writers in this group, I can name off the ones that currently stand out to me in English translation. In no particular order, they include Guadalupe Nettel, Samanta Schweblin, Mónica Ojeda, Fernanda Melchor, Liliana Colanzi, Cristina Rivera Garza, Valeria Luiselli, Nona Fernández, and Lina Meruane. Certainly there are more currently at work in Spanish as well as others emerging in English translation. A good example of the prototypical novel of this group of writers is Ecuadorian Mónica Ojeda's 2018 novel Mandíbula, published in 2022 as Jawbone in Sarah Booker's translation. It tells the story of a schoolteacher for an elite preparatory school for upper-class girls who goes mad, kidnapping one of her students and subjecting her to experiences of body horror. On one level, the book captures many of the central concerns of Latin American writers like Ojeda—body autonomy, the socialization of girls within Latin American society, mental and physical horrors perpetrated against women of the continent—yet it also communicates on levels that are detached from a Latin American context, as it speaks in languages comprehensible to young women throughout the developed world. Specifically, Ojeda speaks in the language of true crime podcasts, streaming serials, creepypastas, and the world of therapy. Regarding some of her literary influences, Ojeda told me: "I have a thing for true crime documentaries. I don't like to like them because they really hurt me, but I keep going to them. And creepypastas, of course. Not all of them, but some are so very powerful." One of the striking things about Jawbone is how it comes across as something along the lines of a true crime podcast or a creepypasta—did you ever hear the one about the teacher who went mad and tortured her own student? It converses with the media resonating with young women across the globe, giving it a currency that transcends its Ecuadoran context. Yet even as Jawbone feels very of the moment, it also connects up with deep-rooted aspects of the Latin American tradition. For instance, the book includes chapters that read as though they are transcripts from one of the main character's therapy sessions, the speakers only denoted by a Q or an A, and the questions asked by Q not included in the transcript. This tracks back to the powerful psychoanalytical writing that was a core aspect of twentieth-century Latin American literature, [End Page 18] reminiscent of Manuel Puig, in particular. In addition, the suggestion that the controversial Catholic organization Opus Dei is involved in the school weaves in a political aspect, staying true to the propensity for Latin American authors to let politics infuse their narratives in subtle and unexpected ways. It also brings to mind canonical Latin American writers like...

“She did see warning signs but chose to ignore them”: perpetrator justification and victim-blaming narratives in true crime podcasts about intimate partner violence

ABSTRACT Prior research on the media portrayal of intimate partner violence (IPV) shows that perpetrator justification and victim-blaming narratives are common. However, no researcher has yet examined true crime podcasts for these portrayals. For this study, the researcher examined four season-long true crime podcasts about IPV for perpetrator justification and victim-blaming narratives using qualitative document analysis. Across podcasts, perpetrators were commonly presented as having mental health issues and as growing up in environments conducive to abuse and around abusive men. Alternatively, women were blamed for their victimization via descriptions of their flirtatious/sexual behavior, their decision to stay in the relationship, and their naivete about IPV or relationships. The harmful nature of these portrayals is discussed.

Extractivist Imaginaries in Australia's Latrobe Valley: Slow Violence and True Crime in Chloe Hooper's The Arsonist and Tom Doig's Hazelwood

Extractivist Imaginaries in Australia's Latrobe Valley: Slow Violence and True Crime in Chloe Hooper's The Arsonist and Tom Doig's Hazelwood

Media, True Crime, and Public Perceptions

If you have ever found yourself confused on where you stand with a current event in the criminal justice world, you’ve probably fallen victim to media framing. All frames are supported by some portion of the public, and often, people tend to support more than one frame at a time. Many true crime consumers and justice system enthusiasts are able to perceive each case differently when the stories are constructed using different frames. For example, through the Faulty Criminal Justice System Frame, O.J. Simpson can be seen as guilty. This is accomplished by using the narrative that pins the criminal justice system as corrupt, or unable to complete the one task it was designed to do. However, when the story is told using the Racist System Frame, he is innocent. This frame shows the criminal justice system as a tool to further oppress and discriminate against those who belong to minority groups.

Amateur Sleuths and Online Truths: Defamation Lawsuits in the Internet Age of True Crime

Amateur Sleuths and Online Truths: Defamation Lawsuits in the Internet Age of True Crime

Cold Roses

Cold Roses Juliana Gray (bio) Vermont’s Green Mountains jut into the horizon like the dramatic, unlikely slopes I drew as a child. They seem so close, as if walking a few miles in their direction I might suddenly bang my knee against the incline. That illusion—that the mountains were only a mile or so around the bend—was unshakable during my drive here. Now, walking the hills above town, I feel it again. I take a few pictures, but the February day is bright, so I mostly capture sun flares against dark hills. I’m at an artists’ residency, and I should be writing in my cozy little studio. But it’s a rare sunny day, and I’ve been eating rich dining hall food with no exercise. Stretching my legs in sun, luxuriating like a cat, I strip off my coat and tuck my phone into my back pocket, earbuds connecting me to a true crime podcast for company. Back in my room, I post my bad pictures on Facebook and make a joke about how much I’ve missed my murder podcasts. “A lovely place for murder!” a friend comments. Amused, curious, I look online. And in no time at all, I find one. ________ Jodie Whitney was 35, with brown hair and a toothy smile. She worked at Stoweflake Mountain Resort in Stowe; she was married, and had a three-year-old daughter. On May 24, 2004, her husband reported her missing, saying he last saw her that morning before he left for work. She never showed up at the resort that day, and she never came home. Her Jeep was found behind a barn, not far from her house. Jodie wasn’t in it. ________ The podcast I had listened to during my walk was indeed about a murder, or rather, a likely murder. Eight-year-old Relisha Rudd was living with her mother in a homeless shelter; Relisha was taken by a friend, a man the mother trusted. She didn’t, at first, perceive that her child was in danger, and didn’t report her missing. Relisha was Black, so it was somewhat unusual to hear her case covered [End Page 166] by a popular podcast. Crimes involving people of color or marginalized victims such as drug users or sex workers are underrepresented in the media. The most popular stories are about murdered and missing white women, especially if they’re young, especially if they’re middle- to upper-class, especially if they’re blonde and beautiful. Think Natalee Holloway, JonBenét Ramsey, Gabby Petito. The podcast made a point of this underrepresentation, suggesting the police’s initial failure to investigate Relisha’s disappearance may have been linked to her race and her family’s precarious economic status. By the time police got involved, Relisha had missed over a month of school, and her mother hadn’t seen her in 18 days. When police did start to ask questions, the man who had taken her killed his wife, then himself. Relisha has never been found. ________ Police began searching for Jodie right away. Like most Vermonters, she was white. In all, 50 officers and a canine unit conducted a ground search in a one-mile radius around Jodie’s abandoned Jeep. There was an expanded search, an aerial search, a search of three miles of the nearby Gihon River. An unidentified woman at a hospital in Dartmouth, New Hampshire seemed to fit Jodie’s description, but she wasn’t Jodie. Soon people were comparing Jodie’s disappearance to those of two other young women in the area. On February 9, 2004, U Mass Amherst student Maura Murray vanished after an apparent car crash in rural New Hampshire. Then, just over a month later, 17-year-old Brianna Maitland disappeared after leaving her job at a restaurant in northern Vermont. The similarities—missing women, abandoned cars, geographical proximity—were compelling. People began to murmur about a serial killer. Then, on June 2, just over a week after she went missing, Jodie’s body was found. Her husband was already in custody, giving his confession. [End Page 167] ________ My writing studio at the...

Did she do it? Assessing culpability among a true crime audience

Did she do it? Assessing culpability among a true crime audience

Marquis de Sade, The Marquise de Gange. Translated with an Introduction and notes by Will McMorran

This edition retrieves Sade’s late novel from the deep shadow of his pornographic production and places it squarely within the gothic canon. In so doing, it pursues a line also productively explored by Philippe Roger in his essay on Sade and the gothic in John D. Lyons’s collection The Dark Thread: From Tragical Histories to Gothic Tales (Newark: ­University of Delaware Press, 2019; reviewed in FS, 75 (2021), 405–06). Will McMorran’s excellent Introduction dramatically retells the story of the notorious true crime in which a Provençal noblewoman was murdered by her husband’s brothers in 1667, showing where Sade’s tale fits within the many accounts of her death. He also provides a very helpful selected bibliography of the retellings of the story, of which there are many from both before and after Sade, most recently in 1984, supplying in its fascinating entirety an English translation from 1744 of François Gayot de Pitaval’s influential version. ­Notable (re-)writers include Charlotte Smith, Alexandre Dumas père, and Elizabeth Gaskell. ­McMorran’s argument is two-pronged: firstly, that this novel is not of lesser importance to Sadean studies than the earlier works, and here he joins other recent scholars looking to rehabilitate the late novels (notably Michèle Vallenthini’s Sade dans l’histoire: du temps de la fiction à la fiction du temps (Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2019)). His second goal is to establish Sade as a properly gothic author, influenced both by the English gothic and by what might be seen as the genre’s origins in the Histoires tragiques tradition. And the result, in McMorran’s view, is that with The Marquise de Gange ‘the Gothic is coming home’ (p. xxv). So, what of the novel itself? Castles, dank rooms, fell premonitions, and a beautiful heroine unfairly treated are all abundantly present. The reader familiar with Sade will also recognize the disquisitions on nature and won’t be too surprised to discover that the ‘dissolute’ man is ‘inflamed rather than soothed’ by the beautiful ‘apologist for virtue’ (p. 90). There are some bravura passages of gothic horror and in one such we find the Marquise espying a hidden door: ‘a spluttering lamp reveals a glimpse of a chamber on the other side of the door; she enters… But what hideous object greets her eyes! There on a table before her, she sees an open cadaver, almost entirely ripped asunder’ (p. 130, punctuation sic). She escapes for the time being, yet ‘tottering, buffeted both by the gale and her own terror, [she] resembles a young willow battered by a storm’ (p. 131). Poor woman! Her horrid fate will not be eluded. In amongst all this turbulence, the (­relatively) sober account (p. 80) of what it’s like to be imprisoned adds depth and feeling, and if I can’t agree with McMorran that The Marquise de Gange offers a ‘taut, tense narrative’ (p. xxvii), he is right that this is a text worth revisiting and which should be part of a fuller sense of the gothic canon, on both sides of the English Channel.

The Devil Resides in Comfort: Constructs of Evil in Contemporary True Crime Series

The Devil Resides in Comfort: Constructs of Evil in Contemporary True Crime Series

“I just couldn’t cope with it, you know? I just couldn’t believe that she was gone”: The Portrayal of Co-victims’ Grief in True Crime Podcasts about Missing (but Presumed Killed) Women

“I just couldn’t cope with it, you know? I just couldn’t believe that she was gone”: The Portrayal of Co-victims’ Grief in True Crime Podcasts about Missing (but Presumed Killed) Women

The Lawn and; Chickens and; Remembering the World

The Lawn and; Chickens and; Remembering the World Wong May (bio) The Lawn 1 This is the lawn I looked out on in AugustNot knowing you were dead.All of July you were about to die,This is the lawn.July, certainly the best part of,You were in mortal danger. In September came the news.This is the lawn. The grass is norm.The grass too looks photographed.Each blade dips, is dipped Overnight in August, in acid.These the deer that appearedAll July & most of August.& the geese honking like a house in flight,This is the lawn. 2 A woman wrote Far into the night, woke.This is the house broken into in JulyMid-July toward August By a burglar or a nosy neighbourThe woman woke [End Page 96] In the darkOne lurid green lightA fire-fly let in by the burglarScribbling leftRight, close/No closer Over & overKnocking about O Inadmissible,AdmittedYou didn't say It's Over?Doubling back, half frantic delete deleteHow you tried. 3 This is the house.She has checked with the lawn.The lawn chairs in pajama stripes. 30 days hath September.This is the woman.It is still only July.In all the house there isn't a sound. What burnt so bright Inside or out [End Page 97] Left onOr held battering the night You burn to say Over To her now This side It's you all right,Over. [End Page 98] Chickens WhatWith each dayReturningDis-remembering Coming on streetsYou shall never Thank GodFind again With fewer wordsYou speak & writeYou travel more Your Muse fretsDis-believing In a market placeMan squatsBites off throats of chickens"Bite & spit"Back & forth Spits out miseryIn the dustBirdfeed grits on concrete Spit & bite & spitSo it goes [End Page 99] Man making a livingGood at itLike a desk clerk Is discreet;Now then the chickens Well out of miseryToo are nodding off en masseNo flesh woundsLittle that meets the eyeA bloodbathIt ain't & if a heapOf bodies, some square dozen Not all stamped outThighs thigh-highShall spell "massacre"On your retina Move on"Nothing to see"Move along Disperse!The mess of wingsIn the body-warmth darkA reconfigurationOf many as oneA mandalaOf syringesSome half-hearted flutterTwitches confined to the fringe [End Page 100] Die Die downWilling the drug to work The man nodsGives you a nodLifting one eyebrow like a chicken Drawing youTo the matter at handDesk jobOn whose lapWhat must be the most secret bookYou will never ever read again In the penumbraAll the gilt-edged pages rippledFell open, shimmeringAliveThe man wears a chicken's expressionA chicken's stupefaction YouIf you are not saved by what you seeIn the market todayWith just the clothes you are seen inC'mon darkness my old friend Where in the worldWould you also golive& write & live? [End Page 101] Remembering the World What does China remember of Japan?On Lugou Bridge you ask.What does Japan remember of China?On Lugou Bridge you want to know. This is where it all started. They say don't count the stone lionsAt the pier—You will become one of them.Stop countingStop! Your eyeballs are turning stony, inward. I bared my teeth in the mirrorWhen I got back to the hotel.They still chatter.Prolonged exposure to the NortherliesOn the bridge prises one's palate.But I did not roar. A clever man in the last centuryWrote a fairly readable bookFrom Lugou Bridge to Pearl Harbor(1937 to 1941). He reckonsA World War may begin many timesBefore it begins.We never tire. [End Page 102] You are not far offOne of the world's true crime spots. Are there secrets best kept in the War Museum At Lugou?Born after the WarI might turn in my parents,In...

‘BEING A FANGIRL OF A SERIAL KILLER IS NOT OK’: Gatekeeping Reddit’s True Crime Community

All fandoms engage in gatekeeping. Whether or not we agree that contemporary media fandoms comprise something like ‘communities’, the ‘-dom’ suffix to the term ‘fan’ necessitates some conception of a group, and groups have boundaries. These boundaries are always in tension, and self-defined true crime fans are a tricky case. True crime is mainstream, an endlessly profitable and staple of the media landscape. However, true crime fans must negotiate and police a boundary that separates them from the posited figure of the Bad Fan. This article examines the Reddit subforums r/TrueCrime and r/SerialKillers, analysing posts that discuss and police the boundaries separating the right kind of interest in true crime from this posited Bad Fan. I argue that while true crime enthusiasts tend to present their gatekeeping work as an ethical practice, it is often more to do with maintaining gendered norms than it is about morality or propriety.

Truth or doubt: questioning legal outcomes in true-crime documentaries

ABSTRACT Within the last decade, true crime stories have increasingly concerned cases of possible wrongful conviction. Many of these podcasts and documentary series about wrongful conviction look at specific and known factors that contribute to the bad outcomes, and, in different ways, champion the defendants whose cases they explore. This paper looks beyond the contributing factors of wrongful conviction to consider the way truth becomes problematized within the context of the law and the trial. It examines four series (Serial, Atlanta Monster, The Staircase, and Making a Murderer) and the ways the knowability of truth is framed in journalistic and legal discourse, focusing on how knowability itself is questioned in some series; how journalistic bias can compromise truth claims; how the presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt are key to framing truth and innocence; and how Alford pleas offer an unsatisfying way of compromising legal truths. Taken together, we see that series-makers challenge legal outcomes and critique injustices by destabilizing notions of truth.

‘It doesn’t feel right to say how much I enjoyed this’: Listener perspectives on ethics in true crime podcasts

This research seeks a clearer understanding of listener perspectives on issues of ethics in true crime podcasts (TCPs). To do so, the study first divides TCPs into three subgenres: Documentary, Recap and Expert. Then, it uses a mixed methods content analysis of listener reviews (n = 1200) of TCPs to ascertain listeners’ value systems and preferences when assessing podcasts, the role of ethics in audience evaluations of TCPs and the impact of subgenre on listener response. It finds that a large subsection of the reviewer audience (29.7 per cent) privileged ethics as a key criterion for evaluating and reviewing podcasts and that listeners’ level of engagement with issues of ethics is specific, careful and nuanced. It also finds that subgenre can play a role in shaping engagement with content, with Documentary and Recap formats more likely to result in listeners relating to content as entertainment.

Gangs of Buenos Aires: Revisiting 1970s and 1980s True Crime in Argentine Cinema

Gangs of Buenos Aires: Revisiting 1970s and 1980s True Crime in Argentine Cinema

The Pleasures and Problems of Consuming True Crime as Theatrical Entertainment in Nineteenth-Century London

Now a pillar of popular culture, the multi-media genre of ‘true crime’ has roots in nineteenth-century England. Particularly in London, a burgeoning media landscape increasingly catered to public interest in sensational homicides. Like other purveyors of true-crime entertainment, theatre managers at licensed playhouses wished to capitalise on murders making national headlines but encountered considerable – at times insurmountable – obstacles in their path. The likelihood of censorship plus that of public uproar ensured that melodramas inspired by recent slayings seldom showed at licensed playhouses. The rarity of such plays might suggest that theatre contributed little to London's abiding homicide fixation. However, the public interpreted two key spheres of what I call ‘true-crime culture’ through the lens of theatrical production – the administration of justice and the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud’s. Training its attention on the cultural impact of two of Britain's most notorious miscreants, John Thurtell (1794–1824) and Maria Manning (1821–49), this essay shows how theatre-going, in general, and the uniquely controversial dramaturgy of a play based on Thurtell's transgression, The Gamblers (1823), gave rise to a set of affective, aesthetic, and ethical assumptions, which in turn coloured contemporary perceptions of salacious murder trials, public executions, and the Chamber of Horrors.

Consumption of true crimes and perceived vulnerability: Does the cultural context matter?

This qualitative research explores how true crime documentaries (TCDs) are received in cultural settings with different crime rates. It identifies and compares motivations for watching TCDs, perceived vulnerabilities from their consumption, and concerns about their inclusion on broadcasting in Colombia (high murder rate context) and Singapore (low murder rate context). Eleven Colombians (RangeAge = 18–24 years old) and 12 Singaporeans (RangeAge = 19–24 years old) participated in 4 focus groups (FGs). A thematic analysis (TA) revealed that Singaporeans watch TCDs mainly for entertainment, to experience emotions, and to learn about past events, whereas Colombians mostly obtain survival skills, and learn about murderers and their cultural context realities. Unlike Singaporeans, Colombians perceive vulnerabilities associated with TCDs’ representation and consumption as revictimization (resuffering consequences or even being blamed), self-victimization (fear of becoming victims), and victimization (vicarious emotional experience of the consequences of and responsibility for crimes). The samples differ in their approaches to TCDs’ offering in TV. These results inform academy, audiovisual industries, educational programs, and regulatory policies.