True Stories Of Crime Research Articles

Using True Crime Stories to Demonstrate Medical Library Research

The author wrote a series for the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library’s blog that explored the connections between true crime and medicine. Each of the ten entries in the “Disorder in the Court” series tells a true story of a crime or court case that involved a medical diagnosis. The entry then delves into the etiology and pathophysiology of the particular syndrome, using information from research articles and point-of-care databases available through the library. This blog series shows the potential of storytelling in demonstrating how to conduct library research.

People are curious about immoral and morally ambiguous others

Looking to the popularity of superheroes, true crime stories, and anti-heroic characters like Tony Soprano, we investigated whether moral extremity, especially moral badness, piques curiosity. Across five experiments (N = 2429), we examine moral curiosity, testing under what conditions the moral minds of others spark explanation-seeking behavior. In Experiment 1, we find that among the most widely watched Netflix shows in the US over a five-month period, the more immoral the protagonist, the more hours people spent watching. In Experiments 2a and 2b, we find that when given a choice to learn more about morally good, bad, ambiguous, or average others, people preferred to learn more about morally extreme people, both good and bad. Experiment 3 reveals that people are more curious for explanations about (vs. descriptions of) morally bad and ambiguous people compared to morally good ones. Finally, Experiment 4 tests the uniqueness of curiosity for moral ambiguity. We find that people are more drawn to moral rather than aesthetic ambiguity, suggesting that ambiguity, which is cognitively taxing and sometimes avoided, preferentially engenders information seeking in the moral domain. These findings suggest deviations from moral normativity, especially badness, spur curiosity. People are curious about immorality and agents who differ from the norm.

The ‘invisible’ histories and ‘inaudible’ stories in the confessions of infamous serial killers: a reading of The Cannibal and I Killed Eighteen

ABSTRACT This paper discusses The Cannibal and I Killed Eighteen, KTN’s two documentary Case Files that profile Geoffrey Matheri and Philip Onyancha’s confessions as serial killers. With the hindsight that documentaries generally document true crime stories, the discussion closely follows the journalist’s narration vis-à-vis the victims’ confessions, truths, and evidences and it attempts a closure to Dennis Onsarigo’s observation that each of the two cases is still a case open. The study is informed by two observations; first, despite the victims’ glaring testimonies of their macabre killings, both were jailed for the lesser allegations of attempted rape crimes and assaults, and second, though Onyancha publicly confessed to have murdered eighteen, he still contemplates writing a book ‘The Untold Story’ of which he says the book will allow Kenyans to know the truth, Guided by Narrative Theories, this study activates ‘invisible’ histories and ‘inaudible’ stories and it considers how the aesthetic qualities of the documentary and production process place the works between their actuality and the supposed reality in the outside world.

Murderinos

Consumption of true crime podcasts has shot up in recent years, with a majority of listeners being female. There are many things which might draw women to these pieces of media. Women who previously reported elevated levels of fear of violent crime have taken to viewing true crime as a safety measure, wanting to become educated on the stories of others in an effort to not become victims themselves. Many women report feeling more confident that they would know how to avoid or get out of a dangerous situation after learning the details of previous crimes. Production and consumption of true crime media can also lead to increased feelings of justice and a desire to speak out about personal experience or societal and systemic issues. Studies have also been done on the effect of hearing women’s voices on true crime podcasts and its relation to the visualization of mutilation in true crime stories. While earlier studies argue that audiences of true crime media have more anxiety and trepidation around violent crime, I argue that true crime podcasts have many psychological benefits, specifically for women. In their podcast, Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark tell murder stories with comedic commentary, including advice about how to avoid meeting the same fate as the victims they speak of. Following the success of the podcast, the hosts published Stay Sexy and Don’t Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide, condensing their tips into book form and sharing their own experiences with true crime. Using select episodes from the podcast as well as the book, I will prove that participating in these audio spaces improves feelings that women have agency over their lives, giving them an awareness of what’s happening around them that makes them savvier, helps them notice patterns, and allows them to break out of the dangerous mold society has placed them in.

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.

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.

Review: American Cult: A Graphic History of Religious Cults in America from the Colonial Era to Today, edited by Robyn Chapman

Review: <i>American Cult: A Graphic History of Religious Cults in America from the Colonial Era to Today</i>, edited by Robyn Chapman

Who Didn’t Do It?

ABSTRACT David Grann’s Killers of the Flower Moon is a generic hybrid: literary journalism, true crime tale of the Wild West, and whodunit. I argue that the activation of different sets of reader expectations for these genres gives it an extraordinarily powerful political impact. Based on reviews and reader responses on Amazon and Goodreads and on the genre characteristics of the narrative itself, I make the case that Grann satisfies readers’ expectations for formula Westerns and classical detective stories in the first two parts (i.e., solving the crime and arresting the bad guy), only to undermine them in the final section, in which just about all the white citizens in the county emerge as complicit with the crimes. Further, Killers of the Flower Moon–like many true-crime stories–offers a feminist critique of the romance plot by unveiling how happily-ever-after marriages can turn violent and abusive for women.

A guarantee of safety, a cautionary tale or a celebration? Popularity of true crime narratives through the lens of Mary Douglas’s concepts of pollution and defilement

The fascination with crime, hastily described by some as a symptom of moral degradation of Western culture, seems to be a defence mechanism used by individuals to deal with social transgressions and anomalies represented by serious crimes. The aim of this article is to analyse the growing popularity of true crime through the lens of Mary Douglas’s theory of purity and pollution, with a particular emphasis on the methods of dealing with anomalies appearing within conceptual schemata of a given culture. For this purpose, the text has been divided into four parts: the first part briefly presents the history of true crime; the second part analyses the idea of murder through the lens of Douglas’s theory; the third part discusses the reasons behind the popularity of true crime narratives; and the fourth part showcases how individuals use true crime stories as tools to deal with anomalies.

The Visual Pedagogy of Reform: Picturing White Slavery in America

The Progressive-Era movement to end enforced prostitution—hyperbolically termed “white slavery”—achieved substantial and enduring legislative and political victories by the onset of World War I. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, images provided a potent but heretofore overlooked vehicle for the most prominent white slavery activists, a means of picturing the city with all its dangers and temptations, and an effective means of competing with the spectacles of modern society. The visual propaganda of white slavery demonstrates the extent to which prominent members of this reform movement—and several impostors masquerading as earnest reformers—engaged in controversial, explicit tactics in the vein of contemporary true-crime stories. Whether these methods were in the service of arming rural families with valuable knowledge or simply generating attention and profit, they reveal the internal contradictions that threatened to undermine or even undo the reformist message.

Ending Innocence Denying: Changing the Narrative About What it Means to Be a Good Prosecutor

Prosecutors, the most powerful actors in the criminal justice system, also have the most difficult job: they must be “ministers of justice.” A prosecutor’s core mission is to vindicate the truth, rather than strive to “win” by accumulating a track record of convictions. When evidence comes to light suggesting that a wrongful conviction has occurred, a prosecutor’s ethical obligation requires admitting to a terrible mistake and working to undo it. Many conscientious prosecutors accept this responsibility and confess to their errors. But too many do not. They insist, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that wrongfully convicted people are in fact guilty. These prosecutors actively work to delay justice. Some are so committed to adhering to the original mistake that they fail to prosecute the actual perpetrators. Much has been written about how to change the culture that leads to prosecutors’ reflexive doubling-down on wrongful convictions: public shaming in judicial opinions, more rigorous ethical training in law school and on the job, and sharper oversight by state bars. These measures are necessary, but they are insufficient. To curtail innocence-denying, the narrative must change about what it means to be a “good prosecutor,” historically defined as a tough-on- crime fighter whose overriding goal is to obtain and preserve convictions. This mindset pits a prosecutor’s self-interest in getting and preserving guilty verdicts against his or her ethical obligations, which require confessing error and reversing course where credible evidence of innocence exists. The explosion of interest in wrongful conviction cases, narrated as true crime stories in podcasts, documentaries, and other media, has begun to erode the power of traditional narrative. The public is now better informed about the ethical obligations of prosecutors and the consequences of violating these obligations. This, in turn, has led to important, to the election of reform-minded candidates who defeated innocence-denying incumbents by running on progressive platforms, including a commitment to revisiting wrongful conviction cases. In this article, I argue that these “good prosecutor” stories can be woven into a coherent and compelling meta-narrative that can help put an end to innocence denying. When the new exoneration narrative becomes predominant, prosecutors who embrace their ethical obligations and correct miscarriages of justice will have everything to gain because the voters will see them as courageous and just. Innocence deniers by contrast, will be rendered unelectable.

Emotions, Power and Popular Opinion about the Administration of Justice: The English Experience, from Coke’s ‘Artificial Reason’ to the Sensibility of ‘True Crime Stories’

This article discusses emotions and power in the administration and representation of criminal justice in early modern England. In the early seventeenth century, professional lawyers insisted that only they were competent to understand the ‘artificial reason’ of the common law; and lay opinion was associated with unreliable emotional engagement with the protagonists in trials. ‘Popular jurisprudence’ received renewed impetus from the post-Reformation emphasis on conscience and divine providence, however, and this kind of common sense interpretation often featured in popular accounts of law proceedings. Moreover, the ‘low law’ administered at grass roots level by JPs was less professionalised because most magistrates were not lawyers. The development of popular and emotional jurisprudence is demonstrated in the eighteenth century by analysis of judges’ charges, popular novels, and the reportage of ‘true crime’. Ultimately, and despite further ‘lawyerisation’ of trials, this article argues that the rise of the novel and increased press reporting of criminal justice generated more vicarious engagement with the administration of justice. And this was emotional engagement: eighteenth-century popular jurisprudence represented justice as variously awesome, theatrical and unreasonably oppressive.

Making a genre: the case of the contemporary true crime documentary

This article looks at the current documentary obsession with true crime stories, arguing that ultimately this heterogeneous series of individual texts loosely constitute a genre. Bookended by The Staircase from 2004 (the genre's touchstone or foundational text) and Making a Murderer from 2015 (the genre's most notorious example to date), this discussion will look at a diverse range of examples (series, podcasts, one-off documentaries) that nevertheless share common concerns around the law and how it can be represented, the truth, evidence and miscarriages of justice. Examples discussed also include: The Kick (2005), The 10th District Court (2006), Serial (2014) and The Jinx (2015). Even the title sequences are beginning to resemble each other – and those of related drama series – posing more questions about generic and media identity. True crime documentaries are hugely popular; they also serve justice, in that several of these television series, podcasts and web broadcasts have had a direct impact on actual cases.

&lt;i&gt;Crime, Fear and the Law in True Crime Stories&lt;/i&gt; by Anita Biressi

This book, concerned as it is with the relations of crime and narrative, is itself situated in an interesting conjunction of narrative and metanarrative. It is both a commentary on the stories of crimes and criminals, and on the ways in which those stories have been read and represented by writers on them, so it stands already at a third degree of remove from what we could call the ‘real crimes’. Oddly though, in its presentation, this book is returned through the levels of discourse to something approaching the style of those texts upon which it commentates. The cover shows a man in a Cambridge Rapist-style leather hood, his arms and body tattooed with the words ‘murder’, ‘hate’ and ‘kill’, against a night landscape of winter trees; exactly the kind of image that accompanies true crime accounts in books and magazines. The cover also bears the words ‘Crime Files’ in the graphic style of a police case-folder stamp, this being the general title of the series within which Biressi’s book is published, and the brief overview of the series describes it as ‘offering scholars, students and discerning readers a comprehensive set of guides to the world of crime and detective fiction’. I comment on these details of the book’s presentation because it seems to me that they immediately raise questions about some of the difficulties that Biressi is attempting to unravel. What is the status of the writer on, or the reader of, true crime narratives? Wherein does the continued fascination with these stories lie and what is the nature of the pleasure derived from them? Further, in this context, how does an academic analyst differ from those other readers and writers of the genre? A suspicious police officer might be forgiven for being unable to see the difference between the isolated individual in a bedsit full of true crime books and newspaper clippings of grotesque murders, and the office of an academic containing exactly the same material. The ‘scholar, student and discerning reader’ defence hardly works, when this is the alibi that so many of the texts under examination themselves employ to justify the willing involvement of the writer and the interest of the reader in apparently indefensible material.

A Sentimental Education for the Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900 – 1910 by Robert M Buffington

Buffington, Robert M. A Sentimental Education for Working Man: The Mexico City Penny Press, 1900-1910. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2015. Robert M. Buffington, Professor of Women and Gender Studies at University of Colorado, Boulder, has written extensively on Mexican history. Buffington published a monograph: Criminal and Citizen in Modern Mexico (University of Nebraska Press, 2000), as well as several articles, and edited a volume with Pablo Piccato entitled True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (University of New Mexico Press, 2009). As such, he is an acknowledged authority on Mexican history. The author utilizes twenty-seven Mexico City penny press newspapers to illustrate how editors of these papers produced a sentimental education for working-class men that was patronizing, less coercive, more realistic, and more comprehensive than anything produced by authorities (5). The first two chapters explore efforts by penny press to construct popular alternatives to official stories and discuss how editors attempted to forge bonds of affection between popular figures like Miguel Hidalgo and Benito Juarez and working class. In essence, penny press editors plucked liberal icons from official histories, reinterpreted them as working-class heroes, and used them to criticize Porfirio Diaz's regime. Mexican Independence leader Hidalgo's courage in face of betrayals by his countrymen who colluded with imperialist Spaniards resonated with penny press criticisms that an unholy alliance between Diaz and foreigners impoverished Mexico. Similarly, penny press canonization of Juarez, hero of War of Reform and French Intervention, proved an excellent way to subvert official patriotic discourse because Juarez and Diaz had a tumultuous relationship. Penny press editors skillfully employed Juarez to make sarcastic references to Diaz. When Francisco Bulnes, a friend and favorite of Diaz, issued a blistering anti-Juarez polemic, penny press savaged him as a traitor to country. Editors assumed Bulnes spoke for Diaz and deplored Don Porfirio's seeming attempt to denigrate their Juarez, a martyr and a working-class hero. Ultimately, penny press helped forge a new national identity in which working-class men were the true patriots whose hard work and steadfast devotion would one day realize nation's destiny and redeem noble sacrifice of its immortal champions (97). In disseminating this vision, penny press argued that working-class were the people. From reinterpretation of Hidalgo and Juarez, Buffington moves to analysis of penny press efforts to write working-class men into national narrative as active participants. Editors argued that humble but heroic contributions of working-class to nation-building warranted their inclusion, not as passive beneficiaries but as full-fledged rights-bearing citizens (101). …

Graphic journalism: il fumetto come racconto del mondo

The graphic journalism is a form of journalism that takes advantage of the potential of narrative and visual power of comics. More than a theory, a trend or a school, it is a practice adopted by the authors. The graphic reporter is always ready to gather as much evidence as possible on the object of his search. This is what happens in the work of Joe Sacco, Aleksandar Zograf and Igort: their graphic novels describe unknown places, situations and areas. In Italy the publisher BeccoGiallo has created a particular kind of comics, called civil comic. BeccoGiallo's graphic novels talk about true crime stories, biographies and reportage about the world of migrants.

Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato (eds.), True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), pp. xi+276, $27.95, pb.

Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato (eds.), True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), pp. xi+276, $27.95, pb.

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico

This timely and progressive collection of eight essays centers on criminal cases from the late Porfiriato to the first decades of the Mexican Revolution. Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato have concentrated on framing causes célèbres as texts that offer insights into changing aspects of Mexican society during the disruptions that accompanied modernity and revolutionary change. This volume gives readers a sense of not only “place” but also how the individual act fits into the larger social discourses of criminality and nation.In presenting their argument that criminal cases offer a way for people to make sense of the world, Buffington and Piccato offer an interesting variety of expertly authored topics, from banditry and murder to political assassinations and infanticide. Some of the cases will be familiar and others are relatively unknown, but all offer the reader, both academic and general, a fascinating look at Mexican criminality. The anthology begins with the 1897 exploits of the Porfirianera prostitute María Villa. Buffington and Piccato explain the nuances behind Villa’s actions, highlighting Porfirian society’s anxieties about modernity and gender. The next two essays, by Elisa Speckman Guerra and Cristina Rivera-Garza, offer fascinating analyses of the roles print media and modern science played in ordering and defining crime. Speckman Guerra’s subject, the notorious El Tigre de Santa Julia, became a symbol of the revolution only because his execution occurred at the same time as Francisco Madero’s revolt. Rivera-Garza’s contention that historians and state institutions are obsessed with narratives finds resonance in the case of an insane asylum inmate. Modernity plays a significant role in her essay, as it does with Pablo Piccato’s discussion of the 1923 murder of Senator Francisco Tejeda, committed by the young daughter of a political rival killed by Tejeda. In this selection, questions concerning family and gender roles emerge and provide insight into how masculinity was both challenged and reinforced through the public arena of the trial, a civic forum that would fall prey to the modernizing impulses of the revolutionary state.The Mexican state’s dominant role in constructing criminality, especially in the wake of its solidification of power in the late 1920s and early 1930s, provides the fuel that drives the rest of the volume. In Christopher R. Boyer’s essay on murder in Zamora, Michoacán, political motives certainly lay behind the 1923 death of the son of a conservative landowner, but while the case was never definitely solved, it did not matter. As Boyer demonstrates, the murder and subsequent events transformed politics in the region, giving conservative and Cristero forces added motivation to embark on their conflict. The violence of the 1920s is examined again by Renato González Mello, who offers a comparison of the careers and violence-related art of José de León Toral and David Alfaro Siquieros. Though ideological opposites, both men were dedicated to the pursuit of violence to fulfill their ideals. In fact, Toral had more success than Siquieros, the latter emerging in the essay as a frustrated and somewhat tragic marksman. González Mello’s focus, the self-body sketches of both men, demonstrates once again, as in Rivera-Garza’s essay, that violence can be read in many different ways. Body politics also provides an important subtext in Víctor M. Macías González’s examination of the case of Miss Mexico 1928, María Teresa de Landa, who murdered her bigamist husband, General Moisés Vidal Corro, and Katherine Elaine Bliss’s look at infanticide and its intersection with revolutionary notions of state and motherhood. In the case of Miss Mexico, Macías González ties together questions about propriety and class. This is one of the stronger essays and, together with Piccato’s tale of family vengeance and Boyer’s analysis of political vendetta, offers the best window into the formative and turbulent 1920s, a decade deserving further study. Where Buffington and Piccato succeed, however, is in offering a new and provocative mechanism to study criminality. By digging deeper into narrative and text, Piccato and Buffington present an alternative visualization of the importance crime has in national and community identity and formation, a topic of extreme relevance in the present moment.

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico by Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato Eds.

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico by Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato Eds.

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico. Edited by Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Pp. xi, 276. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $27.95.

True Stories of Crime in Modern Mexico. Edited by Robert Buffington and Pablo Piccato. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009. Pp. xi, 276. Illustrations. Notes. Index. $27.95. - Volume 67 Issue 2