Bringing new research from true crime writers, scholars, and media practitioners around the world, this book offers fresh perspectives on how women read, write, and are portrayed in true crime stories across different platforms, including documentaries, podcasts, and TikToks. The genre of true crime is flourishing, and it is overwhelmingly consumed by women. Despite this, there is much we do not know about how women consume true crime and are represented in true crime stories of various kinds. This edited volume helps to fill this gap in our knowledge. Across ten chapters and using a variety of study methods, including creative practice, interviews, surveys, archival research, and case studies, the book reveals the multifaceted ways that true crime matters to women and suggests areas of future research. It also offers new insights on a diverse range of topics, such as racial identities, fraudsters, activism, victimisation, and deviance, as well as highlighting major cases from past to present which have influenced criminal justice responses. True Crime and Women is intended for researchers and students of criminology, literary studies, gender studies, media and journalism studies, and rhetorical studies, as well as media practitioners and writers.

While many people think true crime is a new phenomenon, Americans have been obsessed with the genre for over a century, and popular culture continuously tries to cash in. The names of infamous serial killers are well-known, but the identities of their often-female victims are frequently lost to history. This text flips the script and focuses on the women to keep their identities known and remembered. This is the first book to examine how popular culture has mistreated women as both perpetrators and victims of crime, covering a hundred-year span from 1920 to 2020. Detailed is popular culture's interest in true crime and how women in true crime documentation have largely been sexualized and victim-blamed over the decades.

During the 1950s and 1960s True Detective magazine developed a new way of narrating and understanding murder. It was more sensitive to context, gave more psychologically sophisticated accounts, and was more willing to make conjectures about the unknown thoughts and motivations of killers than others had been before. This turned out to be the start of a revolution, and, after a century of escalating accounts, we have now become a nation of experts, with many ordinary people able to speak intelligently about blood-spatter patterns and organized vs. disorganized serial killers. The Rise of True Crime examines the various genres of true crime using the most popular and well-known examples. And despite its examination of some of the potentially negative effects of the genre, it is written for people who read and enjoy true crime, and wish to learn more about it. With skyrocketing crime rates and the appearance of a frightening trend toward social chaos in the 1970s, books, documentaries, and fiction films in the true crime genre tried to make sense of the Charles Manson crimes and the Gary Gilmore execution events. And in the 1980s and 1990s, true crime taught pop culture consumers about forensics, profiling, and highly technical aspects of criminology. We have thus now become a nation of experts, with many ordinary people able to speak intelligently about blood-spatter patterns and organized vs. disorganized serial killers. Through the suggestion that certain kinds of killers are monstrous or outside the realm of human morality, and through the perpetuation of the stranger-danger idea, the true crime aesthetic has both responded to and fostered our culture's fears. True crime is also the site of a dramatic confrontation with the concept of evil, and one of the few places in American public discourse where moral terms are used without any irony, and notions and definitions of evil are presented without ambiguity. When seen within its historical context, true crime emerges as a vibrant and meaningful strand of popular culture, one that is unfortunately devalued as lurid and meaningless pulp.

This book examines the representation and misrepresentation of queer people in true crime, addressing their status as both victims and perpetrators in actual crime, as well as how the media portrays them. The chapters apply an intersectional perspective in examining criminal cases involving LGBTQ people, as well as the true crime media content surrounding the cases. The book illuminates how sexual orientation, gender, race, and other social locations impact the treatment of queer people in the criminal legal system and the mass media. Each chapter describes one or more high-profile criminal cases involving queer people (e.g., the murders of Brandon Teena and Kitty Genovese; serial killer Aileen Wuornos; the Pulse nightclub mass shooting). The authors examine how the cases are portrayed in the media via news, films, podcasts, documentaries, books, social media, and more. Each chapter discusses not only what is visible or emphasized by the media but also what is invisible in the accounting or societal focus surrounding the case. Lesser-known (but similar) cases are used in the book to call attention to how race, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, social class, and/or other features influence the dominant narrative surrounding these cases. Each chapter addresses "teachable moments" from each case and its coverage, leaving readers with several considerations to take with them into the future. The book also provides media resources and supplemental materials so that curious readers, including scholars, students, content creators, and advocates, can examine the cases and media content further. The book will appeal to scholars and students of criminology, psychology, sociology, law, media studies, sexuality studies, and cultural studies, and people with an interest in true crime.

This book explores contemporary American true crime narratives across various media formats. It dissects the popularity of true crime and the effects, both positive and negative, this popularity has on perceptions of crime and the justice system in contemporary America. As a collection of new scholarship on the development, scope, and character of true crime in twenty-first century American media, analyses stretch across film, streaming/broadcast TV, podcasts, and novels to explore the variety of ways true crime pervades modern culture. The reader is guided through a series of interconnected topics, starting with an examination of the contemporary success of true crime, the platforms involved, the narrative structures and engagement with audiences, moving on to debates on representation and the ethics involved in portraying both victims and perpetrators of crime within the genre. This collection provides new critical work on American true crime media for all interested readers, and especially scholars and students in the humanities and social sciences. It offers a significant area of research in social sciences, criminology, media, and English Literature academic disciplines.

How serialized crime shows became an American obsession TV shows and podcasts like Making a Murderer, Serial, and Atlanta Monster have taken the cultural zeitgeist by storm, and contributed to the release of wrongly imprisoned people—such as Adnan Syed. The popularity of these long-form true crime docuseries has sparked greater attention to issues of inequality, power, social class, and structural racism. More and more, the American public is asking, Who is and is not deserving of punishment, and who is and is not protected by the law? In The New True Crime, Diana Rickard argues that these new true crime series deserve our attention for what they reveal about our societal understanding of crime and punishment, and for the new light they shine on the inequalities of the criminal justice system. Questioning the finality of verdicts, framing facts as in the eye of the beholder—these new series unmoor our faith in what is knowable, even as, Rickard critically notes, they often blur the lines between “fact” and “fiction.” With a focus on some of the most popular true crime podcasts and steaming series of the last decade, Rickard provides an in-depth analysis of the ways in which this new media—which allows for binge-listening or watching—makes crime into a public spectacle and conveys ideological messages about punishment to its audience. Entertainment values have always been entwined with crime news reporting. Newsworthy stories, Rickard reminds us, need to involve sex, violence, or a famous person, and contain events that can be framed in terms of individualism and conservative ideologies about crime. Even as these old tropes of innocent victims and deviant bad guys still dominate these docuseries, Rickard also unpacks how the new true crime has been influenced by the innocence movement, a diverse group of organizers and activists, be they journalists, lawyers, formerly incarcerated people, or family members, who now have a place in mainstream consciousness as DNA evidence exonerates the wrongly convicted. The New True Crime questions the knowability of truth and probes our anxieties about the “real” nature of true crime media. For fans of true crime shows and anyone concerned about justice in America, this book will prove to be essential reading.

"Utilizing the tools of forensic science and Christian theological ethics, this book resituates prominent criminal cases within their social and forensic contexts"--

Travel around the world and inside the minds of monsters in this true crime anthology featuring sixteen astonishing serial killer exposés. Serial killers: Ted Bundy, John Wayne Gacy, and Jeffrey Dahmer are often the first names that spring to mind. Many people assume serial killers are primarily an American phenomenon that came about in the latter part of the twentieth century—but such assumptions are far from the truth. Serial killers have been around for a long time and can be found in every corner of the globe―and they’re not just limited to the male gender, either. Some of these predators have been caught and brought to justice whereas others have never been found, let alone identified. Serial killers can be anywhere. And scarier still, they can be anyone. Edited by acclaimed author and anthologist Mitzi Szereto, The Best New True Crime Stories: Serial Killers reveals all-new accounts of true-crime serial killers from the contemporary to the historic. The international list of contributors includes award-winning crime writers, true-crime podcasters, journalists, and experts in the dark crimes field such as Martin Edwards, Lee Mellor, Danuta Kot, Craig Pittman, Richard O. Jones, Marcie Rendon, Mike Browne, and Vicki Hendricks. This book will leave you wondering if it’s ever really possible to know who’s behind the mask you’re allowed to see. Perfect for readers of true crime books such as I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, Mindhunter, The Devil in the White City, or Sons of Cain. “An engrossing and multi-faceted anthology for a new era of true crime writing.” ―Piper Weiss, author of You All Grow Up and Leave Me

Why do true crime stories exert such popular fascination? What do they have to say about the fear of crime in the present moment? This book examines the historical origins and development of true crime and its evolution into distinctive contemporary forms. Embracing a range of non-fiction accounts - true crime book and magazines, law and order television, popular journalism - it traces how they harness and explore current concerns about law and order, crime and punishment and personal vulnerability.