True Crime from the Trenches

The first time I publicly spoke about my dad’s murder, I was 18 years old. Before a class at The University of Cincinnati, my mother and I stood discussing our family’s trauma and perspectives on the death penalty with a classroom of kids who had yet to consider their own views. That was in 1989, two years after Dad was killed and well before 30 seasons of Law and Order or NCIS became common television viewing. Since then, a parched American society has absorbed true crime culture like a sponge, and now regularly makes stories, like that of my Dad’s death at the hands of a serial killer, into entertainment.

And why not? Crimes made public are fair-game for storytellers, and take people away from their own problems; a fascination inherent to the functionality of denial and distraction. The ethics or morality around producing or devouring true crime is up for neverending debate even as the market, hungry for more, expands. According to YouGovAmerica in September of 2022, senior survey data analysts Carl Bialik and Linley Sanders say, “Half of Americans say they enjoy the genre of true crime, including 13 percent who say it's their favorite genre. Consistent with prior observations, we find that women (58 percent) are more likely than men (42 percent) to say they enjoy true crime, and twice as likely to say it's their favorite genre. Differences across racial groups, age groups, and political groups are minimal.”

Weekly I hear someone, with or without knowledge of my story, saying how much they “love” or are “obsessed with” true crime. From my biased angle, the grisly view has been no less gripping. Murder draws us all in, though its pull feels peculiarly slanted away from the victim and survivor, often, I find, at great cost. My trauma is not anyone’s concern, nor would I ask that it be, however, in this current climate, with a crisis of mental wellness and stability in our society, my process of overcoming trauma may contribute to the conversation; in other words, my healing may heal others. To that end I’ve used my voice, both spoken and in print to expose what that process was like for me, describing the myriad lifelines I was tossed and clung to.

Though violent crime has declined significantly since 1990, according to the CDC and statistics from National Violent Death Reporting System (NVDRS), both homicide and suicide have increased since 2020 and have not declined to pre-pandemic levels. CDC reports in February 2023, that American teenage girls are seeing increasing rates of sadness, assault, and suicidality, where “Nearly 1 in 3 (30 percent) seriously considered attempting suicide, up nearly 60 percent from a decade ago. The report also found more than half (52 percent) of LGBQ+ students had recently experienced poor mental health and, concerningly, that more than 1 in 5 (22 percent) attempted suicide in the past year.”

A national mental health crisis, that I can relate to all too well by my own teenage trauma, has me asking how to impact this concerning trend. With consumption numbers high across media for true crime, why wouldn’t some of us in the trenches attempt to reframe the narrative? Can sharing my story shine the spotlight on survivors? Could true crime be more than a distraction; could it serve as a cautionary tale, a victim remembrance, a healing strategy, or as a heroic family survival story? Finding limits within formulaic structures, I write outside of the traditional genre, and I have defined my book, Met the End, as a true-crime survival memoir.

As a teenager undergoing this tragedy and upheaval, when my emotions sank me to panicking depths, my mother entered me into a behavioral psychiatric center for teens where I began the lifelong education of confronting my experience, and more importantly, my responses to it. In working the problem there, I became acutely aware of the same weighty burdens (for disparate reasons) on the shoulders of many of my adolescent peers. This empathetic understanding stayed with me and when I raised my own teenagers through their anxiety-filled years, it served me then as it did all those years ago during my own. Access to support groups, books, healing practices, and private and institutional therapy, all played a role in moving me through my adolescent angst and into the adult I have become. These resources have become more readily available though not evenly across demographics and without a preventative mindset. Accessing individual levels of trauma, removing financial barriers, shame or stigma around seeking help can create pathways through lived experiential trauma and offer tools for teens who otherwise feel trapped.

Post-traumatic growth has allowed me to grow in many ways from my difficulties, including having a greater appreciation of one’s life and relationships, as well as increased compassion, altruism, purpose, utilization of personal strength, spiritual development, and creativity. Tragic optimism is the phrase coined by the existential-humanistic psychologist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, and what I found possible with the guidance afforded me and full transparency around the role I played in my own healing. Suffering is the very nature of true crime, yet many of the coping techniques for survivors can extend to others who experience loss, upheaval, or traumatization. To bring meaning and purpose out of my family’s tragedy, I now speak to groups about writing to heal, understanding our reactions, talking through trauma, and about seeing the human on the other side of entertainment.