Misty Lamb’s fortnightly column on society, published on Saturdays
Netflix has added yet another true crime documentary to their repertoire: American Murder: The Gabby Petito Story.
I remember this case when it was occurring and followed it in real time during the nine days that Brian Laundrie, Gabby’s finance and murderer, was missing after Petito’s death. It was a well-made documentary although my stomach still churns everytime I see TikToks of the final scene – a shot of Gabby prancing along a beach, baring a glorious smile to the man who ended up killing her.
The lovely song that framed that scene was hailed as one of the last songs she added to a Spotify playlist. However, internet sleuths speculate that it was Laundrie who added this song to create a pseudo alibi to prove she was still alive.This twists the scene instantly into something sordid and abhorrent whereby even the celebration of her life after murder is grossly and irresponsibly depicted through the lens of her killer.
True Crime as a genre that has always existed but it propelled into vogue in 2019. There was reportedly a 66 percent growth in true crime podcast listeners between 2019 to 2022. This rapid saturation of content and content creators can only inevitably result in one thing – that is a detached, objective and careless handling of unspeakable crimes with real lives at the centre of them. With titles such as “My Favourite Murder”, “Conversations with a Killer” and “Crime Junkie’, there has been an astronomical shift in the way we speak of life’s most brutal and cruel realities.
I do wonder whether there is a relationship between COVID-19 lockdown and the sudden rise in consumption of this genre. Broadly speaking, we were cooped up at home day and night with only the internet to scour. The closest contact we had with strangers was at least a metre’s distance or through a plastic screen. We never saw beyond a stranger’s eyes and hair. Any such danger we felt in those years of the pandemic was disparate from the danger we were advised about as children: the type of immediate danger threatened by the bare hands of mankind. Perhaps, amidst this boredom and stagnance, we were impelled to taste danger vicariously which led to an overconsumption of true crime content.
Streaming platform’s documentaries are usually less offensive than independent, self-uploaded audio efforts, they are made by professionals and often involve family members who have consented to the project, adding a more effective and authentic insight. We’re not just fed the opinions of an amateur who simply had the internet, a mic and a dream. Still, we see this fanaticism everywhere both in the producers and consumers of such content. It is important to pull our heads out of the water and recognise how our consumption inadvertently glorifies the commodification of real tragedies which will traumatise entire generations of families to come.
To this day, Keith Bennett’s remains have not been found because Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, the notorious Lancashire-based serial killers active in the 1960s, have refused to reveal where he was buried. The murder and mutilation of Elizabeth Short in 1947 Boston was never solved. In 2011, a sheriff ordered for the unidentified remains of eight people found in John Wayne Gacy’s home to be exhumed to attempt to identify them through DNA testing. The remains were found in 1978.
True crime and violence is not some faraway nightmare happening in an alternate timeline or universe. There is no novelty around the number of lives taken. These victims are not merely a statistic and our empathy for them does not absolve us of the guilt we should feel consuming the horrors of their deaths for entertainment.
Behind each podcast episode or TV mini-series lies genuine tragedy and the real, piercing and, often, ongoing grief of the victim’s loved ones.
If you find yourself getting excited when you see new content on someone’s violent death, you should go outside and touch some grass. If you are still thinking about it after that, do the research yourself. It is the least you could do to learn about their harrowing stories.
