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Reading true crime discussions have highlighted to me that an active online community can be both a help and hindrance to solving cases. This seems to depend on a range of factors - some I have tried to capture below, but I am keen to add to this as others will have different experience and perspectives, and likely a longer and broader experience of true crime than me.
It is obvious that a barrier to solving cold cases, and sometimes active cases, is resourcing. So more effectively harnessing enthusiastic smart volunteers' time and diverse professional skills would be beneficial. There are some examples of this I have seen, including the volunteers doing genetic genealogy, but I am also keen to hear what other formal and informal ways this occurs.
On the flip side, we repeatedly hear comments from law enforcement and families of victims of crimes that their time and money has been wasted by the involvement of the public and unqualified people who want to insert themselves into the drama of investigations.
Most of the time, I don't think people hinder investigations intentionally. Rather, this occurs because their interest and involvement centres around themselves and their enthusiasm/goals and they fail to consider how their actions might affect the investigation or the victims.
It seems that if we could identify what behaviours are useful and which are problematic, and why these occur, we could work toward a more effective true crime community :)
Below are a few of my observations on some key problems I see around this theme. I would love to hear others thoughts on this, particularly where you think I have misunderstood the situation or where there is already a discussion elsewhere or solution to the problem that I am not aware of.
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How to deal with Conflicting Agendas:
Everyone brings their own goals to a situation, and the conflict between these goals and the overarching higher goal (solving the crime) can create issues. For example, people creating podcasts/videos etc about cold cases have a primary interest in getting views + advertising revenue. However, they have a secondary goal of bringing public attention to the case and pressure to have it solved, and are often very effective in this. This can also occur at a more informal level when we engage with cases on reddit fora, where our primary goal is personal entertainment, but our secondary goal is to make a contribution to solving the case. If people make decisions about their behaviour and actions based mainly on their primary goal, without considering how these affect the higher secondary goal, we get problems.
In my professional experience, the best way to align people to common goals is to make them part of the solution: Utilize their professional input to achieve the goals so they feel a sense of responsibility, and include them in the team environment where they are then exposed to more of the information, can directly see the consequences of their actions, and where they will align to the behavioural and cultural norms of the group. This is why I am interested in understanding the formal or organised ways that volunteers can get involved in solving crimes.
2. Emotional vs Analytical engagement with problems:
Upfront declaration - I am a very analytical person, so I am frustrated at how many emotionally driven theories and conclusions are expressed on true crime fora. I think that this undermines the value that these discussions could have in contributing to solving crimes.
Empathy for victims and considering THEIR emotional state is absolutely critical to engaging sensitively and usefully with the types of crimes that are discussed. And we all bring our own unique personal experience to any situation and this can create insights.
But I am concerned how often contributors are driven almost entirely by their own feelings, often to the exclusion of evidence: they believe someone is guilty without any basis, they have a strong feeling that someone is not a good person without knowing much about them, and this emotional certainty then drives a range of unhelpful behaviours and sometimes it can snowball to public opinion that affects innocent people. I recognise that there are a range of measures by moderators and contributors to address this behaviour, but it is still a problem in every comment stream.
My observation is that this occurs more in cases where there is less factual information available and therefore media and discussion has focussed on the people involved. The public engages heavily with the very selected details and cliches available and fills in the gaps from their personal experience. No idea what could be done about this, but would love to hear others opinions (especially more emotional and empathic people who are going to respectfully disagree with me!) :)
3. Disparity of engagement based on the victim profile:
I didn't want to just call this 'missing white woman syndrome' because it is far broader than that, but that is what I mean here. There are certain cases that everyone seems to gravitate toward, and others that get no attention at all. Unfortunately, resourcing of law enforcement is political and therefore, to some degree, attention and public engagement = cases getting solved. It would be great to hear what initiatives people are aware of that are dealing with the systemic causes of this problem - and opinions on how effective they are.
For example, there is obviously a role for media in creating stories and reconsidering the way they present victims. And clustering cases into patterns and reporting them in this way (whether or not the basis of clustering is sensible or borderline conspiracy theory) seems to work to attract attention. But I am sure there are more complex things being done and I am keen to know about them.
As a white woman, I will always naturally empathise with other white women of the same background as me and be more interested in their cases, and realistically it isn't something that is likely to change. But I recognise the inequitable negative impact of this.
I could go on forever with dot points like this, but feel this is probably long enough as a basis for discussion. Looking forward to hearing what others think.
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Unpopular opinion- I honestly don’t think the true crime community adds much to solving crimes. If you’re not raising money for DNA testing, physically searching, doing genealogical research etc I don’t see what listening/watching recaps of the crime does to help solve it.
"You don't understand...I have this wild theory based on incomplete news reporting that I just know is correct. Why aren't law enforcement looking into this?!?"
Cue 30 people encouraging them to contact the local, understaffed pd with their theory & no evidence.
LMAO. Why do people do this? There is obviously rare exceptions to this where people have actually contributed useful theories/information but it is quite grandiose of people to think that after being an armchair detective online for a few hours they have generated a theory worthy of serious recognition. Especially in high profile cases where a federal investigation is warranted. If anything media attention and online sleuthing/ useless tips can just confuse any actual pending investigation.
Main character syndrome & lack of faith in law enforcement to do their jobs correctly - heck, they might have a point in some cases.
I think my theory of the Robert Wone case is the correct one & that it's been overlooked by law enforcement. But I'm not about to go contacting them about it. At the end of the day it's just my stupid opinion.
I noticed a lot of people default mechanism is to latch onto police incompetence/negligence or poor detective work in order to rationalize just speculating and acting as if they know any better. I am not denying that incompetence exists and many cases are botched and overlooked for a variety of reasons but most of the time I am inclined to trust law enforcement more than the average redditor in handling a case.
Agree with this wholeheartedly. We need less internet sleuths. The conversations are interesting but I think they can tend to muddy the waters.
I feel like the Boston marathon bombing should've taught web sleuths that they're not experts, but obviously not.
I have this general theory about enthusiastic people - that their energy should be channelled in useful ways. If they are being unhelpful in the way they are using energy, the best way to stop it is to find them something useful to do.
I actually help run a true crime website and believe me this is how we feel about most cases. So many people join thinking we’ll actually solve something but it’s mostly just informative cross referencing on police reports and articles. The farthest we’ve gone is trying to reach out to people for interviews. Even when we do find something interesting or suspicious we usually don’t publish or share it outside of the staff because people take it and run and destroy someone’s reputation. If you go into sleuthing expecting to solve cases it’s going to be a lot more boring and morally complicated than you’d expect.
Yes, this is a really good point - if people are really about making a difference, this is where they should be putting in time. Though actually, I have seen volunteer data analysts add value. But it was in LE initiated structured ways, not just random ppl online...
Because, well, agents of the government have the same constitutional limitations, and usually untrained amateur agents are bad at everything and also screw that up and cost the case the smoking gun. Fruit of the poisonous tree and all that.
Yes, definitely needs to be in a controlled environment.
Not controlled, highly specifically trained. A single wrong word can fuck everything up. There just is no place for an amateur, a volunteer is best served heading to the victims advocate side where your empathy can become a huge help to the victim and you won’t accidently impact the case.
Please, if you are getting involved in any online sleuthing, remember the victims and their families. Their needs and privacy should be prioritized over trying to solve a case from an online forum.
https://www.reddit.com/r/SeriousConversation/comments/1c8p3a0/true_crime_is_disgusting_and_shameful_from_an_ex/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_butto
This post raised a lot of valid concerns about the morality and problems with online sleuthing and whatnot
Thank you for sharing - that was the sort of thing I hoped to get when I opened this discussion.
Yeah no problem when I saw your post it reminded me of this.
There is absolutely zero the community does for actual Justice, except as it relates to attention for certain cases, which is itself a good thing. However, the reality is the downsides counteract that.
One thing that needs addressing is the reason people get involved on online sleuthing. I've seen many, many comments in the crime subs that declare users' desires to get justice for this victim or that one, when I believe most of us here are here for the possible thrill of solving a crime.
For example, I'd love to figure out what happened to Asha Degree or Maura Murray or Jon-Benet Ramsey, and I'll admit that doing it for the victim is not the primary motivation for spending hours reading, interacting and researching.
The Delphi murders case was one that was really bad with this. The family said many times they didn't want people doing it, so in the main subreddit it wasn't allowed. That policy spawned something like 10 alternate subreddits over the years where there was no deference to the wishes of the family.
In the end, for all the sleuthing that went on, it didn't solve the case.
Yup. Literally just responded to someone in this sub on a post about a famous murder that happened when I was growing up because they said "they couldn't care less what the family believes or forgives", like all offence but their loved one died so maybe back the fuck up.
This is why I mostly stick away from any online crime discussions tbh. That, and people get heated if you try and talk about evidence and science.
Weren't you a moderator there?
yeah
Even though it wasn't a murder, the disappearance of Nicola Bulley in the UK caused a lot of web sleuths to crawl out of the woodwork and make up wild theories about this poor woman. The police had to tell them to stop trying to search for her and contaminating the search areas.
These web sleuths act really entitled and seem to care more about brownie points for "solving" a case than the actual victim and their family.
I just like mysteries.
Like that’s it for me.
Me too - I hope my writeup didn't sound like I was criticising that. I assumed most people felt that way.
Have you seen the online comments on cases? People are still blaming the Ramsay child, photoshopping flower crowns on Kohberger's perp walk pics, & arguing that OJ was protecting the real killer all along.
We need to stay the fuck away from attempting actual investigations. It's interesting to speculate on cases. We can make some assumptions from some of the information reported but let's not pretend we have a higher purpose here. Consume the content responsibly & don't try to insert yourself.
I partly blame the rise of body language analysis for these ideas.
You’re not detectives. You are fans of murder.
You aren’t helping. You’re making the crimes about you which is gross.
It’s really quite creepy to make murder your personality, but it sells books and Netflix accounts so some entities encourage it.
I don't have much to add, other than to endorse this:
I have one rather unorthodox thought: anyone who wants to sleuth from the sidelines should first go off and play half a dozen or so rounds of the game mafia. it's also called wolves and villagers, and maybe a few other things. play until you've had at least one each of the following experiences first hand:
getting lynched as "scum" when you are town.
being town and completely convinced another player is scum, when they're not.
being scum and deliberately working to get an innocent townie lynched in your place.
it's extremely humbling, believe me. and if you're honest enough to learn what it's telling you, it's a very strong crash course in emotional imagination and empathy. imo, it would be good for some of the overly confident self-appointed "detectives" I've seen.
Is this a video game
no, it's ... I guess you'd say a party game? or tabletop? I've only ever played it online but people do it in person too. seems it's called werewolves too. here's a link I chose at random:
https://playwerewolf.co/pages/rules
Online (detectives) community could, but very seldom, do wonders to solving ‘true crime’ cases that are cold cases or end up being missing people unrelated to crime. Both the former and latter would, if found, by extension free up LE resources to solve other true crime.
Some true crime examples are actually missing people. If people spent 1/100 of their time searching for these missing people as they do clicking, posting, and lurking many people could be found.
Example; An untold large number of people have been found very close to their point last seen accidentally by locals. If that’s a reactive result, what would the proactive result be?
There is real value in that aspect I believe. Unfortunately, harnessing that value and getting people to believe in it are more complex ideologies.
Well stated. For every Gabby Petito where ‘online sleuths’ were actually able to make a difference, there’s 100 Boston Bombers/Idaho etc.
My particular interest is with long-term missing people (and generally, VERY long term, 50+ years or more) and that’s where I think the potential exists for making actual contributions. We have the time, energy, and research abilities to really dive into the missing person’s larger context (family, friends, trends in Townville USA in 1938 that may be relevant, for example, and so on.)
It takes time, patience, and the ability to persevere on tiny morsels of interesting but possibly unrelated anomalies, research dead-ends, and rarely, new relevant facts. It’s a very slow process, which perhaps explains it’s relative lack of popularity. :)
Excellent example. I’m sure there are a few more. I feel like the Doe network has had some success. Also the aquatic searchers have definitely found some submerged folks with some help from the online community. These divers true motives…draw your own conclusions.
I’m fascinated by the fact that their are dozens of missing people all around every web sleuth out there but nobody wants to walk out the front door and search. At least there’s a few of us.
In re: “missing white woman syndrome” , I’ve wondered if stripping identifiers would be helpful in addressing this. In other words, the only info one has is details specific to the disappearance or crime.
(I was hired through a process like this - the interviewers didn’t even know my name, in case it created any unconscious bias. They only knew details from my CV relevant to the job I was applying for.)
Of course, this likely wouldn’t work for current cases, where the main goal is to find the missing person.
My other half-baked theory about stripping identifiers is that it would help with the emotional attachment/ego projection issues. It would essentially “flatten” the person in question, presenting their case in more of a pure puzzle aspect.
Being more analytical/ focusing on reasonable interpretations of known evidence doesn’t preclude one from being empathetic.
However, I’m not convinced the opposite is true - the people who participate from a mostly/purely emotional place are the ones most likely to perceive their “desire to help” as the only qualification necessary to do so, can’t distinguish between reasonable, constructive speculation and wild-ass conspiracy theories, and often refuse to hear that they’re not actually very helpful. Because, really, it’s all about them in the end, not the actual victim or their families.
As someone who both hires for me team, and someone who runs a team of professional investigators, I have been wanting a way to make candidates and victims/perps more anonymous, to prevent bias and focus more on hard facts.
When I’m looking at resumes there is zero reason for me to know or consider the candidates gender (other than we are required to maintain certain demographic ratios).
When reviewing a case, knowing a persons race is usually not significant for the types of crime we investigate and it becomes difficult to not start connecting dots that aren’t there.
I hope this problem can be addressed someday.
I think your premise is flawed OP. The true crime community has no obligation to be useful, our only obligation is to consume true crime media respectfully. We have no business inserting ourselves into any investigation, no matter how helpful we think we're being. By all means you can research the publicly available information about a case and form your own theories, and even perform your own amateur investigation if you can do so without breaking any laws or harassing anyone, but the true crime community as a whole has no business interfering with these investigations.
Our interaction with these cases should be limited to spreading the facts and quelling misinformation. We can share info about missing persons for visibility and join local searches. We can advocate for victims and raise funds to support victims and their families. That should be the extent of any random internet web sleuth's participation in an investigation.
I would only add that the only way that the police aren’t blaming someone else that’s not the police is to bat 100 percent.
Because when a tragedy happens and time goes by it has to be someone else’s fault because it can’t be theirs look I understand the situation with the article but I promise that a bunch of information to sift through is much better than none.
And getting to the point solving a murder or finding a missing person is not easy ever it takes someone who cares enough to never let it go ever till the case is resolved and regardless of what most folks think honestly sometimes a case is solved suspect arrested and the reasons why might still never really be known or at the very least understood because at times the only person who really knows is either dead or not talking ever.
My dad has been a Detective for 30 years and he is nearing retirement and we also were in the towing business for years and I have been at many murder scenes and it’s like this unless you know something for a fact then you keep checking until you are certain and if you have an agenda then you should just stay out of it because I am a witness to this a good Detective doesn’t care about money or anything besides getting answers for the family.
And also the most important thing is to keep in mind that you collect and or review the information and evidence and let that guide to a theory if you will and check recheck and check again on everything that you think you know as you have to be sure about the facts and then let those facts guide you to the right answer just listening to a 3rd party sources statements about something and then filling in the holes in their statements with what you’re best guess is doesn’t help anyone.
That’s what you have to absolutely understand I believe is to remember that you most likely will be dealing with an absolute tragedy and then ask yourself what you are doing this for and if you’re answer is anything except to help the family members get to the truth then you should do something else actually most really good Detectives prefer to remain anonymous as much as possible for notability can have a negative effect on doing things required for certain aspects of the job
In the end though I do believe overall that one of the things that has helped with many cases of late is the reach and capability of internet sleuths and the fact is that as long as you’re heart is in the right place and you are doing it looking for answers and not fame then even a determined novice can help break a case we should never forget things that we have already learned such as in Ted Bundys case had the internet and the sleuths existed then he most definitely wouldn’t have been able to get away with what he did for so long.
We know that for the most part he did get by for so long because law enforcement didn’t communicate with each other properly and folks in say Florida had no clue what was happening in Utah or Washington state and now we also know that those days are over people are very well informed now also keep in mind everybody is wrong at times that doesn’t define intelligence nearly as much as being able to except it learn from it and then move on cases that don’t get solved usually end up that way because someone couldn’t see the forest for the trees pride has nothing to do with the facts of a case especially when you have a murderer on the loose. .
Wondering what your opinion is of Billy Jensen-style digital detective work?
Its human nature for people to speculate and theorize and while I do agree that sometimes it can violate the rights and wishes of a victims family the unfortunate reality is that people will still do it. True crime and related topics have become hugely popular at this point and I think the best thing to do is just to never impede upon any ongoing investigations or reach out/potentially harm a victims families lives. Basically what I am trying to say is speculation will always occur but just try to keep it to reddit and not intrude upon peoples privacy.
Actually, to add to my original comment: This was actually a discussion with intention. I no longer need to work so have time on my hands, and I am interested in crimes being solved. Unlike many people on here, I am not very good with focussed research and details of investigation - my skills are more in conceiving and setting up large schemes with interested parties and finances. I have actually found that all it takes is one motivated person who can bring together the mutual interests of relevant players and a funding source of two to do something really impactful. However, you need a really good understanding of the landscape you are operating in to identify what is useful to do, and to set it up so it works. And I currently don't have that. Hence the crowd sourcing of intel - which is so far really interesting and useful.