Why Do People Read True Crime

Why do people read true crime? In order to answer that question I must first answer why I read true crime and why I write about true crime. From as far back as I can remember I have always been interested in why killers kill. It is so foreign to me that someone is evil enough to take another human’s life without remorse.

     My first experience with true crime came in the form of a story my grandmother told me about a young girl in their town who at the age of 16 years old disappeared out of her backyard where she had been sunbathing in a swimsuit. Her body was found floating in the Coosa River days later. I was a small child and that story stuck in my head. I wanted to know why. Why had her life been cut so short, why he felt the need to kill her.

    I carried that story around in my head for several years. Then when I was in seventh grade in the middle 1960’s one of our required readings was “In Cold Blood” by Truman Capote. The report we wrote had to explain which killer was the less guilty. I argued that they both were equally guilty. The teacher didn’t like that report. She made me do it again. So I stated that the one who didn’t pull the trigger was guiltier because he stood by and did nothing. She didn’t like that either. The bottom line was she wanted me to write her opinion not mine. I guess she thought that I didn’t understand the book. How wrong she was. I understood perfectly.

   I moved on to “Helter Skelter” and Charles Manson. I wanted to know why he felt the need to murder people he didn’t know. I learned. It is all about the power that they feel the need for. It has nothing to do any other emotion.

  I read all I could about Jack the Ripper and his killings; again it was holding the power in one’s hand over another human. His story began my interest in the minds of serial killers. In 2004 I was able to get my degree in Criminal Justice and included it that was psychology. Killers are evil; they have no remorse for the lives they steal. The more lives they steal the more power they feel. Serial killers are the worst. They take trophies to live the fantasy over and over again.  They plot and plan their killings like most of us plan a night out on the town. They have no remorse and no conscience.

   This led me to the path of writing about the victims of these criminals. They cried out for their own voice. Everyone remembers the killers, the Ted Bundy’s, the Danny Rollings, and Gerard Schaefer’s of the world. But they were forgotten because of the notoriety of their killers.

   I read true crimes to find out the why. To find out what makes them tick. No one could ever answer that question. So I decided that it was time to start. None of my books are sanitized they do not make excuses for the killers they do not present the killers in any sympathetic light. My goal is to make you the reader feel at least on some small level the pain, suffering and death of the victims. They deserve the notoriety they are the ones forgotten.

  Silent Scream the true crime of many of Gerard Schaefer’s victims. They now have a voice. The Last Rites the story of Pauline Metler who was raped and executed on a remote road in Fort Pierce, Florida then buried in a pauper’s grave by the county with no stone to show her final resting place. None of these young girls and young women deserved this death. None of them asked for it. None of them expected it. None of them wanted it to happen.

   If by reading these stories it makes you more aware and more educated then it is worth your read. Only you can answer the question of why you read True Crime.