The True Crime Phenomenon

True crime has always been around. Polarizing stories have been at the forefront of newspapers for centuries because if it bleeds, it leads, literally. 

Lizzie Borden, who was tried and acquitted of murdering her parents, was the star of the first trial to be referred to as a “trial of the century” in 1893. This trial was so famous it inspired a little ditty, “Lizzie Borden took an axe, And gave her mother forty whacks, When she saw what she had done, She gave her father forty-one.”

This is actually not true, the Bordens received only 29 whacks, not 81. But the popularity of the poem and its exaggeration are a testament to the public's fascination with the trial. People couldn’t believe a 33-year-old woman would murder her father and stepmother, and many people couldn’t believe the acquittal despite the amount of evidence against Lizzie. Which is the perfect recipe for a popular true crime story: an unexpected, pillar of the community type murderer and a surprising, even frustrating, police investigation and court ruling. 

Operación Masacre is a nonfiction novel by Argentinian journalist and author Rodolfo Walsh. Published in 1957, it is considered by some to be the first of its genre. The book details the José León Suárez massacre, where a group of civilians were arrested and shot by the Buenos Aires Province Police. The book claims the men were unlawfully arrested and illegally shot by police. 

This book was published nine years before Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood; however, the latter is considered to be the prototype of the true crime novel, although the other book had been out for almost a decade. The book follows the 1959 Clutter family murders in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. The book was particularly popular because of its extensive detail and narrative that describes the lives of the murderers, the victims, and other members of the community. 

The psychologies and backgrounds of the murderers were described in detail, both during and after the murders. This book is the foundation of all true crime content we know today. 

Except, it’s important to note that the book differs from the real events. The author dramatized events and added information, so it’s like a Ryan Murphy “true crime” show, which we will talk about later. In Cold Blood is the second-best-selling book in the genre’s history, behind Vincent Bugliosi's Helter Skelter, which was published in 1974 and details the Charles Manson murders. 

Courtroom on CourtTV

After books and before podcasts, audiences were tuning into true trials on television, and I am not talking about Judge Judy. 

Ted Bundy’s 1979 trial was the first trial to be nationally televised, but I found other sources saying that the trial of Pamela Smart was the first to be broadcast live on television from start to finish in March 1991. 

Pamela Smart was 22-years-old when she was found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder, accomplice to first-degree murder, and witness tampering in connection with the death of her husband, Greggory Smart, who was found shot to death in their home in May 1990. 

Pamela was having an inappropriate relationship with a 16-year-old student named William Flynn, and Pamela was accused of convincing this boy and three of his friends to kill her husband. This trial was broadcast by news stations nationwide and instantly hooked audiences and viewers. This case was so popular that it inspired an entire television network.  

The Courtroom Television Network, commonly known as CourtTV, was launched in July 1991, about four months after Pamela Smart’s conviction went live. The channel consisted of live courtroom trials with anchors and reporters filling in the details. By the end of the 90s, the channel’s content consisted of law-based news shows, legal-based talk shows, live homicide trial coverage, court shows, police force shows, and other criminal justice programming, including Forensic Files. 

CourtTV covered high-profile cases such as the William Kennedy Smith rape trial in 1991 and Anita Hill’s testimony during Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearing. CourtTV also covered the acquittal of the four Los Angeles police officers who brutally beat Rodney King. 

The channel also covered the trial of Christian Brando, who was found guilty of manslaughter after killing his sister’s boyfriend during an argument. The trial included a testimony from Marlon Brando. The channel even covered Jeffrey Dahmer’s conviction in 1992. 

Despite all those high-profile cases, CourtTV didn’t explode in popularity until the Menendez brothers came to court in July 1993. By that summer, more than 1.3 million people were tuning into the trial. Terry Moran, one of the original CourtTV anchors, wrote this in 2017 about the Menendez brothers trial: “Reporters and crews from around the world came to the courthouse in Van Nuys, Calif., to bring this family's disaster to all the folks back home. By the time each of the brothers took the stand to testify, they were transformed. So were their parents. Their family tragedy became a kind of national game-show or cartoon—unreal, drained of the pain that flowed through the courtroom every day.”

Terry Moran is now a Senior National Correspondent at ABC News. Moran concluded his 2017 article on the Menendez brothers by saying: “I learned a valuable lesson from all that: Ignore the hype. Remember—always remember—that no matter how big a story gets, it's always about real people, real life, in the first instance. As soon as a reporter loses that connection—that empathy—cynicism creeps in. And cynicism kills real journalism." 

Although it’s streamed live and it’s real trials, CourtTV is said to turn everyone involved in these trials into a performer and the substance or crime into a spectacle. However, the creator of CourtTV, Steven Brill, argued that the channel wasn’t affecting behavior or outcomes in the courtroom. 

Rather, their cameras were adding transparency and educating people about a process that most people would only see acted out in movies or scripted television. Which could be positive, many people argue that cameras and photography in the courtroom increase the chances of a fair trial for the defendant, which I can agree on.

But this sentiment, coming from a channel that had the tagline, “If CourtTV were any more addictive, it would be illegal,” just doesn’t resonate as much as it would if it came from a source that wasn’t relying on polarizing cases with celebrity or high-profile defendants to get views. 

An estimated 95 million people watched O.J. Simpson drive his white Bronco down the 405 in June 1994. This is quite literally the trial of the century, which brought the courtroom into everyone’s homes, even more so than the Menendez brothers. An estimated 100 million people around the world watched the court proceedings in real time.

According to Business Insider, trading on the New York Stock Exchange dropped 41% during the verdict reading, and America lost an estimated $480 million in lost productivity because people stopped working to watch the O.J. trial. 

O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers are two early examples of sensationalized crimes turned into a media circus, but they are certainly not the last. 

The trial of Casey Anthony in 2008 was one of the most-watched criminal trials in history. An estimated 40 million Americans watched the court proceedings, and almost 100 million people across the globe watched Casey Anthony be found not guilty of the murder of her daughter but guilty of providing false information to authorities. Once again, this case had everything that intrigued audiences: a young mother being accused of a horrific crime that no one could imagine. 

But here it was, right on everyone’s television screens. And the court of public opinion is much stronger than the ruling of the court. Casey Anthony recently came to TikTok to reintroduce herself to the world and explain how she wants to advocate for victims like her daughter. You can guess what the comments looked like. 

Over 10 million viewers watched George Zimmerman be found not guilty of the murder of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin. This case was brought to the media before Zimmerman was even charged with murder. After he shot Trayvon Martin in February 2012, Zimmerman admitted it to the police and claimed he murdered the teenager in self-defense, and he was released. 

Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s parents, created a Change.org petition calling for Zimmerman's arrest. Within 10 days, it would have 200,000 signatures, but the US Department of Justice only agreed to investigate after Trayvon’s family heard the 911 calls the night of the murder and spoke to ABC News about how their child was killed by Zimmerman. 

But still, it isn’t until April 2012, two months after the murder of Trayvon Martin, that the FBI announced it would be doing an investigation, and Zimmerman was arrested. So, before the trial even entered the courtroom, the nation was tuning in and having an opinion on the case. 

Most recently, more than 500 million people watched the defamation trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, which was livestreamed by the Law and Crime network on its YouTube Channel. It should be noted that Law and Crime was created by Dan Abrams, a former CourtTV reporter. 

People were tuning into the Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni lawsuits, more than the movie the two filmed together. Although it’s not being televised live, the P. Diddy trial is currently going on, and journalists are immediately reporting the details of the trial right after the court gets out.  

Popular Podcasts and Their Impact 

Although they laid the foundation for podcasts, when most people hear “true crime,” they don’t think about the livestreaming courtrooms or the news. They think of people on podcasts. 

According to a 2022 survey from the Pew Research Center, true crime is the most common topic among top-ranked podcasts, and almost a quarter of the top podcasts on Apple and Spotify are primarily about true crime. 

In this same survey, 34% of U.S. adults who have listened to a podcast in the past year say they regularly listen to podcasts about true crime. Among U.S. podcast listeners, women are almost twice as likely as men to regularly listen to true crime podcasts, and younger audiences are more likely to tune into true crime than older listeners. 

The rise in popularity of true crime podcasts is credited to the podcast Serial, created by journalist Sarah Koenig, and its impact on the conviction of Adnan Syed. Adnan Syed was found guilty of the murder of his ex-girlfriend, Hae Min Lee, in 1999 and sentenced to life in prison; however, supporters of Syed were adamant about his innocence and knew the case was not presented to the jury correctly. 

In 2013, 13 years into Adnan's life sentence, a family friend and attorney reached out to Sarah Koenig in hopes that Sarah would do a story on Adnan’s case for the NPR show, This American Life. But it turned into Serial, and no one could have anticipated the impact the podcast would have on the case. 

Serial discovered that there was another witness who spoke with Adnan in the library at the time Hae Min Lee was killed. This witness wrote a letter to Adnan confirming that they spoke at that time. He gave this letter to his original defense attorney in 1999, but that attorney never followed up with the witness. Not only does this give Adnan an alibi for the time of death, but Adnan told this witness that he wasn’t mad at Lee for dating someone else, which was one of the prosecutor’s biggest arguments. 

She asked him how the breakup was going, just like any teenager would ask their classmate, and he simply told her Lee was dating someone else, and he didn’t seem angry or upset, contrary to what other witnesses said on trial. There was also evidence from the autopsy and cell phone records that contradicted what was used as evidence in the original trial. In Feb. 2016, Syed’s defense attorney argued for a new trial since his original defense attorney failed to adequately represent him when he was convicted in 2000.

Adnan was released from prison in 2022 after prosecutors said they had uncovered problems with the case and moved to vacate his conviction, but this was later reinstated. In March 2025, a judge agreed to reduce Adnan’s sentence to time served and ruled that he would be on supervised probation for five years; however, his murder conviction still stands. So, while the conviction was not overturned, Adnan is not serving a life sentence in prison because of a podcast and the over 40 million people who listened to it. 

The idea of media impacting real court cases is the subject of a law review article co-authored by Kat Albrecht, Assistant Professor of Criminology in Georgia State’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. The research focuses on a phenomenon known as “The Serial Effect,” named for the podcast discussed above. 

The study, published in the New Mexico Law Review, looks at two popular podcasts, Serial and In the Dark, to evaluate their impact on the jury’s perception of criminal procedures and evidence, and whether the defendant is guilty or innocent. The In the Dark podcast investigates the Curtis Flowers case. 

Curtis Flowers was wrongfully arrested and found guilty of four murders in 1997 in Mississippi. Prosecutors illegally excluded evidence and black jurors, and Flowers was sentenced to death. He was tried six times for the same murder by the same prosecutor. 

American Public Media (APM) inves­ti­gat­ed the case on its pod­cast In the Dark, and uncov­ered addi­tion­al evi­dence that proved Flowers’ inno­cence, includ­ing evi­dence point­ing to anoth­er sus­pect and a taped admis­sion from the state’s star wit­ness that he had per­jured him­self dur­ing the trial. 

The U.S. Supreme Court overturned his most recent conviction in 2010, and the Attorney General’s office dropped all charges against Flowers, offi­cial­ly exon­er­at­ing him after 23 years of impris­on­ment. He has since received $500,000 from the coun­ty for more than two decades of wrongful imprisonment.

Here are two cases where evidence was suppressed or not even investigated due to police incompetence or racial discrimination, and podcasts bring the evidence to court, which then gives defendants a true, fair trial.

These are good examples of podcasts being a serious form of media. Investigative journalists have been investigating cases for years. They identify a problem, talk to people involved and impacted by it, find evidence, and present all of that information to the public in the form of a book, documentary, or podcast. 

However, podcasts provide a different type of nuance that the news or live courtroom proceedings won’t. In her article, Albrecht wrote, “Some of these sorts of things you might hear in a podcast, you won’t hear in court, like speculation, or whether the defendant is a good person. Those things are not materially relevant to the evidentiary questions about a case. But it’s really relevant in the world of the podcast, to make the story meaningful.” 

The most recent Max document about Adnan Syed features one of the average Joes turned podcasters who became interested in the case. He explained that the thing that got him so interested in the case was Sarah’s storytelling. He said, “It was like listening to this incredible story, but it was real life.” This man resigned from the fire department to be a true crime podcaster. 

I’m not saying I am better than that man. I have been watching Dateline since I was 10 years old. It plays every day at 1:00 p.m. and I like to watch it while I eat lunch. I also listen to And That’s Why We Drink, and I mean I only listen to And That’s Why We Drink. 

It’s truly the only true crime and paranormal podcast I listen to unless I’m researching for a podcast episode. I feel like it’s a good balance of comedy and being serious, and remembering that they are talking about real people. 

Remembering the True People 

As Terry Moran said, it’s the empathy that’s important. We have to remember victims and their families who may not agree with the audience's interpretation of the crime. In the March 2025 ruling that released Adnan Syed from prison, the judge focused on what Hae Min Lee’s family endured, including his rise to celebrity following the release of the Serial podcast and a Max TV documentary on the case. 

This also rings true for the past couple of Ryan Murphy true crime shows. Ryan Murphy claimed to have reached out to around 20 of the victims’ families for his series on Jeffrey Dahmer and tried to get their input. But no one responded, so they relied heavily on researchers. 

According to the show’s description, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a series that exposes these unconscionable crimes, centered around the underserved victims and their communities impacted by the systemic racism and institutional failures of the police that allowed one of America’s most notorious serial killers to continue his murderous spree in plain sight for over a decade.”

It did not do that. The series received backlash from victims’ families, some of whom have accused Ryan Murphy and the team of not reaching out to them at all. Rita Isbell, sister of Errol Lindsey, who was murdered by Dahmer at age 19, criticized Murphy and Netflix for profiting off the tragic story. 

Ryan Murphy dramatized the story, but claimed it was to shine a light on the victims’ stories and show them as more than a statistic. But how can you do that without talking to the people who knew them? People who loved them and have spent decades missing them. 

If Ryan Murphy wants to make murderers sexy again, he can just make a high-quality season of American Horror Story with fake murderers. Can we make anything up anymore?

There are plenty of podcasts that report what the news doesn’t. They get in touch with families of victims, victims themselves, and those closest to the case before publishing their content. Even talking about certain topics and cases can have a positive impact because it brings public attention to them. 

Creators and listeners of true crime content have a sense of responsibility to victims and those who have been horrifically impacted by the true crimes and court proceedings that are at the heart of each story.