According to David Canter, professor
of psychology and author of Forensic
Psychology for Dummies, the danger
we feel while consuming a true crime
account excites us.
Canter, who developed
the use of investigative
psychology and
profiled John
Duffy—one half of
the “Railway Rapist”
duo convicted of two
murders and four
rapes in 1988—says,
“The fight or flight
idea stimulates our
physiological arousal.
There’s an excitement
in that, and if it’s not
too dangerous then
we can enjoy it without it falling into
experiencing real terror.” Canter adds
that the more random the crime the
more likely we are to be afraid of it.“If somebody kills a spouse,
although it’s a tragedy, it doesn’t
send fear through the community
because they assume it was
something in that
relationship. But if a
stranger is attacked
in the street and
there’s no real way of
explaining why that
attack occured it’s
much more frightening
to people. They think,
If it happened to them
it could happen to
me, so that becomes a
threat. It’s a challenge
people can cope with
through the medium
of documentaries;
the fear is lessened and it’s a sort
of inoculation against the concern
and anxiety that might otherwise
be present.”70 • JULY 2019The hugely popular
Serial podcastN
etflix’s Making a Murderer, a show exploring an alleged false
imprisonment and America’s judicial system, reached 19.3 million
views after just 35 days. And the podcast Serial, an investigative
three-part series exploring separate criminal events, is currently
boasting over 350 million downloads. These examples are not
anomalies—our passion for true crime is unashamedly flourishing.
Globally, viewers are tuning in to the controversial genre daily and
consuming their fair share of murderous, grisly tales, but why? Are we
twisted voyeurists harbouring a darkness which delights in witnessing
horrors, or merely empathetic observers bearing witness to a crime-
saturated world?WHY ARE WE SO OBSESSED WITH TRUE CRIME?