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• Posted December 18, 2025

The Dark Side Of True Crime Reporting

Grieving friends and family of homicide victims or missing people often feel pressure these days to participate in true crime podcasts or documentaries, in hopes their testimonials will help catch the killer.

But this relationship is not very healthy for those trying to cope with their loss, recent research argues.

True crime productions often add to the trauma experienced by victims’ loved ones, researchers report in a pair of studies published in the journals Mass Communication and Society and Crime Media Culture.

These “co-victims” often come away with lost privacy and a sense of being exploited, and must balance that against their desire to keep the case in the media spotlight, researchers said.

“There’s a horrible intrusiveness that's never going to go away and often, it’s going to be covered for the rest of their lives,” researcher Kelli Boling said in a news release. She’s an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln College of Journalism and Mass Communications.

“On the flip side, being available to media helps them find leads in certain cases, especially in missing person cases,” added Boling, who was involved in both studies. “It keeps people talking about the cases and sometimes helps them change the narrative and correct inaccuracies.”

For the studies, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 20 co-victims who’d had their loved ones’ stories told through true crime media.

Co-victims had five major concerns related to their experience with true crime productions:

• Inaccuracies

• Sensationalism of their tragedy

• Loss of privacy

• Uncomfortable interactions with consumers of true crime content, including trolls

• Lack of control over how the stories are produced and edited

In one anecdote, study participant Kiirsi Hellewell described watching a television series about the disappearance of her best friend, presumed murder victim Susan Cox Powell.

“I just watched it and we just sat there and we’re like, ‘Whoa, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s wrong, that’s not true, that’s not. . . Wow, this is really bad.’ They shared her story, but they sure got a lot of details wrong,” Hellewell said in the Crime Media Culture article.

Bill Thomas, brother of homicide victim Cathleen “Cathy” Thomas, described the harm that can come from overly lurid true crime reports.

“If true crime media is not well done and not respectful, then you’re left with the very uncomfortable reality that this media outlet has sensationalized your loved one’s case or gotten details wrong or produced content that is disrespectful, sensationalized, distasteful, and may ultimately end up making you feel terrible about the whole experience,” Thomas said.

The co-victims also complained about the ghoulish behavior of some true-crime aficionados and amateur sleuths.

“I’ve had people come to my home, in my family’s home, and literally look in our windows, come to our back doors when we didn’t answer the front, because there’s this sense of entitlement with these people that become so obsessed and they think that they’re onto something and they don’t have the full set of facts, and they think that they’re entitled to everything as if my missing sister is public property,” said Julie Murray, sister of missing woman Maura Murray.

This has even led to online abuse, said Collier Landry, son of homicide victim Noreen Boyle.

“People were trolling me, saying that I was responsible for my mother’s death because I told my mother about my father’s affair, and if I had just kept my mouth shut, she would still be alive,” Landry told researchers. “And I would engage with these people. And it was just to no avail, because of course, they then say more and more infuriating things or incendiary comments just because they’re, again, looking to get a reaction for whatever reason.”

On the other hand, co-victims feel the need to interact with the media to keep their loved one’s case alive.

True crime reports can draw public attention to a case, and increase pressure on police and prosecutors to solve a case and pursue justice for victims, researchers said.

“The missing person cases and the cold cases tend to be more dependent on media long term, so they maintain a more positive overall impression of the media, because they are so dependent on keeping their loved one's name out there,” Boling said.

The co-victims interviewed felt that there should be standards – and possibly laws – in place to protect them while they share their story and seek justice.

They didn’t distinguish between journalists, professional production crews or armchair detectives invading their privacy, researchers said. All ultimately were harmful, if they didn’t act ethically.

“They didn't distinguish between who was flying the helicopter that was over their house or trying to take photos of their backyard. Everything was media to them,” Boling said. “They didn't distinguish if this is a local news outlet or some independent production. In their mind, everybody should be held to the same standards. Nobody should be allowed to do this.”

The research team is now working on a paper about how true crime productions can be done more ethically, without causing further harm to co-victims.

“I went into this research as a media scholar, and my thought was that the only way to properly tell a story is by a trained journalist, who is following journalistic ethics, but we found that co-victims said, ‘no, the only way to tell these stories is to have the co-victims tell the story,’ ” Boling said. “They were very clear that only another co-victim would have the empathy and respect to tell a story that anybody outside that lived experience could not do it justice.”

She concluded: “Ethical true crime has to be victim- and co-victim-centered.” 

More information

The National Center for Victims of Crime has more on true crime and media ethics.

SOURCE: University of Nebraska-Lincoln, news release, Oct. 9, 2025