Hooked On Horror
University of Kansas sophomore Caroline Keene’s interest in true crime podcasts began with her mom, Lajean Keene, who always listens to the podcasts. Eventually Keene found herself listening to them too. She then became enthralled in “Crime Junkie” and “My Favorite Murder.”
“I have always just been drawn to it and I just find it really interesting, and I think the fact that it’s real, makes it more interesting as well,” Keene said in a recent interview. “It’s just riveting.”
Keene is majoring in Psychology and minoring in Criminal Justice and said she feels a link between her interest in her fields of study to her interest in true crime media. She said that she enjoys hearing about the motives of the perpetrator’s crimes and investigating the stories along with the podcast hosts.
One of Keene’s favorite criminal justice professors, Stephen Bell, teaches a course about notorious Kansas murderers and said he always has high enrollment. There are about 200 students enrolled in the course, split between two lectures.
He said he does his best to teach about crime in an ethical way.
“As an academic, there is a difference in consuming historical data for pure entertainment versus trying to learn something from it,” Bell said. “Even if it’s so basic as to avoid history or meeting itself.”
People are intrigued by murder and true crime.
“People are fascinated by things they’re not necessarily familiar with,” Bell said. “And then you have just the introduction of true crime entertainment. I think once you add entertainment to something that already interests people, those two kinds of interests marry together and create this fascination.”
History of society’s fascination with crime
KU English Professor Megan Dennis researches victim portrayals in crime media and teaches a course about crime literature. She said that fascination with crime is not a new phenomenon.
“I think the ways that we’re seeing true crime and our fascination with crime, those are new, but at its core, that impulse to view the spectacle is not necessarily new,” Dennis said.
A look at the case of the Bender family, an infamous group of serial killers from Labette County who murdered several travelers who stayed at their inn from 1872-1873, shows the fascination with murder is not new. After the family was arrested, many Kansans flocked to the inn to see the murder scene.
Fox4 quoted an archived article from the Weekly Kansas Chief about the spectacle that occurred after the Benders were discovered.
“The curiosity of many seemed to master their repulsion, and hundreds brought away some memento of the dreadful place,” the article said. “The blood-stained bedstead was smashed to pieces and divided in the crowd, all the shrubbery and young trees were broken or torn up and carried away, and pieces of the house torn off by the curious. Such another raid would not leave much of the shanty.”
The spectacle was just the beginning of society’s fascination with crime, and as podcasts and technology are becoming more prevalent, more people are exposed to crime media.
Dennis said that most children are exposed to crime stories at an early age.
“I grew up, I think a lot of us do, reading mysteries or reading things that are about crime, like you read the Nancy Drew books or the Hardy Boys, even things like Scooby-Doo and the gang, right? They’re solving mysteries. So, in some ways, I’ve thought about how we’re already prepped to ingest these stories.”
As children grow up, they get exposed to more media through the internet, and we have seen the popularity of podcasts grow in the last decade. Many of the most popular podcasts are about true crimes.
Edison Research found that true crime podcast listeners have tripled in the past five years, due to the overall growth in popularity of true crime media. They used Edison Podcast Metrics to estimate that 6.7 million American adults listened to podcasts in 2019 and the number grew to 19.1 million in 2024.
A safe space for listeners
A 2022 Pew Research Center survey shows the demographics of people who listened to true crime podcasts in the last 12 months. They had 5,132 respondents made up of members of the American Trends Panel (ATP) that is nationally representative of randomly selected U.S. adults.
The study found that almost twice as many women than men listen to true crime podcasts. Dennis said she thinks women listen to true crime for a sense of safety.
“I think, for women, in particular, there’s some sort of comfort in being able to participate in that space without it being dangerous,” Dennis said. “True crime gives women a space to kind of face those fears in a way that is contained and it is safe. There is closure at the end.”
Dennis said that it is important to consider whose stories are told. She said the media should consider not only covering white women’s stories, but also people of color, so they get the same resources allocated toward investigations.
“I think one of the ethical ways about writing crime literature and true crime, whether it’s fiction or whether it’s journalism, is humanizing the victims and taking up cases that don’t get as much media coverage,” Dennis said. “I’m not saying that those women shouldn’t be remembered, but the issue is when we’re only getting media coverage of white women and white girls, it restricts how we think about victims.”
Bell said he wants his students to always remember that the victims discussed in his course are actual people.
“Don’t forget, we’re talking about real people. These aren’t just names,” Bell said. “These are real people who died. Even though society may be becoming a little desensitized, I want to make sure that people understand that we’re talking about real folks, real crime, true crime, is true.”