Revising Our True-Crime Tales
Top 5 reasons people alter “official” versions of crime narratives.
Recently, we’ve seen a rise in the number of seemingly “settled” cases being changed – even erased. Books, podcasts, scripted series, and documentaries are proposing new narratives, thanks to improvements in methodology, fresh revelations, or fresh interpretations. It’s tough to surrender what we know from the first set of facts we heard, especially if you have an investment (author, prosecutor, investigator). That’s our cognitive anchoring bias. But insisting the tales stay static robs later information of its due.
I’m guilty of this, myself. But some original narratives are based on incomplete, hasty, or biased investigations, so we should give new info consideration. That’s how convicted-but-actually-innocent people get exonerated. That’s how cover-ups are exposed. That’s how cold cases once thought hopeless get solved.
It’s certainly true that unsolved or controversially solved cases will always attract people who want to take a shot at them, like Jack the Ripper, Lizzie Borden, the Zodiac and the Colonial Parkway murders. I’m more interested in the reasons people return to a seemingly finished narrative to add to, change, or reinterpret it. Some revisions fall short, but we should stay open to the possibility that we don’t necessarily know the whole story just because we read the first true crime book devoted to it.
Below I list some reasons for revising our “known” crime narratives.
1) Hook a new audience
For media, it’s a no-brainer. To keep the massive true-crime audience intrigued, they need new cases or new ideas about old cases. So, H. H. Holmes becomes Jack the Ripper, an owl becomes the new suspect in the Michael Peterson case, or an infamous killer gets cleared. Some programs are just hype, but some provide a more complex picture and encourage the application of promising new procedures.
2) Use new technology to set the record straight
I got a taste for this when I served as the documentarian on an exhumation team run by the late law professor, James Starrs. In his casebook, A Voice for the Dead, he re-examine questionable cases by digging up human remains and applying new tests. He made enemies, and some members of his team even questioned his conclusions, but he made us think. Was Alferd Packer a heroic survivor of harsh conditions or a murdering, self-enriching cannibal? Did CIA scientist Frank Olson kill himself or did the agency “facilitate” his demise? Did Jesse James fake his death and escape, or is the real Jesse in his grave? Lots of cold cases have been resolved and revised with new technology or new approaches.
3) Add missing facts in service of justice and truth
One story getting a lot of attention is that of John Wayne Gacy, officially presented as a lone wolf sexual predator. Featured in The Devil in Disguise and The Clown and the Candyman documentaries, Gacy’s tale grows more complex. Maybe three possible accomplices in multiple murder got off scot-free. Tracy Ullman, an executive producer for The Devil in Disguise, writes about it on her blog. This show features Gacy telling former FBI profiler Robert Ressler that others were involved. He’s a known liar and easy to dismiss, but there are some provocative records. David Cram and Michael Rossi had been working and living with Gacy for several years. Cram drew a map of Gacy’s crawlspace and admitted he’d been digging down there. Rossi, too. Could they really have thought it was just a “plumbing project”? A third potential accomplice, Phillip Paske, links Gacy to convicted sex offender John David Norman, the head of a national sex trafficking ring.
“Why don’t we ever hear about Paske?” Ullman writes. “Why does Terry Sullivan, one of the prosecutors from Cook County, have Paske listed in his personal case notes, but Paske never appears?” Sullivan’s does comment about Paske in the documentary, but he doesn’t really answer the question.
Ullman sums up her concern: “We are in the process, as a society, of finding out [that] a lot of public narratives served the causes of the people in power creating them. Myself and three others who spent nine years investigating the 1978 serial murder case of John Wayne Gacy discovered things that shot so many holes in the current narrative, it needs to be revised.”
4. Exonerate or mitigate
With the advent of neurocriminology and evidence from brain scans that adolescent are reactive, emotional, and have deficient decision-making skills, cases that feature teenage offenders are getting a new look. Caril Ann Fugate, who was with Charles Starkweather in 1958 in Nebraska when he murdered her family and five others, was just 14. Rather than being a wild and crazy partner as films depict her, she might have just been a scared, freshly-orphaned kid with no perceived way out. Starkweather, too, was 19, and suffered from headaches caused by a serious head injury.
I worked with Elmer Wayne Henley Jr on The Serial Killer’s Apprentice to show that there was a lot to the story that the original true crime books included. Police files were flawed and some leads weren’t followed. Henley was poorly represented at his trials by an appeals attorney with a conflict of interest, and other possible accomplices were never interrogated. There’s good reason to re-examine that story.
5. Stake a claim
Some podcasts have generic true-crime themes (e.g., True Murder or Crime Junkie), but some focus on one case so as to become the go-to resource and clearinghouse of all info about the incident (Serial, Down the Hill). This can help to organize complex information, develop new leads, attract witnesses who’ve never talked, pressure police to re-open cases, and provide victims’ families with the sense that others care. Things can also get territorial, however, as we’ve seen with the Zodiac and Jack the Ripper. Audience share can matter.
The science of justice evolves, but it can be hard to overcome our anchoring bias in established narratives. When we think we know the facts of a case, it’s difficult to shift from that position. But openness to new discoveries, witnesses, and perspectives is essential for justice to be served. While evidence and corroboration remain central to this process, we can’t let automatic mental sets or personal investment thwart new narratives that might better accommodate the full set of facts. I don’t always agree with new interpretations, but I welcome them as a way to keep thinking about a case.