How to Make Good (and Ethical) True Crime Shows

True crime is as big as ever thanks to a steady stream of books, documentaries and podcasts on all sorts of grisly cases. But the explosion of the genre has produced a lot of crap too, and a number of recent documentaries and dramatisations have felt seriously lacking in the ethics department. Netflix’s Dahmer and Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile (a Ted Bundy biopic) both received flak for casting unnecessarily attractive leads and glorifying their subject. 

Speaking as someone with experience in writing about true crime, it’s the job of the storyteller to approach the material with care and sensitivity, at the very least. True crime, when made conscientiously, can be virtuous: It can validate the victims, aid families in their search for justice, and help raise wider societal awareness. 

The podcast L.A. Not So Confidential is a good example of this. The show is presented by Dr. Scott and Dr. Shiloh – two psychologists working in the criminal justice field – and they discuss things like notorious cases, social phenomena and diagnoses. They don’t just give the clinical explanations behind the infamous cases and reviled killers, they also review true crime documentaries with a sharp focus. 

As they’ve navigated the world of true crime, they’ve come face to face with the unusual ethical quandaries it throws up – like, for example, meeting people at conferences who have “favourite” serial killers (it was Ed Gein). And they believe ethics will play a huge part in the genre’s future, with the best productions already reflecting that. 

To dig deeper on what makes the greatest true crime media so good, and the worst so unbearably horrendous, I sat down for a chat with Scott and Shiloh.

VICE: Hey guys! Today I was thinking we could discuss the good and the bad of true crime.
Dr. Scott: I would love to do that, but I also want to tell on myself. Shiloh and I have certainly had an evolution in the way we look at this, since we've been doing it for almost eight years now. There was an article in the New York Times recently about the sister of Polly Klass – it was the 30th anniversary of Klass being kidnapped and killed by her neighbour. She spoke about being re-traumatised by it – that her experience, her sister's experience, is now commoditised by this kind of uncontrollable narrative. 

We've had those interactions with relatives of Maura Murray [who disappeared in 2004 following a car crash]. I sat next to Maura's sister – a wonderful woman – after I had, several years prior, casually discussed that case. Sitting next to her I realised how divorced I’d gotten from the actuality of the impact, and realised there's a whole family here with a whole history, and it continues to be part of their day-to-day lives. 

VICE: I hear you – I think that’s something we all need to be mindful of. So what’s something good true crime documentaries typically have?
Dr. Shiloh: I think it certainly lends to a good crime documentary to have some experts in there who aren't affiliated with the case. It keeps it from being [told] just through one lens of the experience of the people who are touched by it. It's someone that can pull back a little bit and give you some research behind what the reality is. 

VICE: And what about the bad? I’ve heard you guys question documentaries’ use of family members in potentially unethical ways before.
Shiloh: You get a feeling like this is really exploitative to have this person – it doesn't even necessarily have to be a family member, but usually it is – talking to the camera about what happened or how they're feeling about it. You get a sense that they're not quite ready, they might not have done the work or the trauma is still fresh.

It's been incredibly powerful at the opposite end though, right? I'm thinking of the 11 Minutes documentary from the shooting in Las Vegas – that is all victims story-driven. They literally give zero airtime to the offender. It’s so powerful and those people have gone through such tremendous trauma. But you felt good sitting there watching them talk about it. They were ready –  it was of their own accord… 
Scott: You're on the edge of your seat with all of their stories. 
Shiloh: One of our other pet peeves is the overuse of reenactments, which I think we've been sick of since the 80s. But I empathise that it's hard – like, how do you tell a story of something that’s already happened, without showing people how this all went down at some point?

All of us as content creators should be asking ourselves: Why are we here? What are we doing? When Shiloh and I started our project, she was like: Look, nobody is really talking about the motivations of the criminals. They're not talking about the psych aspects from a clinical or a forensic psychology background; [people] that are actually practicing and working in the field like we are. So that was sort of our hook.

VICE: What did you make of Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel about the tragic death of Elisa Lam?
Scott: I have a love/hate relationship with this particular documentary. There were some really great things that appealed to me, because I'm a little bit of a weirdo and I love conspiracy theories. I love them as entertainment, I don't necessarily buy into any of it; I just think they're such fascinating examples of our minds needing to put patterns together. In that particular case, they gave some screen time to three different and really wild theories that actually were examples of strange coincidences. But I remember after that, having conversations with people who had watched it, and they had completely misinterpreted what they had seen and were then willing to discount everything else. 

We have a colleague that was not well served by it at all. They [the documentary makers] kind of imply bad police work and corruption; and they're implying and implying, and then near the end, they’re like, “Oh, look, none of that happened.” It's like: You've already planted the seed now with this audience. So are you driving a fictionalised version of historical events? Or are you actually going to [make] a documentary? That is a really good example of a documentary that walked the ethical line pretty badly and stepped over it a few times. 
Shiloh: I think we've almost got a third category. There's documentaries, there's fiction or feature films…
Scott: Docudrama.
Shiloh: Yeah, and then we have this in the middle where it's shot documentary style, but there's clearly editing and narratives that are driving what they want the audience to see or feel or experience. 

VICE: I remember watching that and thinking: They're trying to turn that hotel into a Tower of Terror situation.
Scott: Yeah! Thank you, that's exactly it.

VICE: Do either of you have any all-time favourite documentaries?
Shiloh: We ended up reviewing Long Shot last year. I always say that is my number one documentary. For one, it's short, so it feels super appropriate to how much time should be given to it – there's no filler. I think a lot of time when there's filler, the audience is like, what am I still doing here? So I think timing in the storytelling is really key to a good documentary. But it also just has really great storytelling: beginning, middle and end. 

Aside from just victims’ voices, the other [direction] in which true crime has been going is looking at the almost wrongfully convicted person. So you have this social justice issue piece painted in there too. Wrongful convictions are obviously getting more attention and they should be. And of course, there's some of the funny bits to it too, with the overlap with essentially a Hollywood production [Curb Your Enthusiasm] being the thing that exonerates this guy. 

VICE: How do you navigate the tension between needing to entertain your audience while producing something that is considerate to the victims and their families?
Scott: A really great example is a dear colleague of ours, Bob Ruff, who has a wonderful set of shows on his network. He was talking once about the letters that he gets from listeners that want him to cover a certain case, and he talks about ones that he's really not comfortable handling. He made a really interesting statement about wrongful conviction cases that he's not comfortable taking. There's wrongful convictions across the entire landscape of crime, including child sex offences. But he's not comfortable taking on those cases, because those alleged victims – or those adjudicated victims – are still alive. He said, “I just can't even go in that area because the victims are still there. I don't want to further traumatise them by bringing this to light.” I just thought that was a great example of someone really thinking carefully about it.

@niche_t_