We stream it while we fold laundry. We listen to it while driving. We fall asleep to podcasts describing strangulations, shootings and dismemberments. We speculate about motives, debate suspects, rank documentaries and complain when a case isn’t sufficiently mysterious. And somewhere, almost invisible, is a family.
I know something about that family. My husband’s murder in 1985 was not a plot twist. It wasn’t a mystery for strangers to solve over a beer. Nor was it a distraction while folding laundry. There were no credits to roll and a switch to just flip off.
We were already home. And we had to live with what remained.
That distinction is at the heart of MINE: Murder Is Not Entertainment. https://www.pomc.org/pomc-programs/murder-is-not-entertainment-mine/
What is MINE?
MINE—Murder Is Not Entertainment—is not simply a phrase I use to describe my objection to the commercialization of homicide. It is a program of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered Children (POMC), launched in November 1993 as a nationwide campaign to challenge society’s insensitivity toward murder and its aftermath.
The program grew from the experience of people who understood homicide from the inside: the loved ones left behind. Ann Reed, the mother of a murdered daughter, Becky, started the MINE program in her daughter’s memory.
IMAGE: A commercial murder cruise advertisement
MINE’s concern extends beyond any single medium. Over the years it has challenged the marketing of murder through television, games, toys, promotions, murder-themed events and other forms of entertainment. Its larger purpose is to change the way we regard it—to encourage the same empathy and respect for murder victims that we readily extend to victims of other tragedies.
That distinction is important.
MINE is asking us to remember what we are talking about.
IMAGE: Podcast cover art for My Favorite Murder
As of 2020, My Favorite Murder podcast spews 35 million downloads per month. The show and it’s giggles and sidebar digressions quickly gained a large fan following, including a Facebook group with over 200,000 members by 2018, and a Facebook fan page with more than 171,000 followers that same year.
Fans of the show refer to themselves as “Murderinos,” (self-defined as a “Person with a borderline obsessive interest in true crime, and the specific nature and details of disturbing murders.”)
On April 12, 2018 My Favorite Murder announced their new platform for fans called the “Fan Cult.” For a yearly fee, fans are granted access to exclusive merchandise, pre-sale of live show tickets, additional content, and forums.
In November 2019, My Favorite Murder hosted a weekend-long event called “My Favorite Weekend“ in Santa Barbara, California
Where is the Line?
Homicide should be investigated. It should be reported. It should be studied. There are important documentaries, books, podcasts and other works that illuminate violence, expose injustice, identify systemic failures and give victims and survivors a voice.
But there is a moral difference between bearing witness to suffering, learning about violence and crime, and consuming someone else’s suffering for amusement.
The boundary can become remarkably easy to lose.
When a murdered person is flattened to “the victim in that fascinating case,” something has been stolen from them. Their ordinary humanity is overshadowed by the manner of their death. They were someone’s husband, daughter, mother, brother, friend or child. They had irritating habits and private jokes. They forgot appointments. They loved particular songs. They had pets and dreams, worldly possessions and their own preferences for entertainment. They worried about money. They had plans for next Tuesday.
Then someone killed them.
Their murder should not become the most interesting thing about their life.
Try this exercise. In your mind, remove the second photo above (of Lucie Blackman) and imagine an image of someone you love nestled in between The Pharmacist and Don’t F”K With Cats. Now does this advertisement feel any different? Remember: Netflix doesn’t necessarily need your permission to make a documentary about your loved one’s murder.
Why is mainstream culture drawn to it?
The attraction to stories about murder isn’t necessarily evidence of callousness or shallowness. Human beings should attend to danger. We want to understand why frightening things happen and whether we could recognize danger before it reaches us. Our brains are wired to notice potential threats. It’s part of why we slow down near traffic accidents, turn toward unexpected sounds, lock doors at night and carefully watch a large animal spotted in the woods.
True crime may also offer a sense of mastery over fear: we can examine something terrifying from the safety of the couch. There is curiosity about abnormal behavior, the intellectual satisfaction of solving a mystery and sometimes the reassurance of seeing an offender identified and held accountable.
Education or Justification?
One explanation frequently offered for consuming true crime is that it is educational: people want to understand criminals, recognize warning signs and learn how to protect themselves.
There is undoubtedly some truth to that. But when does “education” become “justification?”
First, if acquiring knowledge were the primary motivation for consuming true crime, there are more direct and accurate ways to obtain it. We could attend criminal trials, read criminology and victimology textbooks, study research on violence, or speak with people who actually work in the law enforcement or criminal justice systems. None of those activities has produced anything remotely resembling the enormous audience for true-crime entertainment.
Second, there is the matter of dose. Wanting to understand crime might explain listening to two or three podcast episodes. It becomes less persuasive as a complete explanation for listening to hundreds of them, subscribing to multiple series, bingeing one murder story after another or describing oneself as a “Murderino.”
So, someone can reasonably say, “I watch cooking programs because I want to learn to cook.” But after watching 800 hours of cooking programs…? Might we then reasonably suspect that learning to cook isn’t the whole explanation?
This doesn’t mean people are dishonest when they say they are learning. Entertainment can educate us. Human motivations are rarely singular. But when the “educational” explanation no longer adequately accounts for the amount or manner of consumption, we should at least be willing to consider another possibility:
True crime is popular because people enjoy it.
IMAGE: Marketed by Shunvogue as a “creepy and disturbingly realistic blood dress”
That is where the ethical question becomes uncomfortable. Because the material providing that enjoyment is not fictional. Someone actually died. Relatives carry the lifelong aftermath. And omeone is benefitting financially.
It’s safe to say that true crime is not a niche interest. It’s a highly profitable industry supported by ads, subscriptions, investors and publicly traded media companies benefitting from the audience it attracts. In 2026, Forbes estimated that Ashley Flowers, host of Crime Junkie, earned approximately $42 million from podcast-related activity in a single year, making her the fourth-highest-paid podcaster in the world. Recent industry rankings have also placed Crime Junkie at the top of U.S. podcasts by audience reach.
Whatever else true crime may be—journalism, education, advocacy or storytelling— no one can deny it’s an extraordinarily profitable form of entertainment.
When a Death Scene Becomes Content
Crime-scene (“biohazard”) cleanup offers a particularly troubling example of the boundary between legitimate work and entertainment.
This growing industry perform a necessary and difficult service for families and businesses. But some have also built enormous social-media audiences and revenue by posting videos from actual death scenes, sometimes presenting graphic remnants of suicide, homicide or decomposition and labeling it as “educational” content.
I have written about this practice before https://jancantyphd.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=1617&action=edit and, several years ago, addressed a national gathering of crime-scene cleanup professionals about the impact such practices can have on survivors.
There is certainly useful information to be taught about biohazards and remediation. But we should still ask: How many actual bloodstains and death scenes does the public need to see in order to “learn” from it? And what are they doing with all this newly-acquired “knowledge”?
The same information could be taught using simulated scenes. Technicians could demonstrate protective equipment, contamination procedures and remediation methods without using someone’s actual death as the visual aid. (The use of crash dummies to understand traffic fatalities is a long-standing model for such an approach.)
If education is really the objective, why does the lesson require an actual dead person or their bodily fluids?
The Spaulding Decon Case
In 2022, Florida widow Michelle Syers sued Spaulding Decon after alleging that video from the cleanup following her husband’s suicide was posted online without her knowledge or permission. Spaulding disputed the allegations.
The litigation continued for nearly four years and included an unsuccessful appeal by the company. In February 2026, a jury was selected and sworn. Right before the trial, however, the parties reached a settlement. Court records subsequently show proceedings concerning approval of a settlement involving Syers’s minor twin children, followed by voluntary dismissal of the lawsuit in June 2026.
The publicly available docket does not disclose the settlement terms.
That means it would be inaccurate to say that a jury found Spaulding liable. It did not; the jury never reached a verdict. But neither was Syers’s lawsuit dismissed as meritless. It survived years of litigation, an appeal and trial preparation, and reached the point of an empaneled jury before the parties settled.
If that experience produced a chilling effect within the biohazard-cleanup industry, I could find little evidence of it. Why? On September 14, 2026, a brief visit to TikTok produced these examples—from dozens like them.
[IMAGES: TikTok crime-scene-cleanup posts from September, 2026]
One was captioned “My Ex Wife’s Decomp” followed by vomiting emojis.
The “Educational” Permission Slip
There is also a troubling inconsistency in how the word “educational” is applied on Tik Tok and social media.
I had TikTok post removed for violation of community standards for an article about PTSD where I illustrated it with the familiar image of the second hyjacked airplane striking the World Trade Center. Another article was removed after I included a news photograph showing injuries to a man’s face at the hands of ICE.
Yet crime-scene-cleanup accounts have been permitted to show disturbing material from actual death scenes under the mantle of so-called “education”.
I am not arguing that graphic imagery should be unrestricted. I am arguing for a coherent, rational, and meaningful standard.
If an image illustrating PTSD or current news events is too disturbing for viewers, it’s difficult to understand why the remnants of an actual person’s death become acceptable because a cleanup company calls them “educational.”
On several occasions, I questioned crime-scene-cleanup content directly on TikTok. In one comment I asked, essentially: “If this is educational material, where are the pop quizzes? The final exam? The syllabus? The research findings?”
The backlash was immediate and voluminous. I cannot know what motivated individual commenters, but the intensity interested me. I hadn’t told anyone not to watch. I hadn’t demanded that the material be banned. I hadn’t attacked anyone’s character. I had simply questioned the label “educational.”
So the obvious question becomes: “Why should that question provoke such anger?”
Perhaps the term “educational” makes viewers feel better about consuming it. And by questioning that legitimacy I was removing their balm.
“Educational” should describe what content accomplishes, not function as a permission slip for exploitation. Understanding why we look doesn’t relieve us of responsibility for how we look.
From Watching Murder to Playing It
Podcasts and crime-scene videos are hardly the only places where the boundary has blurred.
Consider JFK Reloaded, a 2004 video game that recreates the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The player assumes the position of Lee Harvey Oswald and attempts to reproduce the assassination. Scores are based on how closely the player’s shots correspond to the official account.
The player isn’t merely watching an account of an actual murder. The player performs a simulation of it.
IMAGE: JFK Reloaded video game
Then there is Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, released in 2005. Players assume the roles of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and act out the Columbine High School massacre.
IMAGE: Super Columbine Massacre RPG! video game
Whatever artistic, historical or educational arguments may be made for such works, they raise a question very different from the debate over fictional violence.
These people existed.
Their families still exist.
Whose Story Is This?
That may be the question underneath all the others.
Legally, the answer can be complicated. Ethically, it shouldn’t be.
A homicide creates concentric circles of harm. At the center is the person whose life was taken. Around that person are spouses, children, parents, siblings, friends and communities who must absorb an event they did not choose. When their experience is repackaged for public consumption, they can lose control of the story as well as the person.
That doesn’t mean survivors own historical facts or possess veto power over journalism. It means their humanity deserves consideration. And it also means we should be discussing where the right to privacy begins and the right of the public to know exists.
Repeatedly presenting murder as entertainment also subtly changes the relationship between audience and victim.
Suspense requires escalation. Producers need hooks. Thumbnails need faces. Titles need intrigue. Episodes need cliffhangers. The demands of storytelling can begin competing with the obligations of truth. This is why “docudramas” are not called documentaries.
And the murderer often becomes the star.
We remember the killer’s name, childhood, preferences, methods and psychology while struggling to remember the names of the people who died, let alone who was impacted by their death.
MINE asks us to reverse the camera. Who was this person before somebody killed them? Who still loves them? Who has to wake up tomorrow knowing they are gone? Were the survivors consulted? Does telling this story serve some purpose beyond attracting attention? Is graphic information necessary to understanding what happened, or is it there because horror sells? Could the same lesson be taught without displaying the actual remnants of someone’s death? Would we tell the story differently if the person sitting beside us were the victim’s mother?
These aren’t arguments against storytelling. They are arguments for better storytelling.
Third Lens
I would take that idea one step further and propose a third lens. In other words, envision a triangle.
At one point is the crime: What happened? Who did it? What was the motive?
At another point is the aftermath: What happened to the people who loved the deceased? What impact did their death have? Did they get put through a trial?
The (new) third point represents the viewer or consumer of true crime. Why am I watching this? What am I receiving from another person’s tragedy? What responsibility do I hold in contributing to the profit of this homicide?
Afterall, if nobody watched, liked, shared or subscribed, would this material still be produced?
There is excellent work being done in the true-crime world. Some journalists, filmmakers, writers and podcasters investigate forgotten cases, uncover wrongful convictions, expose institutional failures, generate leads and allow survivors to tell stories that otherwise would never be heard.
Responsible storytelling can restore humanity rather than ignore it.
That is precisely why the distinction matters!
The standard shouldn’t be, “Never tell stories about murder.”
It should be:
Remember that these are not merely “stories.” They are real tragedies that happened to real people and they are viewed by real consumers – by the millions.
Profitting From Murder
This is hardly a niche form of entertainment (as it was before 1960). A 2024 YouGov survey found that 57% of American adults consume true-crime content. Among podcast listeners, Pew Research Center found that roughly one-third regularly listen to true-crime podcasts—and true crime was the single most common subject among the top-ranked podcasts it examined. Perhaps most tellingly, among people whose principal podcast was true crime, 85% cited entertainment as a major reason they listen to podcasts.
The rise of true crime in American popular culture
Sources include Jean Murley’s history of American true crime, Pew Research Center, and histories of the post-2014 podcast/streaming boom.
What Can Be Done?
MINE doesn’t simply object. The program encourages action. Through MINE Alerts, POMC identifies products and promotions it considers objectionable and encourages people to contact those responsible. Its school program gives students opportunities to examine products marketed around violence and murder and to write to the companies involved.
But responsibility cannot belong only to MINE, survivors’ organizations or social-media platforms.
Producers can ask whether graphic material is actually necessary.
Journalists and filmmakers can involve survivors rather than treating them merely as sources—or obstacles.
Parents can ask questions about their childrens’ video game viewing preferences.
Platforms can apply their standards consistently instead of allowing “educational” to become a loophole.
Audiences can ask themselves why they are watching, whether the material respects the people involved, and whether curiosity alone creates an entitlement to see it.
None of this requires pretending murder doesn’t exist.
It requires remembering that murder happened to somebody.
For an audience, an episode eventually ends. Another program begins. The headphones come off.
For homicide survivors, there are no closing credits.
Murder is not entertainment.
It is someone’s life.
And someone’s loss.
Perhaps the question MINE ultimately leaves us with is this:
Where is the line between learning from another person’s suffering and consuming it—and what do we owe the real human beings whose worst moments supply the content?
