Every so often, someone is surprised to learn that many homicide survivors don’t consume true crime at all — not podcasts, not documentaries, not the latest streaming series everyone talks about.
But there’s another group of survivors who do.
Quietly. Regularly.
Sometimes compulsively. And people wonder why.
It comes as a surprise because most people know that what is seen on a screen is entertainment. It’s the cleaned-up, sped-up, carefully narrated version of something that in reality is slow, jagged, disorienting, and life-splitting.
Most true crime fans want a 45-minute arc:
- a body is found,
- a detective arrives,
- clues emerge,
- the “why” is revealed,
- justice is served,
- and everyone is tucked neatly back into place.
In the real world, homicide looks nothing like that.
The Part No One Puts in a Podcast
Real homicide begins with waiting. Long, sickening, empty waiting. Waiting to hear where he is. Waiting for someone to call. Waiting for the door to open. Waiting to identify a body you pray isn’t his. Waiting in hallways outside morgue rooms that smell like bleach and dread. Waiting for the medical examiner to finish. Waiting for the funeral to begin. Waiting while relatives arrive stunned and broken. Waiting for justice — which may take months or years or may never come. Waiting for the truth to settle in because your brain refuses it. Waiting for regular sleep to return. Waiting for parole. Waiting for the news cycle to chase a different story. Waiting for this to somehow make sense.
Real homicide has no soundtrack.
No narration.
No convenient chronology.
No commercial break.
Just hours that stretch like wet rope.
None of this fits easily into a podcast episode, movie, book or screenplay.
So it doesn’t make the cut.
Why Some Survivors Watch True Crime Anyway
People assume survivors avoid it — and many do. But some continue watching, and not because they enjoy violence. They watch because:
1. They are trying to regain control.
Trauma steals control.
True crime gives a predictable arc. It “flattens” the experience.
It lets a survivor face horror from the outside, on their terms.
2. They are trying to understand.
The forensics.
The psychology.
The procedures.
Things they lived through but never fully grasped.
3. They are looking for themselves.
Not gore.
Not entertainment.
Just recognition.
Someone who says:
“This actually happened. This is real. You’re not imagining the magnitude.”
4. Their fear threshold changed.
What once terrified them no longer does —
not because they’re callous,
but because they now know what real terror actually is.
5. They don’t know why.
Trauma rewires the mind in ways that don’t always feel logical.
Sometimes true crime becomes familiar, even when it hurts.
None of this is pathology.
It’s adaptation.
What True Crime Fans Don’t Want
There is one thing general true crime audiences almost universally avoid:
The reality of violent death.
They don’t want it to be too real. They’d rather avoid seeing
- the steps leading into the morgue
- the pungent identification room
- the display case of items used in homicides and suicides
- what the medical examiner does
- the burned-out waiting rooms
- the fluorescent silence
- the hours before the knock on the door
- the long days when families don’t know if their person is alive or dead
- the moment their knees give out
- the tedious, highly commercial and expensive funeral planning
- the vacuum of afterward
True crime fans want answers, not the unvarnished truth.
Resolution, not ruin.
Plot, not pain.
The “why,” not the waiting.
And while I don’t begrudge anyone their entertainment, I do ask for something rare in the true crime world:
respect for the reality behind the story.
Because when someone dies violently, the family enters a threshold they cannot reverse.
It is a doorway with no return key.
And all the tidy narrative arcs in the world will never match the slow, disorienting, life-warping truth of those first weeks.
The Survivors Who Walk Through the Door
Every family who passes through the morgue doors becomes part of a club no one ever expected to join.
We are not characters.
We are not plot devices.
We are not background voices behind the narrator.
We are the people who wait.
The people who identify.
The people who bury.
The people who live with the aftermath long after the credits would have rolled.
So if you’re a survivor who avoids true crime, you’re not alone.
If you’re a survivor who watches it, you’re not alone either.
There is no right or wrong response to trauma — just the one that gets you through another day.
But for the rest of the world:
If you’re going to consume true crime, do so with awareness.
Understand the difference between a narrative and a life.
Between a season finale and a family that never gets one.
Behind every episode is a threshold a real person had to cross —
one that cannot be rewound, summarized, or solved in 45 minutes.
Related reading: What Homicide Survivors Keep to Themselves and Overturned Murder Convictions: The Fallout on Homicide Survivors.
