JonBenet Ramsey. Natalee Holloway. Polly Klaas. You have probably heard these names at some point, either in passing, on TV, or plastered across a magazine at the checkout counter. But what about Mitrice Richardson , Asha Degree , or LaToyia Figu eroa? All of these women and girls were either murdered or have gone missing, but JonBenet, Natalee, and Polly have gotten significantly more attention. Why?
They’re white.
In recent years, true crime entertainment has gone from a shameful niche interest to a mainstream industry. Books, TV, and podcasts are all capitalizing on the sudden interest. It’s no longer considered strange to be fascinated by something as unthinkable as murder. However, true crime, like the rest of the entertainment industry, has a race problem.
As mentioned earlier, almost anybody, even someone who is not interested in true crime, can name a white woman who has gone missing or been murdered, but few can say the same about black or Latina women.
Generally speaking, the cases most often covered in true crime entertainment do not reflect who is actually at risk in our country. In the United States, males, people of lower incomes, and people of color are more likely to be victims of crime. Half of the women killed are killed by an intimate partner, while men are more likely to be killed by a stranger. Black women face some of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country. Even more disturbing, there are no records kept of how many Native American women go missing or are murdered every year in the United States, yet they are raped at four times the national average and are 10 times as likely to be murdered than other Americans.
Ironically, some consider this massive explosion in true crime entertainment to be due in part to the popularity of the podcast Serial , which covered the murder of Hae Min Lee in its first season. Hae Min Lee was a Korean-American high school student who was murdered in 1999. Her ex-boyfriend, Adnan Syed, who was of Pakistani descent, was convicted of her murder. However, many believe he is innocent. It is after the success of Serial that many other true crime podcasts have emerged, and become one of the most popular genres in the podcast market. But despite the fact that Serial focused on the murder of a young woman of color, most true crime still covers stories about missing or murdered white women.
Polly Klaas, a white 12-year-old girl, was kidnapped from her slumber party and murdered in 1993. In the wake of her death, a performing arts center was dedicated to her, and California Three Strike Act was signed into law the next year.
In 1997, Georgia Moses, a black 12-year-old girl, was found dead in the same area. Few people even knew she had gone missing, and unlike Polly Klaas, her killer was never caught. Georgia never received the kind of media attention that Polly did. Georgia was a middle-school dropout living with her disabled mother. She was alone and vulnerable, yet her death was almost unheard of. Both deaths are equally tragic, but there is an added element of disgrace that one was completely ignored
There was another case in which the remains of 11 women were found buried in the desert on the West Mesa of Albuquerque. Almost all of them were Latina sex workers who had been involved in drugs at some point in their lives. One was a black 15-year-old girl, Syllania Edwards, who had run away from her home in Oklahoma. The case has not been solved although there are suspects. While some in the true crime community discuss this case, there is still not as much attention paid to it as there is for the Long Island serial killer, who mostly killed white female sex workers, or the infamous Zodiac Killer, who killed five people in California during the 60’s and 70’s.
PBS news anchor Gwen Ifill is said to have coined the term “missing white woman syndrome” to describe this phenomenon. It is not just the media that focuses more on white women, but it is also the way they focus on white women. When white women go missing, the media often focuses on their accomplishments and their roles as mothers or daughters. Meanwhile, when black women go missing, there is often a greater emphasis on what might have been going wrong in their lives, such as drug use, past convictions, or abusive boyfriends, essentially suggesting to the viewer that they deserved what happened to them.
We even see this in the coverage of black men and boys who are killed by police. In the case of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy who was murdered by a police officer while playing with a toy gun, people rushed to suggest why he might have deserved it. They said he did not properly respond to the officer’s requests to put his hands up, the fact that his parents had prior convictions, and some news outlets even emphasized the fact that he was tall for his age. Meanwhile, after the horrific Parkland Shooting, in which 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were murdered by former classmate Nicholas Cruz, he was quickly described as “troubled” and “lonely,” as if these things somehow justified the fact that he murdered 17 people.
This is not to say that this is not changing. Cayleigh Elise, a popular true crime and horror YouTuber, frequently covers murdered or missing people of color in her Dark Matters series. True crime and comedy podcast Last Podcast on the Left has emphasized throughout their series that black sex workers are disproportionately the victims of serial killers. Similarly, the podcast My Favorite Murder has made efforts to cover more cases involving people of color. But this is not enough.
While true crime may be a form of entertainment, there are still stories involving real people, and if you enjoy true crime, then you should make an effort to help in some way. That means raising awareness, donating to charity, volunteering, and most importantly, it means giving all victims equal sympathy and attention.
Contrary to popular belief, more coverage of a crime does not necessarily increase its chance of being solved. However, this is still important nonetheless because it demonstrates whose lives matter. If we only cover cases involving white women from upper middle class families, we are simultaneously suggesting that their lives matter more. Women of color matter just as much, and that should be demonstrated in true crime.
