In the weeks leading up to the Edgar Awards ceremony, I’ll be reading and and reviewing the six books nominated for the “Fact Crime” category
cw: harm to a child
In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child opens with a photo of the victim of the 1993 kidnapping and murder. And the first thing that popped into my head was . . . Winona Ryder? This will be explained.
Kim Cross’s thorough, thoughtful, and harrowing account of the kidnapping and search for twelve-year-old Polly Klaas is a powerful read. Her focus is not on elevating the profile of the killer or exploiting the pain of the family, but instead looking at the ways the case, unfolding as it did in the infancy of the internet age, changed how such abductions are forensically investigated by the police and FBI.
For those who don’t remember, Polly Klaas’s kidnapping was highly unusual in addition to being tragic and terrifying. She was taken by a stranger, from her home, when not only her mother but also two friends were there for a sleepover. Because she lived in a “good neighborhood,” and because she was white,1 the media attention on the case was instant and intense. That’s where Winona Ryder comes in: she was also from Petaluma, California, and became involved in the search for Polly in the months between her abduction and the arrest of the man who killed her, leading to the discovery of her body. In addition to Ryder’s celebrity, Polly’s case was featured on America’s Most Wanted. Cross argues that “widespread media coverage was a valuable tool to generate leads and help investigators solve crimes,” and one that was adopted and amplified in the years after the Klaas case: The “Polly’s Legacy” chapter details a similar kidnapping case that ended in the recovery of the taken child, and attributes the better outcome in part to a quick publicity blitz.
The author doesn’t mention the proliferation of “internet detectives” that currently shape the true crime media landscape, but it’s certainly where my head went. Much current analysis of true crime texts asks whether media attention, especially in the online realm, might do more harm than good.
Two very recent texts take on this question directly. The first, from the always captivating newsletter “Suspicious Circumstances,” reviews the new documentary “They Called Him Mostly Harmless.” The film’s director calls the actions of two online sleuths “heroic” in their efforts to identify a hiker’s body. The second, especially relevant to this discussion, is from Polly Klaas’s younger sister. In an audio essay for The New York Times entitled “My Sister’s Murder Isn’t for Your Entertainment,” Annie Nichol describes the way “true crime commodified my sister’s death.”2 She notes that her sister’s case coincided with the late-twentieth-century media mainstreaming of true crime content, and links this trend with harsher, and racist, policing policies and sentencing guidelines.3 Nichol’s call to action is worth quoting in full:
To truly dismantle cycles of harm, we need to amplify survivor stories on their own terms. And we need to embrace the solutions that they’re pioneering in their own communities. I work with a survivor-led organization called Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, and they advocate for policy change and safety solutions, like establishing trauma recovery centers in the most vulnerable communities and reentry services, which are all an essential part of public safety.
I don’t think Cross’s lack of attention to this element of true crime criticism necessarily torpedoes the book. Her commitment to providing sociohistorical context, careful avoidance of bias toward law enforcement, and engaging writing style make this a worthy nominee.
Read if you like: procedurals, Mindhunter, science-y stuff, remembering the ‘90s
One of the things I learned from the book was that “Missing White Woman Syndrome” was actually coined by Sheri Parks, an American Studies professor, and popularized by journalist Gwen Ifill. I believe I’ve attributed it to Ifill alone in previous writings.
Yes, this seems to be the latest salvo in the Times’s campaign to take issue with true crime properties not owned and produced by them.
The notorious “Three Strikes” laws were a direct response to Polly’s case.