How do you solve a problem like CrimeCon?

And should we even try?

This week, Mike Baker of the New York Times published an account of Stacy Chapin (gift link!), mother of one of the victims of last year’s University of Idaho killings of four college students, attending this year’s CrimeCon (held last month in Orlando). Haven’t heard of CrimeCon? It’s a “weekend event experience” for “true crime fans, creators, and professionals.” Does that description make you feel a little uncomfortable? Me too.

The article’s point of view is clear from the opening paragraphs. It recounts Chapin’s uneasy reaction to the thousands of people who gathered to hear a “forensic analysis” of her son’s and his friends’ murders, and Baker notes the multiple errors the speaker—a professor and “death investigator” unaffiliated with the case—made in their presentation. The piece includes details like a vendor hawking “true-crime branded coffee,” attendees posing for selfies in front of a crime-scene cleaning booth, and Chapin being confronted by an unexpected and unendorsed video presentation featuring photographs of her son.

CrimeCon is a perhaps inevitable outgrowth of the process Aja Romano identifies in their Vox article explaining how the murder of two girls in Indiana started as a local story and over time “became ‘true crime.’” They index this transformation with the rise of online enthusiasts of a particular case who not only discuss the details of the crime, but also insert themselves into the investigation itself, virtually or in person. I’ve written before about my discomfort with the term “community” to describe the diverse group of people who consume true crime texts, and perhaps my desire to distance myself from this type of engagement is another reason why.

By branding itself a “con,” CrimeCon is aligning itself with other gatherings that are geared towards fans. There’s no other way to read it: From PhilCon¹ to RuPaul’s Drag Con, the three-letter designation connotes exhibit halls, merch, and branded t-shirts if not full-on cosplay.² I am an enthusiastic member of several fan communities, I am attending New York Comic Con this weekend, and I believe fan culture can literally save lives. I also categorically reject calling myself a “fan” of true crime, and am inherently suspicious and on alert when that language is deployed.³

Drusilla Moorhouse⁴ offers a necessary counterpoint to Baker’s account of how family members of murder victims experience CrimeCon. Her story, which also features quotes from Stacy Chapin,⁵ suggests that she, along with other people intimately connected to those lost to violent crimes, find “catharsis” and “empathy” amongst the booths and panels, and audiences that are “sympathetic, compassionate, respectful and even protective.”

What’s the takeaway? I suppose it’s something like CrimeCon is not one thing to every attendee, that an event that includes tone-deaf merch can still be a place where people find healing, and that, perhaps most importantly, it is not up to me to legislate how people process their grief or mourn their losses. And look, I’ve never been there. Maybe these stories and images fail to capture the complexity of the gathering. But I do worry, as a true crime scholar, how such carnivalesque events perpetuate narratives about true crime that foreground voyeurism and entertainment value at the expense of the real human cost of narrativizing violence.

1. According to Wikipedia, the country’s oldest fan convention. It’s still held every year in New Jersey, and if you ever get a chance to go, go. It’s like time portal straight back to the earliest days of sci-fi fandom.

2. The CrimeCon apparel site offers shirts reading “I’m only here for an alibi” and “Basically a detective”

3. But would I call myself a “fan” of individual true crime podcasts? Well, that’s a more complicated question. The medium would seem to invite that language, but I don’t engage with the work of Connie Walker or Madeleine Baran in the way that I approach watching Only Murders in the Building, for example. When I sit down to read Kate Manne or Roxane Gay, is it because I’m a fan? That label doesn’t feel quite right. Though I enjoy consuming all of these texts, the reaction is of a different flavor with long-form true crime: it’s more that I’m deeply interested in and inspired by these creators’ approaches to argumentation, and the possibilities their storytelling opens for progressive action.

4. Dru writes Suspicious Circumstances, a fabulous true crime newsletter, for HuffPo that offers a thoughtful deep dive into individual cases weekly. You can sign up for it here.

5. To be clear, Chapin spoke to Baker directly. Moorhouse includes quotations from the panel Chapin hosted and public comments she made.