How True Crime Defines Us

Some thoughts about Savage Appetities:  Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession, by Rachel Monroe

First of all, it couldn't have a better title.  I love "savage appetities"--it has a certain Grimm's fairytale feeling to it.  The female appetite in fairytales is so problematic, which makes it even better.  In case you haven't seen this book, Rachel Monroe explores the predoninantly female fascination with true crime through four stories that exemplify four archetypes--detective, victim, defender, and killer.

The four stories are introduced somewhat chronologically.  The first is the story of Frances Glessner Lee, the proclaimed mother of forensic science, who built the astonishingly detailed nutshell dioramas to be used for training detectives to look critically and analytically at crime scene evidence.  Frances Glessmer Lee's miniatures have a creepy parallel to the circumscribed world women lived in, but juxtaposed with chilling violence and mystery.  I suspect that her story may be the hardest for contemporary women to grasp because FGL's obsession may  seem so far removed from out world.  We pride ourselves on being far away from Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "Yellow Wallpaper," but I imagine FGL feeling constrained and isolated and breaking ou wiht her miniatures.  

Our second story is about Alisa Statman, who ends up inserting herself into the lives of Sharon Tate's family after the Manson family killings.  This story also highlighted the history of the victim's rights movement and its link to the Tate family, which I was unaware of.  Following this comes the story of Lorri Davis, who spent over ten years working to exonerate Damien Echols, on death row for the West Memphis killings, and, finally, the macabre but ultimately rather banal story of Lindsey Souvannarath who plotted with a young man she met online to accomplish a mass shooting in a mall in Canada.  They are unsuccessful and the young male kills himself and Souvannarath is serving life in prison in Canada.  The focus in this chapter is on the cult following of the Columbine killers.  

I read this because it was the reading group book for The Stacks podcast, which I have mentioned before.  I would have said that I am not particularly interested in true crime, despite that my husband has an evening fascination with Dateline--which I usually have to watchin the background of my life because he goes to sleep holding the remote.  In recent years I have not read or listened to many of the bockbuster true crime stories that have come out, although I think it is almost impossible to escape from these--they seep into our lives like celebrity gossip or internet memes.  In all of these cases women seem to be very susceptible.

However, I have realized that there are two true crime stories that have been extremely important in my life.  The first was the kidnapping of Patty Hearst, in 1974, when I was fifteen.  I was absolutely fascinated--glued to the New York Times everyday, and attempting to convince my mother that she should give in and let me purchase whatever lurid tabloids were available in Nassau, NY.  My father's secretary gave me a copy of Steven Weed's My Life With Patty Hearst, which I found when I was home last summer.  It is in pieces.  It came home to Wisconsin with me because it still draws me in with the same glamour.  As I write this I also have Patty Hearst's Every Secret Thing on the table with me.  Over time, some of the truly bizarre parts of the story had faded, but there was a series of podcasts on CNN that brought me back to this last year.  I did listen to those, and, my goodness, what a story.  Every violent eccentricity and naivete of the early 1970's all rolled up in one story. 

I can 't explain the initial fascination I felt for Patty Hearst, other than that she was not that much older than I was and seemed to have a very glamorous desirable life pre-kidnapping and and an even more astonishing life after.  The odd political overtones probably added to this.  Psychologically, I am even more shocked at her apparent peaceful return to pre-kidnapping life.  People from the outsksirts of the story continued to show up in the outer edges of my world for quite some time.  Jack Scott, who was apprehended in Pennsylvania with his wife Emily, later became a pioneering person in the sociology of sport, and I heard him speak at a conference while I was getting my Masters.  

So, for whatever reason, this story has psychological importance in my life story.  I think we all have something like this.

The other time when I have suddently felt like true crime has had personal relevance is with the Lorri Davis and Damien Echols story that is profiled in Savage Appetites.  When I was interviewing for jobs in Arkansas, my first trip was to West Memphis.  Some of my horror receded the more experience I had with Arkansas, but on that first visit it was very clear to me that West Memphis had had something happened that he community had never been able to get past.  At the time I had no frame of reference, but the West Memphis child murders, with their connection to Satanic cults (unfounded) and the wrongful arrests of the West Memphis Three do seem to have left a bruise on the little town by the highway.  (There is a lovely college there.)  I have done a lot of reading about Lorri Davis since then, and was interested in her reappearance in Savage Appetites.  In this case, odd as they are, I am glad Damien Echols and Lorri Davis have been able to build a life for themselves and to heal, individually and as a couple.  

I don't understand the famale draw to true crime.  I think it tugs at some of what we most desire and are most repelled and frightened by.  Rachel Monroe ends up deciding that she does not have to be part of the narrative of true crime and feels an immense sense of relief.  I wish for a world where we all could step away from that linked fascination and fear.