The writer is a former criminal barrister and author of crime fiction
When the body of 45-year-old Nicola Bulley was found in a river last week following a three-week search, the focus switched from criticism of the police investigation to the macabre zeal with which some members of the public had sought to solve the mystery of her disappearance. At the height of the frenzy, a crowd of so-called “crime tourists” had descended on her home village of St Michael’s on Wyre, questioning whether she had fallen into the river and breaking into deserted outhouses to search for clues of a criminal plot.
Quite aside from the considerable distress caused to the family and local residents, the activities of amateurs can have a devastating effect on police investigations. Late last year, police in Moscow, Idaho, cautioned wannabe sleuths on TikTok to stop their speculation regarding a recent murder case: indulging in intrigue was hindering police efforts, leading to false accusations and even death threats.
As a criminal barrister and crime writer, I thought I’d experienced both ends of the spectrum, from the grim reality of a trial to the frisson of a fictional murder mystery. But true crime is a strange hybrid of the two. It is a search for the truth but also a call to armchair detectives for whom brutal reality becomes a form of entertainment. Andrew Snowden, Lancashire’s police and crime commissioner, admitted that at times during the Bulley investigation, “control was lost over the narrative”— a comment more appropriate to fiction than real life.
Why do so many members of the public rush to involve themselves in activities that should be left to the police? Part of the answer is fear. If we can track down the perpetrator and solve the case, then we feel in control. It is possible that long-term cuts to police budgets, and recent revelations of violent criminality by serving officers such as Wayne Couzens and David Carrick, have led to such a loss of faith in professional detectives that people prefer to take matters into their own hands.
Snowden also spoke of the news hubbub surrounding the search for Nicola Bulley as “completely unprecedented in the scale of social media and media interest”. But it is not a new phenomenon. Victorian news reporting of the Jack the Ripper murders was sensationalist, and since police have never found the murderer, amateur theories abound. The problem is that victims are dehumanised in the search for the killer, and the barbarity they suffered reduced to entertainment.
When the murder mystery novelist Agatha Christie went missing in 1926, there was a predictable media circus and huge public interest in her baffling disappearance. Every would-be detective in England joined the hunt, and the crime writer Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle even conducted a seance to find her. As a result of the intense interest, Christie was eventually recognised and tracked down at a spa hotel in Harrogate.
This, fans argue, is the point of the true crime genre. Podcasts such as NPR’s Serial, about a Baltimore schoolgirl murdered in 1999, rekindle interest in cold cases, and spur new research. The public is kept engaged until a solution is reached. But at what cost?
The sensationalist, intrusive nature of the search for Nicola Bulley has exploited a family’s tragedy and propelled a community into the media glare. A balance is needed between maintaining public engagement and preventing insensitive intrusion. In this case, both the media and the police could face questions from watchdogs. But, as yet, there are no regulations for these self-appointed sleuths. There remains no accountability, no responsibility. And until there is, we must all learn to treat those affected by tragedy with some much-needed respect.
