No, I’m not Oxygening* you. But here’s a story: A couple weeks after my dad died in 2018, my brother (Brooklyn) and I (San Francisco) were still in Indiana at my mom’s, eating dinner. I don’t recall what we were talking about when she revealed that in 1961 she and some friends had spent an evening with a pair of notorious spree killers, and that one of those friends was their last victim. Maybe an hour or so after dinner, after the dishes were washed and my brother and I were safely buried in our phones, she came back with a photo of her and her friends (including the victim) outside the restaurant where they’d worked.
That revelation helped put so much of my teenaged years in perspective. My mom was so strict and so protective, I had to work to get into trouble. But learning about this brush she had with the worst of the world back when she was a teen, herself, I suddenly understood.
Of course, I’m not the only person who’s had crime impact my relationship with my mom, for good or for ill. I have one friend, for example, sho says the thing that’s saved her relationship with her (Facebook-believing, red-state) mom is the ability to change the subject to the latest Netflix true crime property. Another tells me that she never really talked to her mother-in-law until Scott Peterson’s retrial hearings started heating up, and that they’ve found a way to connect by rehashing the case.
What about you? Is your interest in true crime something that allows you to bridge a gap with a maternal figure in your life, or make an existing bond stronger? I told you my story, now you tell me yours. — EB
*it’s true, finding a crassly questionable marketing hook for true-crime content is now “Oxygening,” tell your friends
True crime isn't something my mother and I typically connect over, but she LOVES the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum and so 10 minutes into watching This is a Robbery I knew she (and my sister who also loves the museum) had to watch. She loved the documentary and we had a good hour long conversation about theories and questions we still have after she finished. I tried to recommend a few other recent true crimes series that I thought she might find interesting based on that (Murder Among the Mormons and Made You Look), but no go. At least we had a fun conversation about this though :)
There are only two crimes I've known to interest my mother. (1) The assassination of John Lennon, perhaps for obvious reasons, since she was 13 in 1964. (2) The murder of Colette, Kimberly, and Kristen MacDonald by Jeffrey MacDonald; a.k.a. The Green Beret murders; a.k.a. Fatal Vision. And I have a feeling my father gave my mom that book as a gift because we lived in North Carolina. Although she's a big reader, my mom isn't really one for non-fiction. Oh, duh, except for the biggest crime of the 20th century! My mother is way into WWII Holocaust literature. She wrote her graduate thesis on it, in fact. Sorry for all this thinking out loud.
My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, was absolutely obsessed with true crime, as is my mom's 'Irish twin', my Aunt Rita. All three of us are passionately interested in true crime involving marriage partners murdering each other, or the kids. We all really like (um, that's the wrong word) family annihilators.
This is such an interesting topic. My mom died several years ago and never had any true crime interest that I could discern. (My dad was a Hoover-era FBI agent, so her lack of crime curiosity might have been an asset in that regard.) But my aunt mentioned watching the A Wilderness of Error doc last year, and lo and behold, we had something new in common.
I discovered she was also really interested in the Sam Sheppard case, and just today she sent me a review of the new Joshua Zeman/Son of Sam doc series. She also loves Jeff Guinn's true crime writing and Skip Hollandsworth--I just remembered she also turned me on to Hollandsworth's podcast, Tom Brown's Body (which I found kind of disappointing, alas). So she had a stealth true crime interest for years, and I had no clue.
My true crime interest is definitely inherited! My mom grew up in a very small and isolated town as an only child. She was a voracious reader and one of her main sources of entertainment were those 1950s true crime detective magazines. The interest continued into adulthood. Like every other North Carolina family in the 1980s, we had a copy of Fatal Vision which I read for the first time when I was probably 13 and I also remember her having copies of Helter Skelter and The Stranger Beside Me around. We talked about true crime all the time and would watch those wonderful true crime made for tv movies of the 80s and 90s together. These days she watches a lot more Oxygen than I do (she loves Snapped) so we'll talk about cases she's learned about there. She also watches Dateline (which I've gotten back into watching during quarantine) so we'll compare notes. She and my dad don't do streaming...I really wish I could get them to as there is so much good content here in this peak true crime era!
My mom passed in 1980 when I was barely 18, and as she threw out our Ouija board the morning after she plowed through The Exorcist (the book, not the film), I doubt she was into true crime. In fact, the only time she was obsessed with it was during the Watergate hearings. She brought the laundry up from the basement so she could iron in front of the t.v. set. I remember coming home from school and hearing her call people liars, etc. She and my Dad had voted for Nixon, so there was that aspect to it. I, of course, thought it was a t.v. show that was suddenly cancelled for some reason other than ratings (my mom never watched soaps or any afternoon t.v. With 7 kids and a doctor husband, she had no time for it). I credit her for my skepticism of all things political and inherited her love of yelling at politicians which has mutated into screaming at my computer during C-Span hearings and recent Supreme Court vetting sessions. This last administration gave me a lot to curse at. The end.
My mum's true crime interest leans more towards the holocaust than what we usually think of when we think of true crime. That said, my true crime gateway book was The Stranger Beside Me (I was a pre-teen, it was loaned to me by my sister who was in her 20s), and when my mum saw I was reading it, rather than confiscating it, she dug out her copy of Gerold Frank's The Boston Strangler and told me to read that next. After I read that she tracked down the 1968 movie based on it (Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda) and we watched it together.
Sometimes I tell her about various true crime properties I've watched and read and she's interested to hear the stories, but not enough to track them down herself. But DeSalvo really intrigues her, possibly because she was in her teens when he was doing his thing. I did tell her the theory about there being more than one strangler, but she decided she was happy thinking it was just DeSalvo.
True crime isn't something my mother and I typically connect over, but she LOVES the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum and so 10 minutes into watching This is a Robbery I knew she (and my sister who also loves the museum) had to watch. She loved the documentary and we had a good hour long conversation about theories and questions we still have after she finished. I tried to recommend a few other recent true crimes series that I thought she might find interesting based on that (Murder Among the Mormons and Made You Look), but no go. At least we had a fun conversation about this though :)
There are only two crimes I've known to interest my mother. (1) The assassination of John Lennon, perhaps for obvious reasons, since she was 13 in 1964. (2) The murder of Colette, Kimberly, and Kristen MacDonald by Jeffrey MacDonald; a.k.a. The Green Beret murders; a.k.a. Fatal Vision. And I have a feeling my father gave my mom that book as a gift because we lived in North Carolina. Although she's a big reader, my mom isn't really one for non-fiction. Oh, duh, except for the biggest crime of the 20th century! My mother is way into WWII Holocaust literature. She wrote her graduate thesis on it, in fact. Sorry for all this thinking out loud.
My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, was absolutely obsessed with true crime, as is my mom's 'Irish twin', my Aunt Rita. All three of us are passionately interested in true crime involving marriage partners murdering each other, or the kids. We all really like (um, that's the wrong word) family annihilators.
My mum & I had a great time with Bad Blood!
This is such an interesting topic. My mom died several years ago and never had any true crime interest that I could discern. (My dad was a Hoover-era FBI agent, so her lack of crime curiosity might have been an asset in that regard.) But my aunt mentioned watching the A Wilderness of Error doc last year, and lo and behold, we had something new in common.
I discovered she was also really interested in the Sam Sheppard case, and just today she sent me a review of the new Joshua Zeman/Son of Sam doc series. She also loves Jeff Guinn's true crime writing and Skip Hollandsworth--I just remembered she also turned me on to Hollandsworth's podcast, Tom Brown's Body (which I found kind of disappointing, alas). So she had a stealth true crime interest for years, and I had no clue.
My mom hates true crime but owns 400+ murder mysteries on Kindle. I don’t get it.
My true crime interest is definitely inherited! My mom grew up in a very small and isolated town as an only child. She was a voracious reader and one of her main sources of entertainment were those 1950s true crime detective magazines. The interest continued into adulthood. Like every other North Carolina family in the 1980s, we had a copy of Fatal Vision which I read for the first time when I was probably 13 and I also remember her having copies of Helter Skelter and The Stranger Beside Me around. We talked about true crime all the time and would watch those wonderful true crime made for tv movies of the 80s and 90s together. These days she watches a lot more Oxygen than I do (she loves Snapped) so we'll talk about cases she's learned about there. She also watches Dateline (which I've gotten back into watching during quarantine) so we'll compare notes. She and my dad don't do streaming...I really wish I could get them to as there is so much good content here in this peak true crime era!
My mom passed in 1980 when I was barely 18, and as she threw out our Ouija board the morning after she plowed through The Exorcist (the book, not the film), I doubt she was into true crime. In fact, the only time she was obsessed with it was during the Watergate hearings. She brought the laundry up from the basement so she could iron in front of the t.v. set. I remember coming home from school and hearing her call people liars, etc. She and my Dad had voted for Nixon, so there was that aspect to it. I, of course, thought it was a t.v. show that was suddenly cancelled for some reason other than ratings (my mom never watched soaps or any afternoon t.v. With 7 kids and a doctor husband, she had no time for it). I credit her for my skepticism of all things political and inherited her love of yelling at politicians which has mutated into screaming at my computer during C-Span hearings and recent Supreme Court vetting sessions. This last administration gave me a lot to curse at. The end.
My mum's true crime interest leans more towards the holocaust than what we usually think of when we think of true crime. That said, my true crime gateway book was The Stranger Beside Me (I was a pre-teen, it was loaned to me by my sister who was in her 20s), and when my mum saw I was reading it, rather than confiscating it, she dug out her copy of Gerold Frank's The Boston Strangler and told me to read that next. After I read that she tracked down the 1968 movie based on it (Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda) and we watched it together.
Sometimes I tell her about various true crime properties I've watched and read and she's interested to hear the stories, but not enough to track them down herself. But DeSalvo really intrigues her, possibly because she was in her teens when he was doing his thing. I did tell her the theory about there being more than one strangler, but she decided she was happy thinking it was just DeSalvo.
My mother's maiden name is Hawley and I may - MAY - have frequently mentioned as a teen that was also Crippen's first name, to her great displeasure.