Murder most foul...

A confession. I'm addicted to true crime shows, also true crime books...preferably with eight pages of exciting, never-before published photographs. And, in the way of all hard-core junkies, I've gotten my husband hooked too. Lately, after dinner, we've been sitting in front of the tube, stuffing our cookie-jar heads with Forensics, 48 Hours, and The Investigators. When those shows aren't on, like an addict tapering off, I make do with the far weaker stuff of CSI, Miami, but my husband won't go there. For him it's the real deal or nothing at all. But in all fairness, he doesn't log the true crime hours I do. A couple of shows and he's done, while I'll sit there entranced, glomming the wide-screen into the wee small hours.

Recently I mentioned my proclivities apologetically to an old friend. I say apologetically, because I never know how people are going to react, even those who know me well. But when I talked about my love of Forensics etc., I could hear his voice palpably change. He said that his wife and he were both nuts about true crime TV. One of their faves was Snapped!, a show about female murderers. This impressed me no end because I'd never heard of the series, and there's not much that escapes me in the true crime world.

Actually I'm utterly typical. Once, in a Borders Bookstore, I was buying a Jack Olson book. I think it may have been Son (one of his best). When I brought it to the counter, the clerk lit up like a juke box. Turns out she'd read it, and she started raving about it, then asked me if I'd read his earlier ones. Of course I had. We fell on each other like lost sisters, and began talking back and forth about all the other true crime authors and books we'd read. We were overheard, and other women gradually crept closer, then joined us. By the time I broke away, there were seven or eight women gathered together, all chattering like magpies about their personal favorites.

I have nothing but anecdotal evidence to go on, but if I were a betting woman, I'd bet 85% of the true-crime readers in America are women. As I told my husband, I think it's because women are at such risk of becoming victims themselves. We become drawn to these books, hoping to game a rather hideous status quo. When I first started picking up true crime paperbacks, I always read while second-guessing accounts of the victims' actions and reactions. Would I have done that? Would I have believed that? Would I have fallen in love with him? Sometimes my answer was Yes, absolutely. Sometimes it was, Jeez, lady, get a clue. Did I think all my reading and cogitating gave me an advantage in this dangerous world? Maybe I did.

When the chips were down, all my research was no help at all in sparing me from violence. If there's one thing many true crime shows reveal convincingly, it's that there's nothing intriguing or clever about most of the evil done. Murder most foul, assaults and rapes are generally committed by the dull, the impatient, and the greedy...most often upon the overly-sympathetic, the weak, the credulous, and the unguarded. And it's in this last category where I belonged one late spring afternoon. I walked to my car, enjoying the day, not noticing a car circling the parking lot, not seeing the boy who jumped out of it.

Who came running at me like a demon. Who came like hell itself.