True crime communities, broken trust and neoliberal empires

On Thursday the 23rd of June 2022, I was told by an acquaintance and fellow true crime community member to check out recent news about Billy Jensen. Billy Jensen for those of you who don’t know is a podcast host and self-acclaimed victims advocate. According to his website (which I am not linking)

“Billy Jensen is an investigative journalist focused on unsolved murders and missing persons. But after seventeen years of writing hundreds of stories with no endings, he was fed up—and decided to try to solve the murders and find the missing himself. It worked. Combining the shoe-leather investigative work and skills he learned reporting crime with techniques honed from his day job as a digital executive, Jensen has solved or helped solve ten homicides and helped locate missing persons.”

Jensen hosts two true crime podcasts, The First Degree and (the now discontinued) The Murder Squad. (I’m going to focus on The Murder Squad as I’ve never listened to T_he First Degree_.)

The Murder Squad #

The Murder Squad podcast describes itself as follows

“Each week ride shotgun with retired cold case investigator Paul Holes and investigative journalist Billy Jensen as they attempt to solve an unsolved murder case using a variety of methods, from routine shoe-leather work to advanced technologies like familial DNA searches and social media geotargeting. But their secret weapon in the search for justice is staring right at this page.

You have been watching and listening to stories about violent crimes and investigations for years. Now is the time to put all of that knowledge and wits to good use to actually help solve a crime. Welcome to the Murder Squad.”

Essentially, with the knowledge and skills of Holes and Jensen, they present cold cases that they think can be solved with the help of their listeners. And to a degree, they have had some success. (Again, information about their successes in finding genuine leads and forwarding them to the relevant police agencies is available online but I won’t be linking to them due to recent allegations). However, listeners and fans of the podcast were left disappointed and confused when Exactly Right, the podcast network The Murder Squad belongs to, announced in a tweet on the 20th of May that the podcast was ending and episodes would no longer be available after August 2022. The ability for people to reply to the tweet has been turned off.

Losing The Murder Squad felt like a huge blow to the true crime community. When people who don’t understand why/how people can listen to and be interested in true crime, many would point to podcasts like The Murder Squad that actively help to solve cold cases, many of which focus on the disappearance or murder of minorities who did not receive the same level of mainstream press due to the press’s alleged preference to cover cases that fall into the ‘missing white woman syndrome‘. (There’s a lot to unpack in that phrase which is far beyond the scope of this specific post).

The allegations #

The situation is murky and confusing. Everything is alleged and I am not stating one way or another if something did or did not happen. I’m not looking to be sued, I’m only relaying information that is publically available online. From what I can gather, two well-known female podcasters were disposed in a legal matter which involved an employee of Exactly Right suing the company for how they handled her (the employee’s) complaint against the sexual misconduct of Jensen. Again, I’m not stating one way or another what happened.

Exactly Right and My Favorite Murder #

Many people have taken to social media to ask if Exactly Right will release a statement about what has happened considering Jensen claims to have been fired by the network for unknown reasons. Specifically, people are wondering if Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark are going to comment on the matter. Kilgariff and Hardstark are the hosts of the true crime comedy podcast My Favorite Murder, where the Exactly Right network all began, making them the founders of the network. With The Murder Squad as Exactly Right‘s flagship podcast, many feel that it is Kilgariff and Hardstark’s responsibility to comment on the issue at hand to provide their listeners with clarity. Some people are hurt that Kilgariff and Hardstark have yet to speak about this matter.

Kilgariff and Hardstark have built nothing short of an empire by sharing and highlighting stories of incredible survival, solved and unsolved cases. They have continuously advocated for the need for people to be vigilant about their safety and to “pepper spray first, apologise later”, and often donate large sums of money to charities and organisations from women’s shelters to LGBTQ organisations to trying to end the backlog of rape kits. The My Favorite Murder brand is quite large, with a variety of clothing lines, houseware and accessories available on their store sporting famous phrases used on the podcast such as “stay sexy and don’t get murdered”, “fuck politeness” and “sit crooked and talk straight“.

Some critics will say that this seems like a cash grab that profits on the deaths and disappearances of people, others will say that it normalises feelings of engaging in morbid interests as a way to educate oneself about doing what you can to minimise risk. Similarly, some will say that true crime brands are a side effect of a neoliberal society that has always profited from the glorification of violence (mostly towards women). Again, others will argue that the true crime community is a safe place where people can unite with a common interest and actively work to bring about justice. It is of course not appropriate to attribute the actions of Jenson to Kilgariff and Hardstark. However, supporters of Exactly Right and those within the wider true crime community are confused and hurt and have had their trust broken.

The true crime community’s outrage #

It’s always a blow to any community when a well-known and well-respected figure is accused of alleged sexual misconduct. But there is something particularly hurtful when that influential figure is within the true crime community. As someone who has advocated for victims and spoken at length about injustice, it has come as a huge shock and major disappointment for the true-crime community that Jensen has been accused of alleged sexual misconduct. It is also worrying for some that he was provided with a platform in a community that is predominately made up of women. Further, the true crime community has been expressing its outrage at the silence from official parties (Exactly Right, Kilgariff, Hardstark etc).

From Jensen’s own catchphrase to “get loud” about injustices to a network that has built itself on the back of advocacy, the true-crime community is hurt at the lack of honesty and transparency.