True Crime Consumers Are the Answer

The media will chase the eyeballs and ears of true crime consumers if they give attention marginalized victims. The votes, the politicians and law enforcement resources will follow.

By Jayson Blair and Raul Montero

Downloads drop a few times a year for true crime podcasters. Thanksgiving. The week of Christmas. And when we do episodes on Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. Some of us have seen declines of 20 percent to 30 percent. A similar decline can happen when published episodes about other marginalized victims, like sex workers, even when they are associated with cases like the Long Island Serial Killer.

This problem does not just occur in the media; it extends to the criminal justice system’s response. Just like podcasters are motivated by following the downloads, law enforcement is incentivized by their political masters to chase certain cases. Both politicians and the media are driven by the tastes, interests and focuses of the communities they serve.

Ashley Loring Heavyrunner is an Indigenous woman who disappeared in Browning, Montana, in 2018. Ashley wanted to become an advocate for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women before she became one. Journalist Payne Lindsey brought attention to her case.

Young white female victims who level middle-class lives, like Gabby Petito, Natalie Hollway, Laci Peterson, and JonBenet Ramsey, take up a disproportionate amount of space in the zeitgeist. At the same time, sex workers like Valerie Mack and Jessica Taylor, Natives like Zach Randall-Shorty and Melissa Montoya and drug addicts like D.J. Fickey fit the profile of those most likely to become victims of crimes, yet receive little coverage.

Missing and Murdered White Woman Syndrome and the resulting media coverage is a real thing, according to research. But it does not fully capture the challenge. Not even all white women get coverage if they do not fit the girl-next-door suburban or wealthy urban profile we have become accustomed to seeing on the front page and the nightly news. Human trafficking is no doubt a thing. But it’s more likely to get documentary treatment when it is a suburban white woman who runs away and has tricked into sex work by a pimp pretending to be her boyfriend than when it fits the more common profile of Asian women being trafficked into the United States or Moldovan women being trafficked into Western Europe to be trafficked through things like massage parlors and brothels.

We recognize the names of Valerie, Jessica, Zach, Melissa, and D.J. because influential people have brought attention to their cases. The FBI announced progress in Zach and Melissa’s cases for the first time in years after Gabby Petito’s parents, Jim and Nichole Schmidt, invited Zach’s mom, Vangie Randall-Shorty and Melissa’s friend, Darlene Gomez, to CrimeCon in Nashville in 2024. Atlanta-area podcaster Robert Parmer, the host of The Broken System Podcast, brought attention to D.J.’s case when he connected with his sister. D.J. struggled with drug addiction, and his death, so obviously a murder, had been ruled a suicide by Alamba authorities who refused to re-open the case after media pressure.

Against all odds, talented journalists like Payne Lindsey, the host of the podcast Up and Vanished, have brought attention to cases like the disappearance of Ashley Loring Heavyrunner, a 20-year-old who wanted to become an advocate for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women before she became one when she disappeared in Browning, Montana in 2017. Journalists like Connie Walker have had a similar impact. Walker, the host of Stolen, covered the disappearance of Jermain Charlo, a 22-year-old Indigenous woman who stepped out of a bar in downtown Missoula, Montana, in 2018, never to be seen again by her family and friends.

Media attention and law enforcement resources followed interest in these cases and helped narrow the list of suspects. While Charlo and Heavyrunner’s cases have not been solved, the police have dramatically narrowed the list of potential things that could have happened and the list of suspects.

In 2024, Missoula, Montana, police released grainy surveillance footage of Jermain Charlo, 22, who went missing in 2018. Her ex-boyfriend, who has not been named as a suspect in the case, is standing behind her. Connie Walker’s podcast, Stolen, brought renewed attention to the case.

One of the challenges for true crime creators who care about these issues but are not reporters is that the lack of mainstream media reporting on the cases of the marginalized makes it challenging to cover the cases. Look no further than the disappearances of the Jack Family, an Indigenous father, Ronald, mother, Doreen, and two sons, Russell and Ryan, who vanished in British Columbia in August 1989.

The disappearance is linked to what is known as the Highway of Tears, a part of Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, where there are many other unsolved crimes against Indigenous Canadians.

An example of where this type of journalistic advocacy, the drive to, as Adolph Ochs, the former publisher of The New York Times, put it to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable,” made a difference was the case of the Long Island Serial Killer, who appears to almost exclusively targeted sex workers, likely killing dozens upon dozens of women over decades in the New York Metropolitan area with law enforcement not even knowing or believing that some of the victims were missing.

Gabby Petito (Left) was murdered in a domestic violence incident. Gabby's four parents ( (Joe Petito, Tara Petito, Nichole Schmidt, Jim Schmidt) have used their platform to put a focus on domestic violence and marginalized victims.

On a late spring evening in 2010, Shannan Gilbert ran through the oceanfront community of Oak Beach, New York, screaming for her life and went missing. No one who had heard of her disappearance thought much about her. She was an escort who found business on Craigslist. The Suffolk County Police Department also seemed to pay little attention. It was even the same seven months later when a search for Shannan on nearby Gilgo Beach turned up four sets of remains of other 20-something women – Melissa Barthelemy, Megan Waterman, Amber Lynn Costello and Maureen Brainard-Barnes – who had all disappeared between 2009 and 2010. All had advertised on Craigslist or its competitor, Backpage. Two more sets of remains were found soon after, and the case was eventually linked to the case.

It soon became apparent that if media had paid more attention and law enforcement had put more effort into several disappearances and sets of remains found in the 1980s and 1990s, Melissa, Megan, Amber, Maureen and the other later victims may have avoided what now appears to be days of torture before their murders and dumping along beaches and parks across the region.

Maureen Brainard-Barnes, 25, of Norwich, Connecticut, was last seen on July 9, 2007, when she said she would spend the day in New York City. Her disappearance was not covered in the media until her body was found on Gilgo Beach, New York, in 2011. The accused Long Island Serial Killer has been charged with her murder.

You would think that the 2010 disappearance of a 24-year-old woman working as an escort on Long Island that led to the discovery of six more sets of remains would capture worldwide attention. However, it was not until Robert Kolker, a long-term contributor to The New York Times Magazine, wrote the bestselling book Lost Girls, which humanized the victims.

Even after Lost Girls, the Suffolk police, who had kicked out the FBI, its Behavioral Analysis Unit and its Cellular Analysis Survey Team earlier in the investigation, seemed to pay little attention to the cases. Our exploration of the case suggests that the BAU and CAST had nailed the geographic profile of where the suspect likely lived, knew the car he likely drove and identified other key details more than 12 years before a Long Island architect named Rex Heuermann was arrested for several of the murders. We wanted to scream each time we saw the local news on Long Island cover a story about ducks crossing a road. A small group of journalists like Kohler continued to push, and eventually, a new Suffolk County District Attorney created a task force and threw resources into solving the case.

Even once the coverage came to the Long Island Serial Killer case, it was clear there still needed to be a more significant amount of empathy toward victims and their loved ones. As Julie Murray, the sister of Maura Murray, a 21-year-old who disappeared in New Hampshire in 2004, put it, we need to engage with more empathy. It costs nothing to be both truthful and kind.

Those of us who are creators in the true crime community and law enforcement need to do more to put ourselves in the shoes of people who do not look like us to bring awareness, resolution and justice to this case. However, we will not change the fact that creators follow what listeners want, and politicians respond to the voters who elect them. So, ultimately, this starts and ends with listeners giving the eyeballs, ears and votes to those who will comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable and advocate for those considered the least among us.

Jayson Blair hosts The Silver Linings Handbook podcast and is a former journalist for the Boston Globe, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

Raul Montero is an advocate for marginalized victims who has extensively pursued the Long Island Serial Killer and has built a visual database of missing persons and unidentified remains across the United States.