The True-Crime Lens Has Now Turned to the True-Crime Obsessives

The true crime genre has always invited — encouraged, really — audience participation. America’s Most Wanted, which has returned roughly a decade after its original cancellation, regularly called on viewers to phone in their tips; in the early 2000s, shows like iDetective featured a quiz component between commercial breaks. The advent of YouTube and podcasting then gave crime buffs an opportunity to be crime show hosts, and the rest is “potential decline of civilization” history.

The true-crime machine now feeds and is fed by those who were once on the sidelines, so much so that popular dramedies like Only Murders in the Building and Based on a True Story make winking commentary about the symbiotic relationship between the two parties. But 2024 marks the most meta development yet, as multiple true-crime documentaries center those obsessed with true crime.

February has already seen the debuts of Cybersleuths: The Idaho Murders on Paramount+ and They Called Him Mostly Harmless on Max, two documentaries that put the “digital detectives” at the center of the action. Their approaches are distinct; Lucie Jourdan, who directs the three-part Cybersleuths, shows a morbid fascination with these no-longer-relegated-to-the-armchair “investigators.” As Joe Reid writes, she seems “content to step back from such moments of accidental truth, as if she can’t believe [the amateur crime-solvers] just said that out loud.” It’s not quite a “give ’em enough rope” attitude — though, when certain cybersleuths push alternate theories out of a desire to keep the investigation (and, for them, excitement) going, rather than to find the real culprit(s), it’s hard to see how those quotes could be taken out of context.

Amateur sleuth documentaries are hardly a recent development, though we’d argue that they reached their high-water mark in 2017 with Netflix’s The Keepers. But with whole networks dedicated to true-crime programming and this sudden confluence of shows that lean on amateur detectives when they start to run light on revelations, it feels like we’ve reached a turning point. Indeed, Max’s They Called Him Mostly Harmless, which premiered February 8, would amount to little more than a Wikipedia entry, were it not for the feuding online communities that fill out the feature-length doc.

The ostensible subject of Patricia E. Gillespie’s documentary is a hiker on the Appalachian trail known to the community alternately as “Denim” and “Mostly Harmless.” More experienced hikers and “trail angels” who encountered Mostly Harmless were usually surprised by how laden he was with winter clothes and other accessories; they didn’t realize that the man, who died in July 2018, had effectively run away from his life.

They Called Him Mostly Harmless sputters less than halfway through its relatively succinct (just 89 minutes) run time, as law enforcement all but throws its hands up at learning the hiker’s true identity. The man, whose emaciated body was found in a tent in the Big Cypress National Preserve, didn’t make it easy: He had no phone or anything else that could identify him, though he did have over $3,000 cash on him and what looked like plenty of food, which further flabbergasted the hiking community and investigators. The doc then focuses on the online detectives who became increasingly desperate — and vicious — in uncovering his identity.

On a purely narrative level, the change in gear makes sense — there’s ultimately more shock and drama to be found among these online factions, who really fueled the investigation. There was a kind of coup in a Facebook group once frequented by Christie Harris (who used to dream of being an FBI agent), which led to bad blood between her and Natasha Teasley, another commenter obsessed with learning Mostly Harmless’ real name. But their efforts, along with those in other online groups, did lead to significant breaks in the case, as well as the $5,000 needed to get a DNA profile from Othram, a genetics company. If working with cybersleuths is a devil’s bargain, you could say this one was worth it.

Mostly Harmless’ identity has been established and can now be readily found online; his tale is tinged with tragedy and disrepute, making the self-applied moniker almost ironic. But without the infighting among the digital detectives, the documentary would find it hard to justify even its feature length. Like Jourdan, Gillespie is mostly a detached observer; she lets viewers draw their own conclusions about the dangers of being too online or becoming too wrapped up in true crime, and the propensity for projection and romanticization of white victims of crime. (Though, without giving too much away, Mostly Harmless doesn’t really fall into that category.)

It’s CW’s Crime Nation, which premiered Tuesday night, that ventures a step further. In “A Town Torn Apart by Murder,” the docuseries picks up the investigation into the 2017 murders of Abigail Williams and Liberty "Libby" German in Delphi, Indiana. There’s little resolution to be found here; the premiere episode underscores how little progress law enforcement has made in the case, as well as its past missteps. It’s much more effective as a documentary of the “mind rot” that can grow among a community, whether it’s an online one or a small town, after unimaginable tragedy.

Several YouTube creators were interviewed for the Crime Nation premiere; some, like Richard Snay (host of Delphi After Dark), have followed the murder investigation from the beginning, providing commentary that’s run the gamut from helpful to “resulted in a restraining order.” Self-proclaimed activists like Julie Melvin and Kelli Brown reveal in talking heads just how ensnared (and willingly so) they became in the investigations of suspects like Kegan Kline. The cybersleuths closest to the case were also the ones burned by it, another cautionary tale in a whole slew of them.

The Delphi murders essentially turned “neighbor against neighbor.” The botched police investigation, which is still ongoing, created paranoia among residents, who pointed the finger at each other. It led to, as Snay himself states, a “witch hunt on steroids.” Or, as Julie Melvin describes it: “This is a story about evil — evil that was done to the girls, and evil that we’ve done to each other.”

The consequences of the inept investigation and the division it fomented in the otherwise tightly knit community is certainly worth noting in a true-crime docuseries, particularly one whose title implies that we’ve become a “crime nation” — spectators to the harm that befalls others; fearful that we may become the next victims, yet insistent upon learning all of the details of others’ misfortunes. With nine episodes left in the season, Crime Nation is poised to deepen that exploration. Or, like the citizens of its proposed “country,” the docuseries could just move on to the next calamity. But it's clear that the line between true-crime shows and true-crime audiences will only continue to vanish.

Danette Chavez is the Editor-in-Chief of Primetimer and its biggest fan of puns.