March 1, 2023, 7:56 AM
March 1, 2023, 7:56 AM
The case of the disappearance and death of British Nicola Bulley has put the spotlight on the disturbing explosion of ‘amateur’ detectives who, fueled by fantasies from true crime series, believe they can do police work from TikTok.
When Nicola Bulley, a 45-year-old mortgage counselor, disappeared in late January — she apparently “vanished into thin air,” leaving her cell phone abandoned at a bank in the middle of a work call — the initial media coverage was low-key.
Three weeks later, when his body was foundthe case saturated the traditional media and a macabre race had broken out on social networks to see who would solve it.
Detectives worked from the beginning on the hypothesis that Bulley, a married woman and mother of two girls, se had fallen into a nearby river and drowned.
But the divers’ initial inability to find the body It was the starting signal for fans of the world of ‘true crime’ (true crimes) to start speculating about what had supposedly happened, to the despair of the family.
Network coverage reached its zenith when a TikTok user recorded himself digging up potential burial sites and even captured the moment Bulley’s body was finally pulled from the river.
David Schmid, Associate Professor at the University at Buffaloin the United States, believes that the Nicola Bulley case attracted the attention of trainee detectives, who are common in cases in their country.
“People try to get more involved in these cases (…) investigate and offer different angles and perspectives on the crime,” the professor explained to AFP.
Interest in the true crime phenomenon of the past decade has skyrocketed thanks to the multitude of shows on the subject, including the 2014 “Serial” podcast and the “Making a Murderer” documentary series on wrongful convictions, Schmid explains. .
Both shows demonstrate “a new type of public interest directly to work on cold cases (already closed) or those in which the public feels that there was an error by Justice”.
Adnan Syed, an American who spent 23 years in prison for the murder of his ex-girlfriend, was acquitted last year by a judge after “Serial” drew worldwide attention to his case by offering new evidence of his innocence.
But although most of true crime productions they have treated the cases with respect and ethics, the current trend would be moving towards sensationalism, considers the professor.
As an illustrative example, the Netflix serial “Dahmer” about a serial killer, which caused a sensation in many countries and was highly criticized by those close to the victims.
“Any of us are one traumatic event away from the worst day of our lives becoming your neighbor’s favorite show,” lamented Eric Perry, a relative of Errol Lindsey, one of Dahmer’s victims.
The implication of amateur detectives — aided by new technologies and online databases, and operating outside the rules of traditional media — is also raising concerns about the possible destruction of evidence or the potential harm caused to people wrongly flagged as suspects.
“We see a lot of crime in fiction, we get caught up, and part of the joy is thinking about the cases and solving them,” says Amanda Keeler, a professor of digital media at Marquette University in Wisconsin.
“But there is this dconnection between a TV show and real people. It’s just not the same.”
Schmid believes that one of the most troubling aspects of the end of the Nicola Bulley case is the “almost palpable sense of disappointment” that, in the end, it turned out to be nothing more than a tragic accident.
“Where are we as a society when we are so desperate (…) to consume the trauma of others that we are almost disappointed that it wasn’t murder?” he wonders.
