The Opinions - My Sister’s Murder Isn’t for Your Entertainment

Episode Date: January 27, 2025

In 1993, Polly Klaas was kidnapped and murdered at the age of 12. Following her death, Polly’s tragic story became a plotline in true crime podcasts, TV shows and books. In this audio essay, Polly��s sister Annie Nichol argues that the popularization of true crime not only re-traumatized victims’ families but also helped create demand for “tough on crime” legislation. “Our legal system actually became more reactionary and more fixated on punishment and fundamentally less just,” she says.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail]. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. My name is Annie Nichol, and I'm a writer and an advocate for survivor-centered justice and healing and public policy. If you were aware of the news in the 1990s, chances are you remember the name of my sister, Polly Class. I was six when a stranger broke into our house and abducted Polly from our bedroom. She was 12. And over the next two months, there was a nationwide search for her. The story around her kidnapping became a national spectacle.

News crews were camped out on our doorstep for weeks on end, and her name was just constantly in the headlines and being mentioned on news programs. every night. Tragically, the investigation ended with the discovery of her death. Her killer was caught and convicted, but that was really only the beginning of the sensationalism. As I got older, I started realizing there were strange ways people were telling my sister's story in ways that made her kind of unrecognizable to me. And what I want people to understand about true creation, is that this isn't a benign form of entertainment. We all know people who consume true crime.

There are plenty of people that I love and respect who do, but I think not enough people are aware of what it's like for victims and survivors to have their stories exploited and commodified for entertainment. Polly's kidnapping coincided with this trend of true crime, becoming an increasingly prominent part of Main Street media. Who committed this crime?

Why was this woman killed? There are just countless books, docu-series. It is a case that has haunted the public for more than 13 years. TV shows. Why would two guys from South Florida drive 500 miles to kill somebody they don't know? It is one of the greatest unsolved crimes in history. And dramatizations that recount in very graphic detail the worst things that have ever happened to real people. And given how much true crime is driven by this insatiable demand for it,

it's important that we reckon with the harm that it causes. And I'm acutely aware of how the media's obsessions with high-profile cases are often used to justify the expansion of mass incarceration and how they can contribute to these broader injustices in our criminal legal system, which is certainly the greatest harm of all. It was difficult for me to feel a sense of justice in the decades after Polly's death. Even though her case was solved and the person responsible for her death had been convicted, I grew up watching politicians weaponize my sister's innocence and use her death to pass three strikes laws, which have dramatically worsened our crisis of mass incarceration

over the past three decades. And to me, it felt like as true crime became more of a mainstream obsession, our legal system actually became more reactionary and more fixated on punishment and fundamentally less just. And this is why we can't talk about true crime without thinking, about the collateral consequences on our legal system, because one of the consequences of sensationalizing these high-profile cases is that the public perception of national crime rates actually become dramatically inflated when crime rates have actually been in decline for decades. We end up with

these punitive policies that are created to address a distorted perception of a problem rather than the empirical reality of how harm happens. There have been numerous true crime productions and books about Polly over the years, but I've never once been asked for my consent from the people making these projects who go on to profit off of our trauma. But in the past few years, a few have reached out to ask me for my memories. And, you know, aside from how manipulative those messages invariably were, they would often offer up details about the case that I had tried to avoid in service of my own healing. And recently, I remember just how angry and helpless I felt, you know, just lying awake at night, trying to calm my nervous system and just wishing I could find.

some way to explain to these people that my memories of Polly are all that I have left of her, that haven't been exploited for public consumption. It honestly stunned me that they would have the audacity to ask for something so private and precious. To truly dismantle cycles of harm, we need to amplify survivor's stories on their own terms, and we need to embrace the solutions that they're pioneering in their own. own communities. I work with a survivor-led organization called Crime Survivors for Safety and Justice, and they advocate for policy change and safety solutions like establishing trauma recovery centers in the most vulnerable communities and re-entry services, which are all an essential part of

public safety. Through this work, I've learned that listening to survivors shouldn't feel like watching a Marvel movie. It shouldn't be an adrenaline-fueled experience that makes your heart race. When you're truly listening to survivors with care, your heart should be slowing down. I believe that is the only way that new dimensions of justice and healing can become imaginable for us. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. This show is produced by Derek Arthur, Sophia Alvarez Boyd, Vichaca, Phoebe Lett, Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek, and Annie Rose Strasser. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Saburo, and Afim Shapiro.

Additional music by Amin Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta, Christina Samuelski, and Adrian Rivera. The executive producer of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Dresser.