Woman's Hour - True Crime Under Investigation

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

We are currently experiencing a boom in true crime, with countless TV documentaries about cases like the Yorkshire Ripper, the murder of Jill Dando, the disappearance of Madeleine McCann and podcasts such as Serial, The Teacher’s Pet and My Favourite Murder. Not only are women usually the victims of these infamous crimes, but they are also the main consumers of the genre. So why are we so fascinated by true crime? Jane speaks to criminologist Dr Gemma Flynn, ex-police officer and Crimewatch presenter Jacqui Hames, All Killa No Filla podcast host Rachel Fairburn and to magazine editor Julia Davis, whose latest title Crime Monthly hit the news stands last month.What is the appeal of reflecting on the grisly detail of violent crime? And how do we ensure that the victims and survivors are not ignored in the clamour to analyse a killer's motives or pathology? Jane speaks to Mo Lea who survived a brutal attack for which Peter Sutcliffe is the prime suspect, and to Carol Ann Lee who has written the book Somebody's Mother, Somebody's Daughter which highlights the stories of the women who's lives were devastated by Sutcliffe.Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Laura NorthedgeInterviewed Guest: Dr Gemma Flynn Interviewed Guest: Julia Davis Interviewed Guest: Jacqui Hames Interviewed Guest: Rachel Fairburn Interviewed Guest: Mo Lea Interviewed Guest: Carol Ann Lee

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2, and of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme, peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and welcome to the Woman's Hour podcast, Monday the 22nd of April 2019. This is a bank holiday edition of the programme on the subject of women and true crime. We're looking at the books, at the TV shows, Making a Murderer, maybe you followed that one, on Netflix. Did you see the Madeleine McCann documentary on Netflix?

Did you listen to the podcast Serial? Do you watch the true crime shows that both ITV and the BBC make regularly? You may well have seen the Jill Dando programme, for example, on BBC One recently. Now there's also a new magazine, Crime Monthly. It's aimed squarely at women and its editor is on this edition of Woman's Hour. So why do we love all this stuff and why do we feel guilty about it? And I think it's really important to say that we also talk about victims and to a victim, to one in particular, Mo Lee, who survived an attack by Peter Sutcliffe,

the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper. Good morning. Welcome to Bank Holiday Monday's edition of Woman's Hour. Now, this is not a live show, but we do still want your views on what you're about to hear. So you can use Twitter at BBC Woman's Hour. You can email the programme via our website, bbc.co.uk slash woman's hour. The subject today is true crime. You might think, perhaps a bit like me, that it wasn't really your cup of tea and then I actually got to be honest with myself about my consumption of this stuff. So I have seen Making a Murderer, the Madeleine McCann documentaries,

for example. I did watch the BBC One show about the unsolved murder of Jill Dando. I have listened to the Serial podcast. So I love it too, and I suspect many of you do. So why do we enjoy this stuff? And why do some of us feel a bit guilty about it? And we'll talk about the victims of true crime. You will hear this morning from a woman called Mo Lee, who survived an absolutely terrible, violent attack by Peter Sutcliffe, the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper. Let's start then with an attempt to work out why women are fascinated by true crime.

Dr Gemma Flynn is a criminologist at Edinburgh University. She's in our studio in Chicago, where she's lecturing at the moment. Jackie Hames is a former police officer and presenter of Crime Watch. And first up, Julia Davis, editor of the new magazine Crime Monthly. Julia, this was your idea. Why did you want this magazine? Myself and my assistant editor on one of my other magazines were constantly talking about the true crime programmes that we watched and the podcasts we listened to and the features we read.

And we were absolutely fascinated by them. We'd debate them, play the armchair sleuths. And then we realised everybody else was as well. And actually, anecdotally at first, we realised it had become a big thing. Well, it's always been a big thing. It's always been a big thing. But now, obviously, we have so many TV channels and we have so many different types of media where we can consume anything including true crime so i

think the advent of netflix and the great big crime shows on there like making a murderer and the keepers you know that really sparked off something and some really big podcasts actually got to emphasize that the crimely is a women's magazine. That's right. It's not general interest. It's women's. Why? Well, again, it sort of started out anecdotally.

We work with mainly women and we realised we were all listening to and watching true crime. And so we did some research into it and we found that it is predominantly women that are consuming true crime. Can I ask, do we as women consume true crime with female victims on the whole or are we not bothered? I think it's a mixture.

I mean, again, going back to Making a Murderer, which is one of the biggest true crime TV shows ever, that, well, there was a female victim, absolutely, but was very much centred around the perpetrator or alleged perpetrator. I wouldn't particularly say that, but perhaps there is a slant thinking about it. And I think it's the whole thing about facing your fears.

I think that women have sort of grown up with the idea of a threat of violence. The whole, you know, walking down a street at night with, you know, somebody walking behind you, a dark car park. We've always had to think of these things. Okay, the facts are that women are, yes, more likely to be the victim of violent crime perpetrated by an intimate partner or relative, but men are overwhelmingly more likely to be the victims of violent crime. To be hurt by a stranger. Yeah. I think, I mean, a lot of it's perceived, isn't it?

I don't know about yourselves, but, you know, as a teenager, certainly we were all, you know, terribly worried about stranger crime, about rape and murder. Well, we're made to be. Yes, well, partly that is the case. But also, you know, there is a vulnerability there. You know, without victim blaming, we have to be sensible. We are vulnerable.

But I do understand entirely what you're saying. I understand what you're saying too. But statistically, and I do think we can't say this often enough, men are more likely to be murdered in this country. I think it's pretty substantial figures. I mean, there's simply no denying that. So Gemma, what do you think? Tell us, why are women apparently more interested than men in true crime? I'm very, very interested in the point that you just make there that we

actually aren't as vulnerable to violent crime but we are interested in this and you talk a little bit about the perception that we feel about fear of crime. Partly this is something which is created and encouraged by these representations of violent crime and true crime sort of magazines and movies and books and things. There's some really, really compelling research from about 10 years ago, actually about the show Crime Watch, in which some researchers looked at the ways in which women felt after they had viewed Crime Watch episodes where there was an overt focus on stranger danger, random attacks of sexual violence and murder against women.

It was found statistically that there was much more emphasis on the programme on these particular crimes than the statistical picture of violence actually represented. We've got Jackie here, so let's ask her, were you conscious of that? It was of huge significance, really, the whole issue of fear of crime. And the whole production team were very sensitive to the fact that depicting these crimes and reconstructing them could raise fear of crime around them. The difficulty you've got is the type of crime that women are victims of and the type of crime that men are victims of. And invariably, it tends to be, as you say, a partner or a stranger attack, although the chances of that are still very, very small, infinitesimally small, actually. Thank goodness for that. Which is why we can still reel off all those names.

Yes. But in fact, as you say, young men involved in a fight, whether knives are used or a gang-type crime, are very difficult to put together as a reconstruction. And invariably there isn't an e-fit or something that you can show. So we could only feature crimes when there was a story, when there was something to show, some evidential idea. I'm glad you said that, because this is telly. Exactly.

Crime Watch, hugely successful show, it's telly. You've got to have the pictures, you've got to have the story. And we know as well from newspapers, it's certainly true of newspapers, that if, tragically, if a young blonde woman is murdered in the UK,

chances are, depending on what else is going on in the world, that story will dominate news bulletins for days. Young black lad, no. Absolutely right. And there is a big debate still, even in this day and age, to be had around that. The producer guidelines around Crime Watch

were very, very strict in the way that they were shown, the way that the reconstructions were put together. There was no music. I don't know about the later years. It wasn't stylised, was it? It wasn't stylised. The use of weapons, the use of violence was very minimal because it wasn't necessary to show that.

And what we were trying to do was solve the crime. It's all very well, people like me, and I was thinking about this before doing this programme, I was a bit snooty about this subject matter. I thought, I'm not interested in this kind of thing. And then I realised just how interested I was based on my consumption of podcasts in particular, actually, lately. Gemma, I put it to you that as a criminologist, you are also very interested in true crime. That's right. Absolutely. But I'm interested in, you know, critiques of the criminal justice system and the problems within. I'm interested in absolutely what's actually happening with crime, which is why I'm very interested in the fact that

women still have very, very heightened levels of fear of crime, despite the fact that crime is low. Certainly, it's still very, very, very much the case that men are overwhelmingly much more likely to be attacked violently. They're much more likely to be murdered. You know, if you looked at the data, really, women should be walking men home. You know, there's just a huge, huge, huge misconception around all of this. I'm glad you said that. Because the last thing I want is to make women listening to this more fearful than they need to be. And the truth is, your chances of being attacked, thank God, are really, really small. In your experience, honestly, why do you think women indulge their interest in true crime? I think that there is something self-perpetuating about this that basically, you know, as you've all mentioned, yeah, we are subject to certain feelings of fear

of crime, which are, you know, in turn created by some of these products. But there is that impulse, isn't there, if you feel fearful to kind of face this stuff, to look it in the eye and really understand what's happening with it. There are lots of classic pieces of criminological work which suggest that our drive to look at crime is really all about understanding, you know, the moral limits of our society and understanding our own fears. But the thing that really, really interests me is that these are in turn kind of created by these products. So it can be a bit of a cycle.

Well, we did ask last week for listeners to tell us why they like true crime. And here's the view of one listener who says, I think true crime is about letting yourself into the mind of the criminal and becoming them. It allows you to let go of your sense of right and wrong and become the predator hunting the prey. I used to check myself when I got into this mindset because I knew it was wrong. But now I've come to the conclusion it's something we all have in us. Another listener says, I listen to these stories and podcasts, sometimes telly. And I've been thinking about why.

I think I listen for the same reason I watch fictional crime, the desire for a resolution and justice prevailing. I want the perpetrator to be caught and taken out of society and some healing for the victims. In a crazy world, I find it therapeutic to view the process. What do you think about that, Julia? I think it's really interesting. I mean, for me personally, I think it's an emotional connection.

It's sort of the emotion of what a victim and the victim's family go through. That, for me, is what's behind it, I think. And also, as one of your listeners said, the armchair detective thing, trying to work it out. We're going to hear now from someone who survived an attack by the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe

in 1980. This is Mo Lee. I should say she was an art student in Leeds at the time, and it's important for you to know that Peter Sutcliffe has never been charged with that crime. You'll hear what Mo makes of that in the course of this interview. Also involved is an author called Carol Ann Lee. She's the woman who's written a book called Somebody's Mother, Somebody's Daughter.

And Carol Ann is passionate about putting victims at the heart of what she writes about true crime. First of all, I asked Mo what had happened to her. It was Saturday night and the boyfriend that I was with went to London for a CND march, so I was on my own. But I arranged to meet my friends anyway and went out and we were conscious of me getting the last bus home. We had a few drinks and then we parted in Headingley by the park because I had to go into town to get my bus, and they were concerned. Are you going to be all right? I said, yeah, fine, no problems at all.

And then I walked through the university grounds. So I got to the university clock tower and decided to take a shortcut, and as I approached, I realised that there was a street light out so I started to pace myself and then this this voice came from behind me hello hi really friendly I thought it's obviously someone I know they definitely know me because they're so friendly and it was dark so I stopped and I turned around and I walked towards him and he started chatting and I realised I didn't I didn't recognise this person. And then I sensed danger footsteps running behind me faster and faster and then I was absolutely like nightmare terror I knew I was in severe danger and then I heard this massive whack on the top of my head and now all I could see and from what I remember is the pavement coming up

towards my face and that's all that I remember. And when you came to, you were obviously, you were in hospital. Yeah. Actually, largely, you were only in hospital because of the intervention of a passing stranger. Yeah, apparently they'd heard me scream. They were at the end of the road and saw a man leaning over me. I was unconscious and he saw them and ran. Otherwise, it would have been the final blow for me. I was unconscious and he saw them and ran. Otherwise it would have been the final blow for me. I was so lucky, really lucky. What was the reaction of the people in hospital? Well, I was really very badly, badly bruised and bloodied and cut and swollen and my hair was

bloodstained. And I woke up in the morning and saw all these women staring at me. And one of them said, what have you done to deserve that? Did the police at that time connect what happened to you to Peter Sutcliffe? No. No. The police, either through embarrassment that another victim had arrived. Because there'd been many by then. There had been many by then, and Leeds was really in a state of almost lockdown,

and the women were frightened to go out, and the police just had no idea what was going on. Did you make a possible connection with Peter Sutcliffe? Not immediately, no. It wasn't Peter Sutcliffe? Not immediately, no. It wasn't until Sutcliffe was found, and I saw his face on the television screen, and it wasn't the iconic image of the wedding picture with the bow tie. It was when he left a police van and went into a courtroom,

and that's when I recognised that it was him. But I was ashamed. I was embarrassed. I felt guilty. I thought I'd been stupid for walking in the wrong place. A part of me felt I deserved it. Deserved it why? Because I'd gone out on my own and people were saying, well, you know, you go out on your own, what do you expect to happen? I certainly didn't expect to be nearly killed by a hammer and a screwdriver by a serial killer. men, including university lecturers and the police, and had a kind of misogynistic tone to speaking to young women. You know, we weren't taken seriously, I don't think. Well, I know you know Carol Ann Lee. Yes.

And your story is told in her book, Somebody's Mother, Somebody's Daughter. And Carol, the point of your book is to center the victims isn't it that's right i know that for understandable reasons most sees herself as a survivor rather than a victim but all too often in stories like this we forget about the people who lost their lives absolutely and i think perhaps more so with this case than any other um you know women were the victims, and yet they have been really sort of marginalised by the way the case has been discussed ever since it began, really,

ever since the murders and attacks started. And it became sort of exploration of male identity. You know, first of all, the focus was on the killer, and then it was on the male detectives and while of course there is scope for that it just seemed to be this endless rerunning of the same theme and I was never interested in Sutcliffe yes interested in the detectives and the detection to some degree and it just seemed to me that you know it was way beyond time to look at the women. But you have also written about female killers, Myra Hindley, Ruth Ellis.

Yes. Very different cases, of course, but nevertheless. These books sell, don't they? Which is, with the greatest respect, why people like you write them. Well, of course, it's partly that. But at the same time, when I wrote the book about Myra Hindley and Ruth Ellis, and approached the families, I was very nervous about that. And I, you know, I thought long and hard about how to do it. But they all welcomed that approach because I think people can tell the difference

between somebody who's genuinely interested in hearing their stories and letting their stories be heard correctly and factually correct, rather than, you know, just soundbites. So hopefully, I'm hoping what people take away from this book is something different, and very much stories like Mo's, women who've survived and show tremendous courage.

And for me, it just made Sutcliffe's life even less worthy. He was such a dull, uninteresting person. He really was, whereas all of these women, a lot of them had fought through poverty. Some of them had careers in front of them. Every single story was worthy of being told. Mo, do you judge or how would you judge somebody who gets in from a long day at work? They're absolutely knackered. They might pour themselves a drink and they indulge their interest in true crime of one sort or another, whether it's on the telly or box set binge or a podcast.

What do you think about it? Well, I like crime as fiction, you know, because often the victims are portrayed as fully rounded characters. Right, with a life. With a life. And that's the nature of that craft of writing. But true crime? True crime. I couldn't even watch a true crime story because it was just too raw. You know, there was no way that the person who attacked me could be prosecuted because there wasn't enough evidence.

And he still hasn't been prosecuted for attacking you. And he still hasn't. And that's another form of grief for me, to be fair. So you would like him to be charged? It would be useful. Yeah, it would make me feel better. But I've learned to live with the fact that that is highly unlikely. The problem that I see with true crime is the victims have a label and that's it in true crime. Victim. The victim.

They don't want to see the ingredients of that victim. They don't want to see the ingredients of that victim. They don't want to see their previous life or their past life. They want to see the trauma and the upset and the horror. And that in itself, I think, can be unpacked because how much truth is actually there? The police will cover things and the perpetrators will cover things, and I guess the fantasy is that the reader is finding out the facts as they leaf through the pages, which I can see is engaging.

But for me, I wouldn't be an area in the library I'd be drawn to go to. Carol Ann, what do you think about your readers? Who are they? Well, I mean, there's a really wide cross-section of readers. And, I mean, the ones that seem to contact me most are ex-detectives and police and so on. But I also have to say, I mean, obviously Mo's made very valid points there. But I do think if true crime is written correctly, then I think there is some value in it, or at least there should be some value in it. And that is one we should be able to hopefully learn from, you know, the mistakes that have been made. As Mo said, you know, how victims are labelled, how they don't have a past. So hopefully books that are written correctly

do go some way to writing that wrong. And the other thing is, you know, I think the problem as well is that certainly some sections of the media do sort of specialise in sort of soundbites. They rehash the same mistakes again and again. And I think there are a lot of women who are very interested in true crime. I mean, they are apparently the prime readers.

And I think reading about it, it's almost a form of self-defence, however strange that may sound. I think it gives you a sort of, hopefully a sense of almost empowerment because you do read about ladies like Mo, you know, and think, you know, that's unbelievable to come through that. Do you allow yourself to feel proud, Mo?

I feel very proud of Carol Ann Lee's work. I think this book is a turning point. What about your work? I've written a book as well, which should be published next year. And you've got your artwork as well. I've got my artwork in it, and my artwork is the main stem of my survival, to be absolutely sure. I am a practising artist and a retired senior lecturer in art and design,

so that's been a wonderful outlet for me but I think Carol Ann Lee's book it's a really interesting new corner to turn in terms of redressing the balance for the victims so I think in that sense this is true crime at its best you live your life and see yourself i know as a survivor yes yes i do absolutely i and i ran for my life and i i'm running still for my life i've got my life you see i feel so blessed by the intervention of lorna smith that was the stranger that yeah yeah and i just think if all these other women had all of their lives you know there's almost a part responsibility to succeed and do well because they never had a chance to do so and I was really lucky. I'm angry of course and I'm sad and depressed and anxious about what happened,

but the overarching emotion is one of you are such a lucky person to have escaped this, you know. That's Mo Lee, who of course survived that attack by Peter Sutcliffe in 1980 and he also heard from Carol Ann Lee, the author of Somebody's Mother, Somebody's Daughter. So we wanted to ask where the lines are drawn or should be drawn when it comes to the consumption of true crime. So my guests in the studio, just to remind you, are Julia Davis, the editor of the new magazine Crime Monthly.

We've also got Jackie Holmes, former police officer and presenter of Crime Watch. Dr Gemma Flynn is a criminologist at Edinburgh University and she's with us as well. And joining us now is Rachel Fairburn, who's a comedian. Rachel, hello. Hello. Good morning to you. Co-host of a podcast which looks at a different serial killer every week and is called...

All Killer, No Filler. Right. We're just going to hear a short clip from an edition of your podcast which was about a serial killer called... Dennis Rader. Dennis Rader, an American. An American, yeah. Right, OK, let's just hear a short clip from the podcast.

You made a great observation there that you think that Dennis Rader is the Alan Partridge of serial killers. He is the Partridge of serial killers. No, I mean, when he got sacked from his job at the council, right, I mean, usually you get sacked to clear your desk. Had he got to be able to clear his own desk desk they would have found what he called the motherlode uh drawings and things he'd kept from his victims and the fact that he referred to sort of his souvenirs at the motherlode that is sheer partridge i mean killing 10 people shows a lack of self

awareness but also being like go and pop this trophy in the mother load it's like more embarrassing again isn't it it's just so cringe with it that's about an american serial killer i suppose um does it make it easier if it's not someone that people will be familiar with does it make it easier to be funny we select every um serial killer that we talk about we think about sort of the impact that it would have we wouldn't if a serial killer that we talk about, we think about the impact that it would have. If a serial killer was suddenly arrested tomorrow, we wouldn't jump on a bandwagon and suddenly go, oh, we're going to do a podcast about this person because it's so fresh, people are affected by it. The thing is as well, we never ever make jokes

at the expense of any of the victims at all. That is something that we are quite keen to get across. We have an interest in serial killers and true crime. Why a particular interest in serial killers in your case? Kiri Pritchard-McLean, who I co-host and co-write the podcast with, we just found out that we had a mutual interest just particularly in serial killers. I can't pinpoint why that was.

I think maybe when I was younger, when I was at school, what might have sparked my interest was the Fred and Rose West case happened. And it was on the news quite a lot. I think that case sparked my interest in serial killers particularly. But we were just both interested in true crime and it was just something that we started talking about and then decided to just do a podcast about. You would say, well, I'm not putting words into your mouth,

but I guess you would say mockery is your weapon. Yeah, I mean, we're interested in serial killers particularly because they are so terrifying. Maybe that is the reason. Well, as Carol Anne Lee certainly said to me in a conversation earlier, these people are boring. Yeah, absolutely. You can find a lot of groups on Facebook and social media

that treat these horrendous human beings like they are some sort of rock star. I mean, for example, the Ted Bundy film that's coming out in a couple of months, I think. And that star, remind me who's in that? Zac Efron. Now I saw the trailer for that and it made me feel very uncomfortable because I felt

it was sort of glorifying this man as some sort of folk hero. Except that your podcast is called All Killer No Filler. Yeah. I mean to be honest with you we just picked the name out of the blue and we wish we'd have called it killer queens now to be honest with you it was

much more catchy so where are your lines in terms of taste and decency if you like where would you just stop i think it's fair game to make a joke at serial killers' expense. I think it's fair to, you know, call Dennis Rader the Alan Partridge of serial killers. I think the issue comes in, and I have heard this on a couple of podcasts, when there are jokes made around the victim, or maybe something that the victim did, or maybe a victim's name's totally unacceptable are you making money from the podcast no we don't profit off the podcast at all we don't have any advertising on it we also try and work with sort of local charities as well we did a collection for mash in manchester that supports sex workers. And we also do collections for feminine hygiene products to sort of donate to various places.

But we do live shows. We sell tickets for those. Obviously, we have to have a venue. We do make money off the live shows, but that is because we write comedy around what we talk about. All the humour in our podcast comes from something that sparks a discussion between me and kiri basically we talk about anything and everything but we keep professional when we talk about the murder i mean we'll talk about bad sexual experiences we'll talk about embarrassing things that happen to to us on stage. But that's where the humour comes from.

The humour does not come from anything that has come from a victim. So, Julia, what about your magazine? Is there a crime too hideous to feature on the cover, for example? Yes, certainly visually. I mean, when we're looking at what content we're going to do for each issue, we think really carefully about every aspect. Can you just hold up the most recent edition of the magazine? Okay, now you've got the central picture is a gorgeous family portrait.

Yeah. Family of four. Yeah. Lovely looking couple of kids and a mum and a handsome dad. And what did he do? He's what criminologists i believe call a family annihilator and he um killed his entire family in this was in america this was recent a few months ago he's just been sentenced well he was sentenced a few months ago and he's

just done um an interview in prison with the f and the FBI wanted to get insight into somebody that commits that kind of crime and that that's why they did it and that's why it was published and also on the cover Jill Dando yeah I know the BBC and ITV both have both made documentaries about the anniversary of her murder still unsolved yeah Madeleine McCann who was the masked intruder and I can see Ian Huntley there as well and Ted Bundy. So one of the things we think about, there always has to be a reason

for them to be in the magazine. So Jill, as Jackie knows, it's been 20 years since her death and as you say, there's been a lot of interest around that. Of course, it's still unsolved which is one of the unbearable things about it. Madeleine, there was a big new Netflix documentary about her

and there were things that were unearthed or brought up again that hadn't been looked at for a long time and have started to be explored again. Ted Bundy, as Rachel said, there's a new movie out, very controversial, and we also talked to the man who actually spoke to Ted Bundy in prison and did his confession tapes, which was also a recent documentary. So how many copies are you hoping to sell?

I appreciate it's only on edition number two. We're doing pretty well with it. We're on target. I know you're a bit cagey about these things. A little bit cagey. Well, are we talking 50,000, 100,000? More in the region of 50. Yeah, and you're doing all right?

Yeah. Okay. 100 000 um more in the region of 50 yeah and you're doing all right yeah okay um but yeah we do have boundaries and and particularly visually we're really careful about i mean for example we'd never publish a picture of a dead body i hope that would go without saying um well actually it wouldn't go without saying so i'm no i'm glad you i'm seriously glad you said it okay no well i mean you know these these are rules we've made up for ourselves, but they kind of, we would think and hope would be pretty much everybody's standards. I mean, for example, we wouldn't, like some magazines do close up shots of a mother's agonized face, or, you know, we just sort of take every aspect, every picture, every headline, every cell, we just look at it thoughtfully and we certainly going forward and a bit like rachel was saying we want to work with campaigns we want to work with families and we want to be part of campaigns because we want there to be meaning and something valuable in what we do as well and that's something we're looking into jackie uh what do you think about well what do

you think about the magazine actually first of all um i totally accept that you know crime is fascinating to everybody which is why crime watch at its height used to get 15 16 million viewers a month yeah um and there will always be an interest in real crime and the stories behind it um having said that i will always look at covers like that and have an emotional reaction well it's jill's apartment exactly exactly i mean i've i've also lost colleagues to violent crime and that i will others like that and have an emotional reaction. Well, it's Jill, apart from the other somebody you knew, obviously. Exactly. I mean, I've also lost colleagues to violent crime and I will always have a recoil emotionally when I see photographs on a newsstand for public consumption.

For me, it has to be for a good reason. Having been so personally involved, you know, people's lives shouldn't be reduced to tittle-tattle and gossip. Do you think there's an element of, I hate that expression, guilty pleasure, but do you feel, Rachel, an element of guilt about your enjoyment of the genre of true crime? I don't feel guilty. I mean, the thing is as well, it's strange to say, I don't necessarily enjoy it. I'm interested in it. You know, trying to understand

why somebody commits such an awful crime, find it fascinating and baffling. Well, what actually have you found out about that? Because you've looked at a lot of serial killers. Is there any factor that unites any of them? Well, one thing that we have noticed is that people are very quick to blame serial killers' mothers

for the things that they've done, which really does get on our nerves quite a bit. Again, something else that we did notice, when, for example, Ted Bundy, he was dumped by his fiancée and people go, oh, that's why he went on to serial kill. There's an awful lot of cases where they will look for a woman to blame. I mean, obviously I'm no expert, I'm just a stand-up comedian.

It's just trying to understand how someone could get enjoyment out of such a horrendous thing, really. What do you think is likely to happen in the future? I mean, what we can be fairly certain of, unfortunately, is that serial killers, although exceptionally rare, are not likely to cease existing, are they? That's right. But again, they are outliers, you know, so I mean, absolutely, it is interesting to kind of think about the psychology behind all of this and to try to look to patterns. But more so, you know, the impact of the representation of serial killers

is something which is driving us to be much more punitive. Where is all this going, this obsession with true crime, Julia? Have we reached peak true crime? You obviously hope not. Possibly, I doubt it. You know, people have always, always been interested in crime for hundreds of years. I I mean I'm sure there'll be some trend that will have a spike like reality TV has so

true crime is perhaps sort of peaking but will it go away? No I don't think so We should end really Jackie with if people are interested in true crime join the police Absolutely yeah why not? That's what I did, you know, I grew up watching,

oh God, showing my age now, Zed Cars. Zed Cars, all right, I've seen Zed Cars, softly, softly. I wanted to be a Scotland Yard detective. And seriously, of course, we need to say that career prospects for women in the police, well, Cressida Dick, of course, is the head of the Met. It's very different from when you went into the police force. Oh my God, yes, my first interview comprised of you still here.

And that was it. And that was it. Do you like the handbag? Yes, yes. Did you have a handbag when you first started? I did, yes. And a miniature truncheon that fitted in the bottom. Oh, get you with your miniature truncheon.

Thank you very much, Jackie. Still got it. Have you? OK. Jackie Hames, the former police officer. Well, just because you're a discerning listener to Woman's Hour who gets the podcast here's an additional chunk of material from the show

Jackie, when you were in the police did you ever unwind at night with a glass of wine and a true crime book or a TV show? No to be quite honest I didn't really get a lot of spare time, to be fair. And even after I left, after I retired, I really avoided it. There's very few crime programmes I can watch, to be honest.

Because you've been there and you've seen the mess and the mayhem and the terrible lifelong grief that results from murder. Completely. And it's not just the physical effects, it's the psychological effects, the ripple effect throughout the family, throughout the friends, throughout the work colleagues. And it's different for everybody. The effect on the police officers doing case after case after case is huge. And I don't think there's actually enough work being done on the psychological effects of having to deal with that day in, day out. So now you're not dealing with it day in, day out. Are you consuming any true crime product or content?

I did get sucked into making a murderer. I started watching with my daughter and I did get sucked into making a murderer. I started watching it with my daughter and I did get sucked into it. I have to say that because the nature of most of these programmes, documentaries, in terms of following a case through, tend to be rather skewed, naturally so because there is always going to be a narrative according to the person who's making it in terms of how they show these things, who they what they choose to put in, what they choose to leave out. And there is only so much time. But I did get sucked into that. And knowing a little bit about the criminal justice system in the States, I could see that there may well be some merit in the fact that there could be a miscarriage of justice here, which made it quite compelling.

And watching that show, did you feel a bit, or did you just think, oh, I'm just going to, this is good. I'm enjoying this. I mean, it is difficult. I still do have this sort of sense of being able to compartmentalise. I had to, even when it's touched me personally, which it has over the years. That's quite difficult because it becomes a car crash then between your personal and private life.

But I wouldn't have done that job for 30 years if I hadn't been fascinated and interested and passionate about bringing people to justice and getting justice for victims of crime. So I still have that in me and I'm still interested and I still follow cases that are in the news, but I do struggle with watching dramas particularly. I really struggle with because they treat the audience quite often as idiots. You're probably quite a knowledgeable member of the audience. Gemma, have you heard All Killer, No Filler? I've heard some bits and pieces and I've also been really interested in, is it My Favourite

Murder, which also has the tagline, stay sexy and don't get murdered and has a sort of similar tone to it. That's another podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Yes, exactly. And I'm really, really interested in the coverage of serial killers and the representation of serial killers in podcasting because in criminology, there's some really, really interesting work happening around the ways in which representations of serial killers can particularly stoke fear because stories of serial killers tend to mention a reach into the suburbs, classically, they tend to make us feel a lot more kind of unsettled about the likelihood that we could be a victim of crime and that crime can be imminent and it can happen to anyone at any time, which unfortunately really does stoke feelings of fear, of public punitiveness, and really can more broadly lead to moves towards mass incarceration,

which ultimately makes crime and victimisation much more likely because it's not a great setting for rehabilitative processes. So there are some criminologists in the field who are very, very concerned about the focus on serial killers, partly because they're so rare, it's so unlikely that we're ever going to be victimised, but the impact of representations of serial killing is really quite enormous and stoking kind of public fear and punitiveness.

Right. But we know, don't we, Gemma, that there are women who write to serial killers and become there or attempt to befriend them. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's quite common, in fact. And yeah, I was recently kind of moderating the talks with the Making a Murderer lawyers, and they were talking a lot about how Brendan Dassey, the younger boy who was in that series, has been receiving lots and lots of public support,

and they do get lots of letters and things. And women, yes, do write to them and will often kind of form relationships and things like that. But in terms of broader patterns in criminology, you know, serial killers, relationships with inside prison, these are outliers. They don't really represent the broader picture of offending, you know. And that's kind of really what I'm interested in here is the deep kind of contradiction at the heart of all of this that you know while I can see that you know Rachel and Julia they're very genuinely absolutely trying to put in place standards and I really appreciate that but the the idea of serial killers and the representation of serial killers is what is

causing the most damage here. So you heard there from Dr Gemma Flynn, a criminologist, Jackie Hames, a former police officer, Julia Davis, the editor of the magazine Crime Monthly, and Rachel Fairburn, one of the hosts of the podcast All Killer, No Filler. Don't forget, Women's Hour back tomorrow live. Your host will be Tina Dehealy. Beyond Today is the daily podcast from Radio 4. It asks one big question about one

big story in the news and beyond. Just how big is Netflix? Why are young people getting lost in the system? I'm Tina Dehealy. I'm Matthew Price. And along with a team of curious producers, we are searching for answers that change the way we see the world. I was actually quite shocked by how many people this issue affects. So we're doing stories about technology, about identity. Are you trying to look black? No, I am not trying to look black. Power, where power lies, how it's changing. And every weekday we speak to the smartest people in the BBC and beyond. It's basically what I've been wanting to do since I was little, to talk about business and economics. It's basically what I've been wanting to do since I was little. It's talk about business and economics. And the stories started forming in my head.

That's what I've learned. It's okay to feel. Subscribe to us on BBC Sounds. And join in on the hashtag Beyond Today. I'm Sarah Trelevan and for over a year I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered.

There was somebody out there who's faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this?

From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story. Settle in. Available now.