A new r/UnsolvedMysteries Reddit thread posed this question to followers and garnered a flood of responses from true crime lovers everywhere.
Redditers named everything from Ted Bundy to Jon Benet Ramsey to the Washington, D.C. Sniper attacks. Others said that watching TV shows like Forensic Files, Unsolved Mysteries, COPS, and America’s Most Wanted prompted their interest in all things murder.
Here are a few sample responses from the thread:
“For me it was the 1998 murder of Carly Martinez, a student at NMSU. Her mom was my 2nd grade teacher, and I happened to be delivering mail to her classroom as a 6th grader when she was informed that her daughter had gone missing. I was standing there with the envelopes in my hand watching this really nice lady break down in front of the class. If I remember correctly it took a few months for the police to find her body. She had been beaten, raped, killed, and dumped in the desert. After the funeral Mrs. Martinez came back to school and you could tell her whole life had been changed. I was just a kid so I didn’t understand why someone would do something so horrible to my teacher’s daughter and it felt kinda personal even though I had never met Carly. I think that’s when I started paying close attention to the news and I started looking up information on killers and crimes in my area.”
“It was the murder of four people in a Furniture Store in Winter Garden Florida on Christmas Eve 1975. My brother was then the chief deputy of Orange County. He told me they had arrested the owner of the store 4 days later while he was in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound through his stomach. Neither my brother nor I believed he could shoot him in the gut to try to hide his involvement but six months later he was convicted and sent to death row where he’s been ever since trying to prove his innocence.”
“JonBenèt Ramsey. I was in pageants with her when I was younger, seeing her photos in the paper and on the news with the words murdered or found dead shook me up. I wanted to know why my friend died.”
“The Yogurt Shop Murders, as a child living in Austin it was everywhere. Even with my parents trying to shield me from the crime, it was hard not to hear about it on the nightly news and the morning radio shows.
It had a deep affect on my Mother and the things I was and was not allowed to do (such as take a part time job in an unsecured shopping center almost 10 years after the murders).”
What prompted your interest in true crime?