"At the most basic level, true crime satisfies that little-kid desire to see beneath the surface of everything."

"As a child, I was often ashamed of my curiosity, which always seemed to go in socially unacceptable directions. I’d reach for a stick to explore a dead fish at the edge of a pond. I yearned to learn taxidermy. Grown-ups smiled when I said I wanted to be a doctor when I grew up, but I knew better than to tell them my main motivation: I wanted to see everyone naked. As a teenager, I liked nothing better than testing my ability to withstand upsetting things. If at that time I felt isolated because of my true-crime fixation, as an adult I know I’m not alone. My fascination springs from the same sources that have always drawn people to the genre: straightforward curiosity, vicarious thrills and a kind of magical thinking that maybe if you consume crime as art you’ll never confront it in real life."

Writes Kate Tuttle in "Why Do Women Love True Crime?"

Why is "curiosity" — once experienced as shameful — now deemed "straightforward"?

This feels like another version of an old phenomenon: It's about women, so it must be perceived as good. Women love the true-crime genre — they're something like 70% if the audience — so it can't be that there's something perverse or creepy or disordered about the fascination.