Question Everything: Why do some true crime cases get more attention than others?
BOSTON - The tragic story of Ana Walshe mysteriously disappearing from her home in a wealthy Boston suburb, has captivated the public's interest. In our series "Question Everything" we asked why people are so fascinated with true crime, and why some cases get more attention than others.
"We're so obsessed with our own mortality that we can't look away," said Emerson Professor and BigFish PR CEO David Gerzof. He said it goes back to Jack the Ripper from the 1800's, and the Zodiac killer of the 1960's. "People can't get enough," he said. "It's woven into our culture...It's in the games we play like Clue, the podcasts we listen to like Serial."
The Walshe story weaves in next-level plotlines: a convicted counterfeit art dealer accused of murdering his 39-year-old wife at their family home in Cohasset in the earliest hours of the new year. It's made national and international headlines, from a CNN special to constant updates on the DailyMail out of London. Here on the CBS Boston website, stories about the Walshes were viewed more than two million times by the start of this week.
When WBZ-TV asked people on the sidewalks of Boston about it, they knew details. "The night before she died, they were having a New Year's dinner and he was chatting and laughing," said Martha Jansen in Copley Square. "With the blood, the saw, and the rug with the blood on it," said Cora Walker in Dudley Square.
But some wonder, why the Walshe case? "There's hundreds of other women disappearing, and the only ones that seem to get reported on are the white women," said Paul Jansen. Criminologist Dr. Scott Brown has studied the phenomenon extensively. "You've heard of missing white women syndrome. Well, it's not a fabrication. It is real," he said.
According to the FBI's most recent data, 30% of missing women in the United States are Black, Asian or Indian. In East Boston, Latino activists accuse police and the media of not calling enough attention to Salvadorian immigrant Reina Morales Rojas, who vanished from the city two months ago. "Think of the cases in the last couple of years that have received so much attention: Gabby Petito," said Dr. Bonn. "Kohberger, who killed four young attractive white people...Ana Walshe, a very attractive young mother of three from an affluent household," he said.
If that reveals bias in our society's core values, experts agree the Walshe case's twists and turns do put it in a class of its own. "Art fraud, and Googling how to get rid of a body," said Gerzof. "You have these young boys--I think a lot of parents can relate to this--that suddenly don't have parents," he said. It taps into the most basic human curiosity, where the appetite for information seems never-ending. "This will not be the last murder mystery that we're all tuning into," said Gerzof.