08/16/2026
I want to explain something about the way I approach true crime journalism, because it comes up from time to time: why I rarely seek out interviews with perpetrators.
I am not saying perpetrators should never speak. I am not saying everything they say is automatically false. I am saying that their retrospective account is not the center of the work I produce.
My work is victim-centered.
I research the facts as rigorously as I can through court records, police reports, autopsy reports, transcripts, investigative files, forensic evidence, contemporaneous reporting, and whatever other primary documentation is available. Then, when I conduct personal interviews, their purpose is usually different. They help us understand who the victim was, what their loss did to a family, what grief looked like afterward, and how a violent crime affected an entire community.
Personal interviews can add humanity. They can add perspective and context. They can sometimes reveal leads that can later be investigated and verified.
But I do not believe personal recollection should set the facts.
Someone's memory, opinion, or preferred version of a crime years later does not become forensic evidence simply because they feel strongly about it.
That is also why I generally do not solicit interviews with convicted perpetrators. It is not because I believe they are incapable of telling the truth. It is an editorial boundary against allowing the person who committed the crime to become the protagonist of the story.
Because that can happen very quickly.
Suddenly the focus becomes: Why did you do it? What happened to you? What were you thinking? Do you regret it? Were you misunderstood? What is your version of what happened?
And before long, the person who was killed becomes little more than something that happened in the perpetrator's story.
I refuse to do that.
The fact that someone committed an extraordinary crime does not entitle them to extraordinary attention.
That does not mean I would never interview a perpetrator. If someone convicted reaches out to me directly, I may listen. There can be legitimate investigative value in doing so. They might reveal a previously unknown detail, identify another crime, raise a question that can actually be tested, or provide information that leads to something verifiable.
But even then, an interview is not an automatic platform.
Access does not equal publication.
A statement does not equal evidence.
An interview does not equal a platform.
Anything worth pursuing still has to be investigated and corroborated.
There are many different ways to tell true crime stories, and other journalists may make different choices. This is simply mine.
My work exists to document what happened as accurately as possible, to show the human consequences of violent crime, and above all, to keep the victim from disappearing behind the person who took their life.
Because in my work, the victim remains the center of the story.
