“Each day, the mainstream media provide audiences with a subtle instruction manual for how to empathise with certain endangered women’s bodies, while overlooking others. These messages are powerful: they position certain sub-groups of women – often white, wealthy, and conventionally attractive – as deserving of our collective resources, while making the marginalisation and victimisation of other groups of women, such as low-income women of colour, seem natural.” -Sarah Stillman, ” ‘The Missing White Girl Syndrome’: Disappeared Women and Media Activism” I’ve had a really hard time deciding whic ..read more

Kris Kremers Lisanne Froon Hello, readers! It has been a very long time since I have updated this blog, mainly because I haven’t had time: I recently accepted a new job as a full-time faculty member at a state university, and the transition process to a new institution has consumed the majority of my time, resulting unfortunately in my personal writing projects being put on the backburner. However, when I discovered a new podcast investigation about the mysterious deaths of Dutch tourists Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon while hiking in Panama, which is a case that I wrote about in 2020, I wante ..read more

Hello, fellow true crime and mystery lovers! I am writing live from the 2019-2020 COVID-19 pandemic. We are currently on week 5 (I think?) of social distancing/sheltering in place. I am currently finishing the semester teaching from home, as my college, like pretty much every college in the US, has moved to online instruction for the spring 2020 semester. Living through this pandemic is beyond anything I ever imagined in my lifetime. However, that is not the focus of this particular blog. If you’d like to read about my pandemic/social distancing thoughts, check out my other blog, Daring to Be ..read more

Hey, it’s been awhile! I’ve been incredibly busy with work, helping my mom recover from a couple surgeries, and other “life” stuff. I am currently down for the count with a nasty case of the flu (and I mean NASTY- wash your hands and take your vitamins, because y’all do not want this), but being stuck on my couch is giving me a chance to catch up on blogging! My August post about the Long Island Serial Killer(s) had quite a few readers and a lot of positive feedback, so I felt that I owed you some recent news on the case. Firstly, on Thursday, January 16 of this year, Suffolk County Police Com ..read more

“Stalking and domestic violence are just murders in slow motion.” – Laura Richards, criminal behavioral analyst and founder of Paladin, the world’s first National Stalking Advocacy Service in the United Kingdom October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and I wanted to use this blog to hopefully shed some light on cases in which the victim’s murder or disappearance (and likely murder) resulted from domestic violence. In one of these cases, the murder was committed in public, the murderer has been brought to justice, and an amazing grassroots movement has emerged from the victim’s horrific d ..read more

The case of the Long Island Serial Killer(s) (you’ll soon see why the singular or plural is ambiguous) is one that has disturbed me ever since I first heard of it. It’s a case I didn’t plan to write about, since it’s pretty complex and somewhat more well-known than what I normally gravitate towards for this blog, but I feel compelled for a few reasons. First, the victims are mainly sex workers, and, going along with my overarching theme of giving attention to victims who are traditionally ignored when they go missing, sex workers are victims who often don’t get attention because of moral judgm ..read more

First, a moment of levity before launching into today’s case: last night we went to a Tony Awards viewing party hosted by our friends Devan and Will. After the Tony broadcast, the local news came on and we heard a news brief about some “overdue kayakers.” We were all very confused about what that exactly meant, until the newscaster explained that the kayakers were supposed to come back at a certain time and were unaccounted for after that time. My husband Jarred then asked, “So, they mean these people are missing?” We thought it was an amusing and really strange way to refer to missing people ..read more