the angels will return

true crime's victim exploitation & unethical practices | uni research project | ʚɞ

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The Archive

A collection in progress

Started: 04/09/25

A Brief History

Murder Pamphlets

The Paris Morgue

Introduction

The Media

The Perfect Victim Archetype

What Are High Profile Cases

Victim Exploitation

- Examples of High Profile Cases:

Elizabeth Short

Sharon Tate

Polly Klaas

Laken Riley

Amber Heard

Sources

My Sister’s Murder Isn’t for Your Entertainment - NY Times

Murder Pamphlets - National Library of Medicine

Murder Pamphlet Collection - New York Heritage

“No somos actores, está es nuestra vida” - CNN España

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Polly Klaas (1981 - 1993)

The 12 year old girl was kidnapped and later on murdered during a slumber party at her mother’s home in Petaluma, California. Her case gained national media attention and subsequently fueled the 90’s crime panic because of her age and the horrific nature of her case.

Polly’s case ultimately changed the way in which the FBI conducts investigations and inspired advocacy for child safety.

Her sister, Annie Nichol, has spoken out against true crime and the re-traumatization her family has experienced in terms of people using Polly’s death as a form of entertainment.

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Laken Riley (2002 - 2024)

A University of Georgia nursing student who was murdered while jogging on campus. Her case has been exploited and politicized due to her perpetrator being a Venezuelan immigrant.

The Laken Riley Act was passed on Jan 29, 2025 by the Trump administration.

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Elizabeth Short (1924 - 1947)

Nicknamed “The Black Dhalia” by the press, the aspiring actress’ body was found brutally mutilated in a LA neighborhood. Her case has yet to be solved.

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Amber Heard

In 2022, the Hollywood actress was involved in the Depp v. Heard defamation trial. The jury found both of them liable for defamation, but Depp was awarded about $4 million more in damages.

Public influence was used to support a massive smear campaign against her, leading her to move to Spain because of the overwhelming public scrutiny.

This case is a prime example of the influence of the media and public opinion within the judicial system. It can also be used to analyze the effects of the perfect victim archetype, victim blaming, and reactive abuse.

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Sharon Tate (1943 - 1969).

The Hollywood actress and model was 1 of 5 victims murdered by the Manson Family in her LA home.

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High Profile Cases

To receive the “High-Profile” classification, a case must either revolve around an influential person, have major controversy, or receive mass media attention.

The issue with high profile cases is how mass coverage influences the public opinion. This in turn can influence the legal process, unintentionally creating an unfair trial.

In cases surrounding violent crime, victims and their families become the target of political and monetary exploitation, having their stories turned into a tool to push a political agenda or an opportunity for a greedy producer to create another dramatized “docu-series” for people to treat like entertainment.

High profile cases go hand in hand with the perfect/beautiful victim archetype. Most high profile cases are young, beautiful white women from wealthy families.

The media purposely makes these girls the faces of unjust suffering not out of compassion, but because they know what will cause the most public outrage.

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A photograph of the Paris Morgue circa La Belle Époque (The Beautiful Era, Late 19th century).

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“She was so beautiful.”

(The Perfect/Beautiful victim complex).

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She’s young, she’s kind, she’s optimistic. She’s wealthy, intelligent, soft-spoken. She’s thin, she’s delicate, she’s white. She’s wide eyed, she’s naive, she’s a tragedy. She’s always under the age of 25 and the epitome of femininity.

Most importantly, she’s dead.

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Researchers describe the “Perfect Victim” as a social construct curated by the media. It’s an incredibly harmful ideology that contributes to victim-blaming. The harm is derived from how victims are treated when they don’t fit this mold.

You may recognize or have said phrases like:

“Why didn’t she leave?”

“What was she wearing?”

“She should’ve fought back.”

“If that were me, I would’ve…”

“She didn’t deserve that, she was so pretty.”

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The Perfect/Beautiful victim can be dated back to the melodramas of the victorian era. Art has historically served to gather a sort of allure to suffering (of the artist or of the muse) with concepts like the “Tortured Artist” and “The Tortured Poet”.

In terms of true crime, the beautiful victim/perfect victim has always been used to dictate which cases should be sensationalized and classified as high profile. The media uses our societal value of beauty to their advantage; the more beautiful the victim, the more fascination and outrage from the public.

In contemporary times, this fetishization of suffering is seen in the rise of the waif aesthetic (a micro-art movement that contains imagery of fragility and innocence along with text containing tones of hopelessness and misery) as well as other subcultures that center around a romanticized victimhood.

Women can be soft and delicate, but they shouldn’t be punished for being abrasive, angry, and ugly in their suffering. Victimhood shouldn’t be dictated by the observer and definitely shouldn’t remove blame from the perpetrator by attaching it to the victim.

It’s damaging to expect topics as harrowing as rape, murder, prostitution, and suicide to be beautiful. It’s equally as damaging to expect the same of a victim.

Beautiful or ugly, dead or alive, everyone is worthy of respectful media coverage in the equalizer that is death.

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[National Library of Medicine.]

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Murder pamphlet depicting the 1859 murder of Priscilla Budge at the hands of her husband, Reverend Henry Budge.

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Morgue De Paris

(19th century Paris’ definition of family fun.)

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The Paris Morgue was opened for the public in 1864 with the intention of identifying Jane/John Doe’s who were found in the Seine, streets, hospitals, and other local facilities of the city.

This was done by putting bodies on a window display for citizens to view at will.

The bodies were removed after three days because of decomposition and a lack of preservation techniques. The body would often be replaced by a wax cast or photograph.

Police would contribute to the identification effort by staging what the confrontation between the suspect and victim may have looked like.

By the 1880’s, the morgue became Paris’ most popular tourist attraction, averaging over 40,000 visitors, from across Western Europe, on a daily basis.

Its popularity was attributed to morbid curiosity and Paris’ lack of free entertainment in the 19th century.

The morgue was closed in 1907 due to backlash on its morality. Concerns included the fact that the bodies were displayed in nude and many of the victims happened to be young women. There was also the issue of street vendors and journalists who profited off of the morgue and turned it into a circus of death.

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Murder Pamphlets

[Trial of Professor John W. Webster Murder Pamphlet, 1850; National Library of Medicine.]

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The origins of the true crime genre can be traced back to 1550’s Britain, with the creation of the murder pamphlet. Ranging from 8 - 200 pages in length, these pamphlets were put together and published by local printers and posted in the town square, newsstands, and other public spaces.

These pamphlets often claimed to be true accounts of a murder, with illustrations and writing describing the trial and confession of the accused before their execution.

Despite this, the majority of them are believed to be fictional due to the prioritization of sensationalism and entertainment over accuracy.