“Getting away with Murder is Technically Impossible” – Forensic Files, TruTV
Bullshit.
According to the most recent U.S. Department of Justice statistics I could find, in 2005, only 62% of all homicides were solved.
Even though the site also says that “homicide has the highest clearance rate of all serious crimes,” still … 62%? In school-grade terms, that’s a D. In restaurant health inspection score terms, that’s getting your restaurant shut down. In real terms, that means that approximately 1 in 3 murderers get away with it. This is unsettling to me, knowing that there are murderers walking in our midst. Maybe they watch as many forensics shows as I do.
For the record, I watch WAY too many forensics shows. But, now that it’s pretty weather outside, I’m starting to find them too depressing. I can’t deal with a steady stream of rape, murder, and shallow graves by the river when the azeleas are ablaze with (blood) red blossoms and the birds are orgiastically chirping while feasting on fresh, fat, (corpse-fed) worms.
I think I hit my rape-n-murder show limit a few weeks ago when I got home from work and clicked on Cold Case Files. I’m trying to eat my dinner and this police detective comes on talking about his interview with a man convicted of raping and killing three women, who enjoyed having sex with his victims AFTER he killed them. “I asked this monster to tell me, on a scale of 1 to 10, how good the sex was with a dead girl, and he said 14,” said the detective. “This guy is a monster.”
Yeah, and that little detail made me lose my appetite.
I also watched, Dateline I think it was, a couple weeks ago about this 13-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by a pedophile in 1986 after meeting her at Dairy Queen and promising to drive her to his son’s birthday party. It was the saddest thing. They found some mix tapes in her purse when they dug up her body. Mix tapes she’d made for the son, her crush. That detail just wrenched me, and I cried my eyes out.
For some reason, I have been super depressed lately. So I have taken to watching SpongeBob and American Idol.
But yes, I bet these murderers who get away with it watch a lot of forensics shows too. They’re practically a primer on what NOT to to. I could write you a list of things I’ve learned from the show, but I don’t have the balls to post it for fear I’d be the target of an investigation and/or I’d give some criminals some ideas. I rattled off the list to two fellow forensics aficianados (both women) over drinks a few months ago and the guys at the table next to us heard us freaked out. “I’m about to get married in a week, but now I’m not so sure!” he said.
For those 38% of murderers who get away with it, I am nearly 100% certain that someone knows they did it, but are too terrified to talk. I wish I were truly a clairvoyant, so I could achieve my lifelong dream of becoming a psychic detective.
Oh, and I’m not joking.
