Can True Crime Media Help Victims—and Solve Cases?

Steven Stayner was abducted in 1972 and reunited with his family seven harrowing years later. But it wasn’t until 2022—50 years after the kidnapping—that the Stayner family felt they had the chance to tell their full story. The docuseries Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story brought Steven Stayner’s story back into the public consciousness, this time with the help of his daughter, Ashley.

“There was never anything out there that depicted our side,” Ashley Stayner said to TVBrittanyF.com before the series premiere. “It was usually a journalist or another person that had a different take on it; it was never the family speaking. I really wanted to do something different for my dad, that encapsulated more personal aspects of his life.”

Crimes are republicized on a regular basis to fill a demand for true crime movies, TV shows and podcasts. Some, like Captive Audience or the series The Vow, have the involvement of family members or the victims themselves. But many do not, relying more on the perspectives of investigating officers, local media or other figures. This has raised concerns about how these cases are depicted or if revisiting them does more harm than good.

“Although people react differently to dealing with the pain of a murdered friend or family member, I would say with a ratio of about 10-20 to one, the victims' family are appreciative that their loved one is remembered, mattered and is now possibly going to get justice,” retired FBI agent and forensic educator Tom Myers tells A+E Crime & Investigation. “That pain never truly goes away, and for a smaller percentage, they prefer to push it out of their minds. But with the advent of some new forensic technology processes—such as DNA IGG, Rapid DNA, M-Vac DNA collection, improved fingerprint data comparisons and more—there are excellent chances of identifying and capturing these offenders.

"Every one of these brings us closer together as a community and offers hope to other victims out there. Every podcast serves as a reminder of what happened but also of what can be done to solve them.”

There are TV shows specifically devoted to revisiting cold cases with the aim of closing those investigations. A&E’s The First 48 aired several episodes that focused on cold case homicides in the show’s featured cities. The 2019 murder of Ben Montgomery was featured in the 2023 installment “Unforgotten: Ben,” and three suspects were subsequently arrested in July 2025, January 2026 and February 2026. They are awaiting trial.

The challenge for these programs, and for those involved in the cases, is the ongoing balance between facts and entertainment. There are the risks of sensationalizing stories to hold viewer interests, omitting information (either due to time constraints or editorial decisions) or simply asking people to publicly revisit something that is traumatic.

In the case of Captive Audience, “there were a lot of emotional moments,” Ashley explained, “but I think when you’re surrounded by people that really care about the story and want it to be genuine, it was a lot easier to handle.”

“I told [director] Jessica [Dimmock] whenever I was watching it that I felt like the movie was made just for me, and I still very much believe that,” she continued, adding, “Seeing those aspects of his life that nobody else really saw, or at least I know I didn’t, really made it more real.”

Victims and their loved ones can also decline to participate in a project that doesn’t feel right to them; former NXIVM member India Oxenberg did not appear in The Vow but was later able to tell her story directly in the docuseries Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, which specifically emphasized her perspective.

However, not every production is like that, particularly in the podcast realm, where some true crime podcasts are created by “armchair detectives” who don’t have the benefit of professional training or access. And with the goal of many cold case projects being to find new information that can lead to an arrest and hopefully a conviction, that generates concerns about whether media exposure can compromise a potential criminal trial.

“Murder investigations are the highest level of investigation, and everyone wants justice and transparency. If you violate that and take liberties with the facts and blurt out unsubstantiated theories, you will eventually be dismissed,” Myers says when asked if there should be standards in place for these kinds of projects. “Because there are no restraints placed on filmmakers or content developers, we must be wary of cherry-picked items of info being reported as fact, or worse, bad information being reported to satiate a political leaning.”

Out of fear of legal repercussions, Myers feels "confident" that "content developers will just continue to get better; those [who] don't and who are caught contriving material will suffer an online and public persona non grata.”

That was an important concern for Captive Audience director Dimmock, who insisted on using words spoken directly by Steven himself. Though Steven died in a motorcycle accident in 1989, she enlisted actor Corin Nemec, who had portrayed him in the TV movie I Know My Name Is Steven, to represent him in the docuseries. “That was about being able to hear it straight from Steven’s mouth,” Dimmock said. “Since he’s not with us any longer, I didn’t want other versions or other interpretations of what he had said or a writer distilling it down.”

While there are concerns and risks that come with cases being republicized for true crime audiences, there are also benefits that balance out those risks. The exposure provided can lead to investigative breakthroughs and possibly provide justice for families left without answers. And even in closed cases, there is an opportunity for families and loved ones to be heard in ways they haven’t been—correcting misconceptions or simply having the chance to share information no one thought to hear before.

“I want everybody to see that we’re a family,” Ashley said. “Even though we’ve been through so many hard times and stuff behind the scenes that nobody really knows about, we’re still like anybody else, just trying to live life and go through the day to day … We’re still people that have a story to tell.”