During Karen Read's nine-week trial and the days of jury deliberation after that, hundreds gathered outside Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham, Massachusetts, accompanied by a crush of international media.
The major interest in the murder case came as no surprise to experts who say it shows the true power of the true crime genre.
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"As Mark Twain once said, 'We are all like the moon, we have a dark side that you just don't see,'" said Jeffrey Zeizel, a clinical social worker who works with law enforcement and who directs the Center for Health Resources. "Through history, people have been fascinated with crime stories."
Read is accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe, with her SUV in late January 2022. O'Keefe's body was found in the snow outside a Canton home the next morning.
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Her arrest, trial and subsequent mistrial have attracted international attention and divided Canton and beyond.
"The thing about true crime is that it allows us to get up close and personal to trauma and sort of the unimaginable," said Deborah Jaramillo, a Boston University professor of Film and Television Studies. "So it hovers in this strange space between the crime that we see in fiction storytelling but it is tapping into the abject, what we don't want to experience in real life. It is taking us to that strange place."
She added, "People have been drawn to the intrigue, the mystery, the investigation, and the gruesomeness as well of this particular genre."
It's must-see TV, playing out in real life — with real people impacted.
"It is the intersection between social media, sensationalism, news coverage and a murder case," said Zeizel. "All these things intersect and everyone wants to feel like they are a part of it."
Jaramillo agreed.
"We know the narrative, it is intriguing to us, and it can be exciting if it is happening in real time, in a trial for example," she said. "We can turn it off, we can walk away, we can say we came close to it, but thankfully we haven't experienced it."
