People have rabidly consumed ghoulish tales of true crime and murder as long as there has been a mass media — going right back to the first pulp tabloids. Some of it is the natural human curiosity for seeing the taboo. What’s interesting is that at least nowadays, true-crime seems to be dominated by women — the exact demographic who are most likely to be victims in these stories. For some of us, it’s a kind of “VR training” in how to spot a killer, what to do if you’re in X scenario, etc. It’s thrilling like a good horror movie, but in the end (at least in most cases) we can rest easy knowing the bad guy was caught and had to face justice. That can be comforting in a world where the bad guys don’t actually always face justice.