True Crime Analysis
Beyond the headlines—
unpacking real cases, audience obsessions, and the ethics of storytelling through a criminologist’s lens.
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Why the Public wants a serial killer in houston
cases & commentaries
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This recent blog post examines why, despite no evidence of at serial killer, the Houston media and community continue to push the idea that a serial killer is responsible for the bodies retrieved from Houston area bayous.
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This is the second episode in the four-part series on the Houston serial killer panic of 2025 that is produced by Crime Time Office Hours. This episode takes a closer look at how we think—and often misthink—about serial murder. Kevin Buckler sits down with two criminologists who bring both clarity and nuance to a topic that’s usually buried under myth and media hype. First, Krista Gehring joins Kevin to unpack the cultural narratives we’ve built around serial killers: the tropes we repeat, the fears we amplify, and the ways pop culture shapes what the public believes these offenders look like, think like, and act like. Then, Casey Akins helps ground the conversation in the empirical reality, walking us through how serial murder is actually defined, what the data really show, and why our cultural imagination so often drifts far from the facts. Together, their insights help us understand how the gap between perception and reality played a significant role in shaping the 2025 Houston scare.