Gianna Lederer Professor Karen Pechilis DSEM: True Crime in NYC September 3, 2024 WTL #2 As I read through these three articles I noticed the different views from across the board of historians on True Crime History. In the first article, “A Historian Turns to True Crime” by Karen L Cox, she talks about the “Negress” and her investigation and her story. She thinks of True Crime as something that “involves crafting portraits of individuals, giving their lives context, and helping readers understand what led them to commit criminal acts. True crime writers interview subjects and gather evidence (Cox 2017).” She then goes on about the Negress and how she did a bunch of online research along with taking action. One thing she stated in her article while collecting research, “I combed city directories and discovered she’d been widowed by the age of 35. …show more content…
(Cox 2017).” She went into this case and gathered as much information as she could from childbirth to the case itself. The next article I read was “Discussion Of True Crime at the Historical Society of Michigan’s Meeting” by Blaine L. Pardoe. In this article, Blaine talks about his experience within writing true crime history and how “Major crimes” play a role in a community. They are often defining events etched into the memories of the people that are there, even if they had no role in the crime itself. People remember significant crimes. They become part of the local culture, part of a shared memory of a key event. Consider this: People remember where they were when they heard that President Kennedy was killed or when the World Trade Centers were taken down. These were crimes, albeit large scale criminal acts, that are burned into our