The Invention of True Crime

Sometimes fact is more horrifying than fiction. This is the philosophy behind true crime, a genre that seeks to present nonfiction accounts of real-world crimes in a style accessible and entertaining to the average reader. The genre has been a hot topic lately, after a new suspect was arrested last week for the crimes of the Golden State Killer, just months after Michelle McNamara’s true crime book on the subject, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark, hit the New York Times bestseller list. But can true crime books really help solve cold cases? The inventor of the genre seemed to think so. 

Edgar Allan Poe was a revolutionary writer who left his mark on a number of different genres and is even credited with creating a few. I’ve written before about his role in instigating the modern detective story with “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” It’s a lesser known fact that he wrote what may well be regarded as the first true crime story as well, although perhaps it’s not so surprising when you consider that writing about real life mysteries is only one step away from portraying fictional ones. In fact, Poe’s true crime story was presented as a sequel to “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and featured the same fictional investigator, C. Auguste Dupin.

“The Mystery of Marie Rogêt” is one of Edgar Allan Poe’s more obscure stories, probably because it’s not really one of his best. Factual events proved more difficult to wrangle than his usual fictional characters, as I’ll explain shortly. But what the story lacks in skillful execution, it makes up for with its visionary status; it is the first example of a murder mystery tale based directly on the details of a real crime. The story was inspired by the murder of Mary Rogers, whose body was found floating in the Hudson River near Hoboken, New Jersey, on July 28, 1841. Mary had been well known around New York City as the “beautiful cigar girl” who worked as a clerk in John Anderson’s tobacco shop in Lower Manhattan, drawing in the male customers. Her beauty was such that admirers sent poetry and marriage proposals to the local newspapers addressed to her. It caused quite a stir, then, when Mary went missing. After her battered body was found three days later, the story was plastered all over the newspapers. With so much media attention and a high reward being offered for finding the killer, people expected the case to be closed in a matter of days. Yet, no culprit had been found.

That’s when Edgar Allan Poe stepped in. After investigators had spent a year getting nowhere, Poe approached a number of editors suggesting that he could solve the case merely by writing about it and methodically analyzing the evidence at hand. Eventually, Snowden’s Ladies’ Companion agreed to publish his story in three serialized parts, beginning in November 1842. Poe set his story in Paris and French-ified the names of the characters, but made sure that the parallels to the local case were still clear. He used his detective character from “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” Dupin, to review and rebut each of the major theories being presented in different papers at the time. Next, using only the evidence he could gather from newspaper accounts, he began to lay out his own theory involving a former suitor of Mary’s. But then the unexpected happened. Before Poe could publish his third and final installment, a witness came forward with new information. The woman who owned an inn near where Mary’s body had been found claimed that Mary had come there with a doctor to receive an abortion and died from complications during the procedure. This confession threw Poe for a loop and totally derailed the ending of his story. When it came time to print his third installment, it was awkward, rushed, and disappointing, leaving the tale without a satisfying ending. The innkeeper’s explanation is the best we have, though her story has a few holes and the police never fully accepted it, leaving the open case to grow cold as the public lost interest.

After Poe’s rather disastrous first attempt at presenting real crime in story format, the genre was picked up with more success by other authors. One of the most prominent early writers of true crime was Edmund Pearson, whose 1924 collection of essays, Studies in Murder, analyzed five famous murder cases including that of Lizzie Borden. It took a few more decades, though, for the genre to really hit its stride. Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966), which detailed the quadruple murder of the Herbert Clutter family, is often credited with establishing the genre’s modern novelistic style and thereby tremendously increasing its entertainment value. Capote’s book paved the way for the biggest selling true crime book in publishing history: Helter Skelter, written in 1974 by Vincent Bugliosi, lead prosecutor in the Charles Manson murder trial. Nowadays, true crime merits its own shelf in the bookstore and is becoming an increasingly popular topic for podcasts, as well.

Do you read true crime? Have any books or podcasts that you’d recommend? Let me know in the comments! Also feel free to share your own theory about Mary Rogers’ murder!