I have always loved murder. Well, not the fact innocent people literally died, but the motives behind it.

For as long as I can remember, I have always had a strange fascination (and fear) of death and murder. I watched Inside Edition videos about whole families getting murdered, fake doctors killing people in the 1800s, little boys disappearing on family hikes, and turning up dead days later - all at the age of 10. Should I have been able to see all this at such a young age? No, most definitely not, but I did, so, I shouldn’t bother dwelling on the past.

My mom also had a fascination with these deeds. She was a Law and Order stan. She had the most useless app on her phone; it was just a button that read Law and Order that made the classic noise when you tapped it. I messed with this button so much as a kid, even though I didn’t know what it was. I think, somehow, this noise leaked into my subconscious and flipped a switch that has been on ever since.

I speak of my mom in the past tense: she passed away in 2020. I know they tell you not to get too personal with these essays, and I won’t get into the details, but she and her death were big things in my life that can’t be ignored. She shaped my love for true crime from a young age. She was the sole person I felt I could talk to about it, but ever since she passed, I have not had anyone to talk to about my fascination. With this lonesome idea, I feed off of two podcast hosts who have the same passion I do and I feel like I know these women on a deeper level because we share something so strange.

One afternoon in July 2023, I start to trek around my neighborhood and push play on my phone and hear,

“Hey, weirdos! It’s Ash! And Alaina! And today…”, (Ash Kelley and Alaina Urquardt, hosts of, Morbid: A True Crime Podcast).

“She could’ve been in the trunk… She could’ve been gagged… She could’ve been incapacitated, not able to scream. They [the police] would’ve never known she was there,” (Alaina Urquardt and Ash Kelley, The Mysterious Murder of Karina Holmer).

I continue to traipse around my neighborhood and I learn that the girl in the episode got brutally murdered while working as an au pair. She sounds a lot like me, a teenage girl minding her own business, and I can’t help but feel loads of sympathy for her. I guess humankind separates themselves from these crimes because of the level of brutality and thinks: It’s so awful, it almost sounds fake. And: That will never be me. These are thoughts that have sparked anxiety in me because I think about how that could actually be me. I get so scared I will get taken, but, I know I am just panicking myself. I am able to classify these thoughts in my mind as “intrusive thoughts that aren’t realistic”. This ability is a strong asset in my life. I use it in so many scenarios, first, school. I use it to compartmentalize all of my negative thoughts to downright focus on my work and always perform at my highest level, no matter the challenge.

I want to take this fascination for dark, morbid stories and turn it into a career. I want to keep learning about how to raise awareness and stay away from sketchy situations, while also keeping said situations at bay. I want to study Forensic Psychology, learn how to spot murderous tendencies, and stop the crimes before they start. I want to save innocent lives, to take this “love for murder” and use it for good. But, just a little more than anything else, I want to connect to my mom.