crime and empathy...
i am very much intrigued with true-crime novels, serial killers, and forensics. i'm thinking, though, that this may not be the best thing for a highly empathic person such as me. or perhaps that explains some of the reason why i am so fascinated by it. reading the stuff inevitably leads to an examination of my own dark side. or psychological trauma.
it's been a good long while since i've read any true crime, but i've obsessively blazed through every past episode of CSI: Las Vegas as well as a few Miami and New York. i also watched some Crime 360 which was a much more reality-based vision of crime investigation. the problem with Crime 360 though is that they didn't go in depth enough on some things, and actual interrogations are not very dramatic to watch. actually, they could use a good writer to spice up the dialogue. real people are seldom clever, eloquent, or particularly dramatic. mostly, they seem uncomfortable or dull.
i remember reading Helter Skelter in high school. Charles Manson was a frightening enough specter even in print to leave me disturbed for weeks. i could almost imagine his charisma. how he could entice an entire group of people to do murder for him. very chilling stuff. a few years later, in my first year of college, i met someone with that same type of charisma. i'm not saying the guy was a psychopath or sociopath or any such, but i could swear that he had the ability to convince anyone of anything. he was a friend of my boyfriend and he used to sit and talk with us for hours in our tiny little house off-campus. i say talk with us, but he would talk for hours and i would listen, speechless. to this day, i hardly remember a single thing he actually said, but he was hypnotic. it was like falling into a trance to listen to him speak. very unsettling. i wonder what he's doing now.
it's been a good long while since i've read any true crime, but i've obsessively blazed through every past episode of CSI: Las Vegas as well as a few Miami and New York. i also watched some Crime 360 which was a much more reality-based vision of crime investigation. the problem with Crime 360 though is that they didn't go in depth enough on some things, and actual interrogations are not very dramatic to watch. actually, they could use a good writer to spice up the dialogue. real people are seldom clever, eloquent, or particularly dramatic. mostly, they seem uncomfortable or dull.
i remember reading Helter Skelter in high school. Charles Manson was a frightening enough specter even in print to leave me disturbed for weeks. i could almost imagine his charisma. how he could entice an entire group of people to do murder for him. very chilling stuff. a few years later, in my first year of college, i met someone with that same type of charisma. i'm not saying the guy was a psychopath or sociopath or any such, but i could swear that he had the ability to convince anyone of anything. he was a friend of my boyfriend and he used to sit and talk with us for hours in our tiny little house off-campus. i say talk with us, but he would talk for hours and i would listen, speechless. to this day, i hardly remember a single thing he actually said, but he was hypnotic. it was like falling into a trance to listen to him speak. very unsettling. i wonder what he's doing now.