My Bittersweet Feelings for A&E, and My Dream of True Crime For Survivors

I have a love-hate relationship with the Arts & Entertainment Channel -- which is kind of weird since they don't know I exist.

The thing is, they do some of the best true crime reporting.  What I really hate about true crime is the sheer exploitation, the bandwagon nature of it, where people cover the same two or three cases in minute detail.

For me, as a survivor, I want true crime to be about what we can learn and what we can be doing better to get better outcomes for everyone.  A&E still isn't doing that.  But they at least come closer, and tell a more diverse range of stories.  A&E does some research.  And they do give survivors some voice that they wouldn't otherwise have.

But I'm almost always left screaming at the screen for one reason or another.  The title of the above-linked episode is "Suspicion Cast On Murdered Schoolteachers Soon To Be Ex."

If you watch the episode, what was very clear to me in the beginning was that the police allowed suspicion to fall on the ex -- only the most natural thought in the world -- by not following through on the very obvious investigative leads from the beginning.  People talk because they don't know what to think.  But the police knew what to think, and they shouldn't have allowed it to go that way.

SPOILER ALERT:  Episode reveal below.

So at the very beginning of the crime scene discussion they mention that there were multiple intruders, that they stayed in the apartment for hours torturing the victim, and that they ransacked the place searching through things like cereal boxes.

Based on my life experience -- and I'm not even a cop or a drug dealer -- that sounds like they very obviously thought that drugs and/or money were hidden in the home.  Right?  She wasn't sexually assaulted.  She obviously wasn't targeted at random of they're searching through items in her freezer.  They for some reason believe she has something of value hidden inside her home.

They also had the ex-husband's cell phone data showing that he was nowhere near the place. 

They found a lighter in the apartment near the point of obvious forced entry, although the victim was not a smoker and had no candles, incense, or other reasons to have a lighter.  This also contained DNA from an unknown male, not the husband.

In the end, they solved the case because the husband, so tired of being demonized as a murderer by the entire town, started asking around at the barbershop.  And since this was an obvious gang of drug dealers that had gone to the wrong house looking for some other drug dealer's girlfriend -- DUH -- there were a lot of people who actually knew what had happened. 

I suppose A&E doesn't want to risk becoming seen as "anti law-enforcement" by accurately labeling this episode "Man Solves Ex-Wife's Homicide By Asking Around At Barbershop."  For God's sake.