Crime & Bereavement

It’s not like I’d never seen Forensic Files before, but recently, this original true crime show from the mid-90s through early 2000s is all I watch.

It took me three months to make it through all fourteen seasons. Four hundred episodes in all. Without commercials, they clock in at just twenty-two minutes each, so I find myself binging five or six episodes per night. Cozied up on the couch with my dog Kit, we watch grizzly murder after ruthless abduction after mysterious virus.

But why do I find myself unable to stop consuming true stories of women kidnapped by lone creeps, husbands poisoned by their wives, children stolen by strangers, and houses burned for the insurance money? One would think a show about the worst in human nature would be endlessly disturbing and ultimately depressing.

Strangely, that’s not how I feel as I watch Forensic Files. I’ve reflected with the help of friends and my therapist, and I’ve concluded that this viewing pattern is directly linked to the recent death of my beloved father.

Why watch Forensic Files as I’m sorting through my grief? I admit that part of the appeal is simply distraction. The show is immensely engaging. It’s hard to ruminate on one’s own sadness while simultaneously wondering what happened to a missing cheerleader and questioning if her prom date’s her killer. The show demands your attention like a car crash on the side of the highway or a friend’s volcanic zit in the center of his forehead. And the benefit of this distraction is that I have been able to forget, for twenty-two minutes at a time, my grief for my dad.

Forensic Files is also comfortingly formulaic. Each episode begins with a teaser: “A newly divorced dentist was a pillar of her community, but then she disappeared. It would take the newest advances in forensic science to bring her killer to justice.”

Next, comes the opening credits with a montage of microscopes, fingerprints, and DNA layered over a catchy synthesized theme. After a commercial break, we open on a bucolic scene with voiceover: “Turnberry, Vermont, was a sleepy town where most residents left their doors open.”

Next, comes the turn: “But things changed one February morning when divorcee Cindy Capshaw didn’t arrive for work.” Soon comes the realization that a crime has been committed. Cindy’s front door is wide open and her car is missing, but her wallet and phone are in her bedroom. The police focus on those suspects closest to her. Her ex-husband and new boyfriend are questioned. Next, a body is found in a remote area. Forensic scientists see what they can glean from DNA, hairs, fiber evidence, and fingerprints. Eventually, a suspect is arrested, charged, and, after a trial, sent to prison for a long, long time. This is also comforting: The crime is always solved, and the culprit is always caught and made to pay for their terrible crime – all in a tight twenty-two minutes.

Watching Forensic Files has also helped me to make a distinction that has proved healing: the difference between the sad and the tragic. A seven-year-old girl abducted from a church social? Tragic. A young wife drowned in her bathtub so her husband can begin a new life with a dancer from a high-priced Philadelphia strip joint? Tragic. A middle-aged man killed by his buddy in a staged hunting “accident,” so the buddy can run off with the dead man’s wife? Tragic. My eighty-four-year-old father hospitalized for three weeks after a fall, never once complaining of pain, then dying after just one night in hospice? Sad. To be clear, I am deeply saddened at the loss of my father, but Forensic Files has helped me to view his death in proper proportion. A sad fact of life. Most people get old, and old age eventually means death. This is not a tragedy; it is, sadly, the natural order of things.

I’m not sure what to make of comfort based on the fact that things could be a lot worse. Is it just a cheap trick I use to try to make my loss feel less immense? Even the Grand Canyon looks small compared to an ocean.  Is it just a dodge from feeling my feelings? Maybe.

But I also watch Forensic Files because I’m inspired by the family members of the victims. The interviews are filmed years after their family member’s murder. Despite the tragedy and despite her grief, that mother sits in front of the camera, teary-eyed perhaps, but finding a way to soldier forth with life. And if she can find a way forward without her child, can’t I find a way to live on in a world that sadly, but not tragically, is bereft of my father?

Dylan Patterson is a writer and filmmaker who teaches English at Cape Fear Community College. Mark Weber is a Wilmington-based artist and illustrates WILMA’s monthly Direct Male essay. weberillustration.com