Maybe it started with the OJ Simpson case, or, as I prefer, the case of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman. That distinction is important because the victims and their families were deleted in the spectacle. Despite the obsession of the nation with all the horrible details, there was no “justice” for them. The families of victims never receive the neat, cinematic end of the bloodthirsty audience, so plans to devour every “juicy” development.
The “happy ending” with a guilty judgment and life sentence is rare, the courtroom final, the “closure” story that helps them sleep at night. None of that exists for us. We just want our loved ones back. And that will never happen.
Every missed birthday, every vacation spent with an empty chair at the table cuts just as deep decades later as the very first year. The pain is not softened, simply because the murderer has been convicted. And when the accused runs free, which happens more often than most of them, the fear is multiplied.
Sadness of murder is not a season of life, it is a permanent, open wound. It never heals. I would not wish for anyone, not even those who consume it for sports on television, in podcasts or on social media.
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When the love of my life was murdered more than two decades ago, I was thrown into this reality. At first, reporters were everywhere, they swarm for interviews, pushed microphones in my face, hungry for a snack of drama. But when the investigation concluded, when the two brothers walked with long criminal registers for free and a third received a Sweetheart plea, the cameras disappeared. Nobody gave it injustice.
I tried to scream from the rooftops. I wanted the world to know that two accused murderers among them were free. But my story was not the end that the audience wanted, so it was ignored. The reporters packed and left and chased the next sensational head. In the meantime, I was left with a crushed life and not justice. That silence was just as brutal as the murder itself.
Now we have the Kherberger case. But again, I won’t call it that. I will call it the case of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mag, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin – the four clear lives stolen in Moscow, Idaho. They deserve to be remembered by name, not as props in the story of someone else.
“Now we have the Kherberger case. But again, I will not call it that. I will call it the case of Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mag, Xana Kernodle and Ethan Chapin – the four clear lives stolen in Moscow, Idaho. (Istock)
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This time the audience did not get the spectacle that it longed for. There was no wall-to-wall television test, no months of salacious witness, no chance for the murderer to cherish in attention and fame. Instead, the public prosecutor followed a plea. I admit that in the beginning I had problems that the families were not consulted before that decision was announced. But in the end it was the very best result for them.
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No testing meant no opportunity for this monster to enjoy in the spotlight. No chance for a jury to be wrong. No technical Maas in the law to slip through. No endless calls. No conditional hearings that drag the families back to the nightmare every few years.
And those of us who have experienced this know the truth: no matter how long the process is, the families would never have received the answers they wanted so desperate. People like him – soulless, bad creatures – give no closure. They give torment.
The OJ Simpson murder case showed the chaos of a spectacle process. File: OJ Simpson’s wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, was murdered on 12 June 1994. (Getty Images)
So the case ended quietly and for once the audience had to accept it. No vast theater. No intimate details to party. Exactly the same empty questions that the families are confronted with: what were their last words? Were they scared? Who did they ask? Did they suffer? These are the painful thoughts with which we live, day after day, year after year, while the rest of the world continues.
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That is the cold, harsh reality of murder. It is not a story arch. It is not a Netflix documentary. It is not an entertainment. It is pure and unfiltered destruction. It is silence in the house where there was once laughter. It is a parent who buries a child. It wakes up every day with the same blow in the gut that this person you loved forever is away forever that their last moments in life were filled with pain and fear and that you were not there to protect them.
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I hope that the media, the audience and the courts can finally recognize this. I hope that they will respect the wishes of the families of the victims of Idaho and seal the evidence and the files and remember my words in future cases. It is not an audience advantage to drag them through more pain. It is not a right to show private -grazing. There is only cruelty.
Murder is not entertainment. It is not content to be consumed. It is the worst that a family can happen, and it deserves to be treated with gravity, dignity and respect that the reality requires. Because of those of us who live with it, because of the victims who can no longer speak, we never let them forget that their names, their stories, their humanity should come for the appetite of the public for spectacle.
