Examining my (unhealthy) obsession with true crime
Surely Flowers In The Attic isn't to blame for everything?!
The bike that belonged to Genette Tate, who went missing in 1978, aged 13
I’ve had a slightly dubious interest in the darker side as long as I can remember, certainly since very early adolescence. I want to say it started with Stephen King, (in my opinion you can blame most things on Carrie or, failing that, Virginia Andrews’ Flowers In The Attic. I mean, anyone reading that in their formative years is destined for some screwed up ideas about what constitutes a healthy relationship!). But, really, I think it happened before that. It started with Genette Tate.
I was 12 in the summer of 1978, the summer Genette disappeared. “The girl who never returned home from her paper round” was a year older than me. Her bike was found on a quiet country lane in Devon, papers strewn across the tarmac, in the middle of the school holidays, and that was it. No trace of her was ever found. Theories abounded, as they did even before social media gave them the power to ruin lives in an afternoon. Aliens were mentioned. Aliens! I ask you. I was 12 and even I could see that aliens had nothing to do with it. It was obvious to any self-respecting 12-year-old that the child-stealing monster in this scenario would take a far more familiar form.
I thought we looked alike, Genette and I, in that terrible school photo that has become forever associated with her. I have one just the same, taken around the same age. Unfortunate haircut, cowlick, freckles, grey v neck jumper, uncomfortable school tie, embarrassed grin. I became a bit obsessed, if I’m honest. (In part out of a vain terror that, if something were to happen to me, my mum and dad would use that terrible humiliating school photo. Puberty was kicking in, what can I tell you?)
It was the first time a crime had really permeated my consciousness. Until then it hadn’t really occurred to me that something real world bad (not just common or garden bullying, say, or getting into trouble at home or school) could happen to someone just like me. Someone who didn’t have a paper round, but did cycle wobblingly down quiet country lanes, where no one would have been around to see if a van had stopped beside me and dragged me off my bike. (Yes, I overthought it. The hormones were running riot.) It didn’t help that no-one was ever convicted in relation to Genette’s disappearance. (Convicted serial killer Robert Black was later believed to have been driving in the Exeter region that day, but he died five weeks before police were due to submit a file to the CPS for the second time, in 2016. The case remains unsolved.)
Genette’s abduction was the first building block in my burgeoning fascination with true crime, but it definitely wasn’t the last. The Yorkshire Ripper was a constant backdrop to the late 70s, ever present on primetime news and tabloid front pages. In the Home Counties, the so-called Fox crawled through open windows while women slept, and fed my nightmares. In London, estate agent Suzy Lamplugh was abducted and Jill Saward was raped by an intruder at the Ealing Vicarage. (If you’re around the same age as me, or older, I’m guessing these names will mean something to you. If you’re much younger I suspect you have your own version). Each news report left me a little more scared of my own shadow. I developed a complicated night time ritual that involved double, if not triple, checking all the windows and locks, that stayed with me until very recently.