It’s 2:30 PM on a Friday. I run upstairs and head straight to my room. Earlier today I had gotten a phone notification regarding a recent breakthrough on a case. Hoping to confirm the news, I go on my laptop and search the name “Jamie Closs”.  

The Jamie Closs case is one that I have been following for a few weeks now. A man and his wife were shot and killed as their 13 year old daughter was kidnapped. Everyone believes that the girl is surely dead but I still have hope. As the results finally load, I let out a sigh of relief. 

“Jamie Closs found alive, suspect arrested”.

I bookmark the tab with a smile across my face. In very few cases does such a happy ending occur. I am glad that this case was one of them.  

I then search “Websleuths” on a new tab.  This website is an online forum in which users discuss ongoing and unsolved true crime cases. Here, I will spend the rest of the day, endlessly scrolling and clicking.

If you told 8-year-old Mandy that this is how she would spend her Friday afternoon, she wouldn’t believe you. She would switch the channel from Crime Watch Daily to Cartoon Network instantly. Indeed, times have changed.

For most, elementary school was a time to be alive. That wasn’t the case for me initially. I didn’t excel in the jungle gym and my social skills had left much to be desired.  Despite this, there had remained a silver lining: the school library.

The library was my safe haven. The librarian had always made me feel welcome and her guinea pig kept me company. These two figures were there as I laughed through Dr. Seuss’ books. They were there as I cried through the Harry Potter books. They were there as I found my way to the mystery section of the library. 

 The library was the birthplace of my love of mystery. From there it was Nancy Drew, Magic Tree House, A to Z Mysteries, and then a single newspaper article. 

The article was about an 11 year old boy who was convicted of the murder of his father’s pregnant fiancé. He was then released for there not being any DNA evidence against him. This had led to the case to be classified as unsolved. Every mystery book that I had read thus far was surely a fun read but that newspaper article on the librarian’s desk was far more enticing.

My love for mystery novels had then evolved to my fascination with true crime. True crime cases are the unfortunate reality of the world around us. There are so many that not only remain unsolved but also go completely undiscovered as well. As eerie as it is to think about, the topic is incredibly fascinating to me. How can someone commit such a heinous crime? Were they born that way or was it a result of how they grew up? I suppose that it is indeed fitting that I am a psychology major 🙂