The ballroom of a downtown convention centre is packed. A woman in a lavender cardigan clutches a notebook, her pen poised. Next to her, a man in a hoodie scrolls through a phone screen, pausing on a mugshot. The room hums with anticipation. On stage, a woman stands behind a lectern; she is small, her voice steady. She is the mother of a murdered girl. This is CrimeCon, the annual gathering of true crime enthusiasts, and for one weekend, the line between entertainment and grief blurs.
True crime is having a moment. Podcasts top the charts, documentaries dominate streaming services, and books about killers and cold cases fill bestseller lists. But CrimeCon is where this cultural phenomenon meets its most ardent disciples. Here, the hobbyists come to trade theories, meet the investigators, and shake hands with the characters they have come to know so well. But there is a tension in the air. The mothers, fathers, siblings, and partners of victims are here too. They are the unpaid speakers, the reluctant celebrities, the ones who remind the crowd that this is not a genre. It is their life.
Walking the exhibition floor, you see the merchandise. Badges with the faces of killers. T-shirts with slogans like 'Serial Killer Fan Club.' Pins that say 'I'm a Crime Junkie.' It feels, at first, like a pop culture fan convention. Then you notice the quiet table in the corner. A woman sits alone, surrounded by photocopied flyers. Her son went missing twelve years ago. She is here to talk to anyone who will listen. The crowd flows around her like water around a stone.
For many attendees, the appeal is the puzzle. The forensic details. The timeline. The search for justice in an unjust world. But the real story of CrimeCon is the collision between this intellectual exercise and the raw, messy human cost. There was a panel titled 'Empathy in True Crime' which was full of good intentions but also a kind of therapeutic voyeurism. A young woman asked the mother on stage if she felt 'closure' after her daughter's killer was caught. The mother's face flickered. 'Closure,' she said slowly, 'is a myth. You just learn to carry it.'
I sat next to a woman named Diane, who had travelled from Ohio. She wore a lanyard with the face of Lisa, her sister, who was murdered in 1996. 'I come every year,' she said. 'It keeps Lisa remembered. But it's hard. People want the story, but they don't want my pain.' Diane spends her days selling insurance. This weekend, she is a victim again. She watches the crowds laugh at a comedian's joke about a serial killer's mother. She walks past the vendor selling 'Jeffrey Dahmer socks.' She does not say anything. She just looks.
The culture of true crime has been accused of exploiting grief for entertainment. At CrimeCon, you see that accusation made flesh. But you also see something else: a community of people who have found each other because of tragedy. The bereaved sit together in a quiet lounge, exchanging numbers. The survivors speak at panels, their voices cracking, and the audience listens with a reverence that feels like prayer. For every vendor selling macabre memorabilia, there is a support group meeting in a side room.
As the convention closes, the hall empties. The cardigan woman puts away her notebook. The hoodie man takes a selfie with a retired FBI profiler. The mother from the stage walks alone to the exit, carrying a tote bag full of business cards. Outside, the sun is bright. The city carries on. But inside, for a few days, the line was drawn. On one side, the true crime obsessives. On the other, the real human loss. And they looked at each other across that line, trying to understand what they saw.
