Every true crime story begins with a person who existed before they became a victim. They had routines, relationships, dreams, and a personality that made them unique. Victim-centered storytelling means never forgetting that fundamental truth.
Too much true crime content treats victims as plot devices—bodies that exist only to set a story in motion. The victim becomes “the deceased” or worse, just a collection of wounds described in clinical detail. Their humanity disappears into the narrative of the perpetrator.
This approach isn’t just ethically questionable. It’s bad storytelling. The most compelling true crime focuses on the full picture: who the victim was, what they meant to people who loved them, and why their loss matters beyond the mechanics of how they died.
This framework offers a practical approach to victim-centered storytelling—whether you’re creating content or simply learning to identify it as a consumer.
Related: For a complete overview of ethical principles in true crime, see my Complete Guide to Ethical True Crime.
What Victim-Centered Storytelling Actually Means
Victim-centered storytelling is a deliberate choice to build your narrative around the person who was harmed, not just the crime committed against them. It asks different questions than traditional true crime:
- Traditional approach: How was the crime committed?
- Victim-centered approach: Who was this person before the crime occurred?
- Traditional approach: What made the perpetrator do this?
- Victim-centered approach: What did this loss mean to the people left behind?
- Traditional approach: What were the gruesome details?
- Victim-centered approach: What details serve the story without exploiting the suffering?
This doesn’t mean ignoring the crime or the criminal. It means maintaining proportion. The victim’s life deserves at least as much attention as their death.
The “Would the Family Approve?” Test
Before including any detail in a true crime story, I ask myself one question: would this victim’s family approve of how I’m presenting this?
This isn’t about sanitizing reality or avoiding hard truths. Crime is ugly. Court documents contain disturbing material. Pretending otherwise would be dishonest.
The test is about intention and proportion. Am I including this detail because it’s necessary to understand what happened? Or am I including it because it’s shocking and will generate clicks?
Consider these examples:
Necessary detail: Explaining that a victim was strangled helps the audience understand the crime and the evidence that led to conviction.
Gratuitous detail: Describing the victim’s facial expression or speculating about their final moments of consciousness serves no purpose except morbid curiosity.
The line isn’t always obvious. But asking the question forces you to justify every choice you make.
Practical Framework: Five Principles
1. Name Them Early, Name Them Often
Use the victim’s name throughout your content. Don’t let them become “the victim” or “the body” for paragraphs at a time. Every time you use their name, you remind your audience—and yourself—that this was a real person.
In my episode about Brandy Odom, I made sure to establish who Brandy was before diving into what happened to her. She wanted to become a school safety officer. She had a mother who loved her deeply. These details matter.
2. Lead with Life, Not Death
Start your story with who the victim was, not how they died. This structural choice shapes everything that follows. When audiences meet the victim as a person first, they process the subsequent crime differently.
Compare these openings:
Death-first: “On April 9, 2018, a dismembered body was discovered in Canarsie Park.”
Life-first: “Brandy Odom was 26 years old. She worked for a security company, but she had bigger plans—she’d just received notification of a job interview to become a school safety officer.”
Both are accurate. Only one treats Brandy as a person.
3. Include the Living
Victims leave behind people who loved them. Parents, siblings, children, friends. Including their perspective—often available in victim impact statements from court records—grounds your story in real human consequences.
When Nicole Odom addressed her daughter’s killer at sentencing, she asked: “Do you know what it feels like for a mother to lose her child? I cry every minute, every hour, every night, and every day.”
That statement, drawn directly from court transcripts, communicates the impact of this crime more powerfully than any description of the crime itself.
4. Be Precise About What You Know
Court documents distinguish between allegations and proven facts. Your storytelling should too.
Use language like:
- “According to the indictment…”
- “Prosecutors alleged that…”
- “The defense maintained…”
- “Court records show…”
This precision isn’t hedging—it’s accuracy. And accuracy is respect. When you present unproven allegations as established fact, you potentially harm the victim’s memory by getting their story wrong.
5. Ask What Purpose You’re Serving
Before publishing, ask yourself: what value does this provide beyond entertainment?
Victim-centered true crime can serve many purposes:
- Educating the public about how crimes are investigated and prosecuted
- Honoring victims by ensuring their stories aren’t forgotten
- Providing closure for communities affected by crime
- Teaching professionals about case patterns and warning signs
- Creating a historical record based on primary sources
If you can’t articulate a purpose beyond “people find murder interesting,” reconsider whether the story needs to be told at all—or at least how you’re telling it.
Red Flags: What Victim-Centered Storytelling Avoids
Recognizing what to avoid is as important as knowing what to include:
Gratuitous violence: Detailed descriptions of wounds, suffering, or death that serve shock value rather than understanding.
Perpetrator worship: Disproportionate focus on the killer’s psychology, methodology, or “genius” at the expense of the victim’s story.
Speculation presented as fact: Guessing at victims’ thoughts, feelings, or final moments without evidentiary basis.
Dehumanizing language: Reducing victims to “the body,” case numbers, or abstract categories.
Ignoring family wishes: Proceeding with coverage when families have explicitly asked for privacy.
Why This Matters Beyond Ethics
Victim-centered storytelling isn’t just morally superior—it produces better content. When you commit to knowing the victim as a person, you discover details that make your story richer and more compelling.
Audiences connect emotionally to people, not to crime scenes. The true crime content that resonates most deeply is almost always the content that treats victims with the most care.
This approach also protects you legally and professionally. Content built on court documents and careful sourcing is defensible. Content built on speculation and sensationalism is vulnerable to criticism—and worse.
Applying the Framework
Every episode of True Crime Cases You Haven’t Heard is built on these principles. I work from court documents—indictments, plea agreements, sentencing memoranda—because they contain verified facts, not speculation.
But more importantly, I try to answer the question: who was this person before they became a case number?
Sometimes the answer is in the court records themselves. Victim impact statements, testimony from family members, and even details in prosecution filings can reveal who the victim was.
Sometimes it requires additional research. News coverage from the time of the crime often includes interviews with people who knew the victim. Community responses, memorial services, and tributes provide texture.
The goal is always the same: tell the truth about what happened while honoring the person it happened to.
A Final Thought
Every victim was someone’s child. Many were someone’s parent, sibling, friend, or partner. They had plans for the future that will never be realized. They had people who still miss them every day.
Victim-centered storytelling simply means keeping that reality at the center of everything you create. It’s not a constraint—it’s a compass.
Continue reading: Return to the Complete Guide to Ethical True Crime for more on responsible content creation and consumption.
FAQ
What is victim-centered storytelling?
Victim-centered storytelling is an approach to true crime that prioritizes the victim’s humanity, dignity, and full personhood rather than focusing primarily on the crime or perpetrator. It means treating victims as people who lived complete lives before becoming crime statistics.
How do I know if true crime content is victim-centered?
Look for content that uses the victim’s name throughout, shares details about their life beyond the crime, includes perspectives from loved ones, and maintains proportion between the victim’s story and the perpetrator’s. Red flags include gratuitous violence, perpetrator worship, and reducing victims to anonymous bodies.
Why does victim-centered storytelling matter?
It matters because victims were real people whose memory deserves respect, because exploitation causes real harm to surviving family members, and because it produces better, more compelling storytelling. Audiences connect more deeply with content that treats subjects as human beings.
Can true crime be ethical and still cover disturbing cases?
Yes. Ethical true crime doesn’t avoid difficult topics—it approaches them with care. The difference is in the intention and execution: including necessary details to understand what happened versus including gratuitous details for shock value.
What’s the “would the family approve” test?
Before including any detail in a true crime story, ask whether the victim’s family would approve of how you’re presenting it. This forces you to justify every choice and distinguish between necessary context and gratuitous sensationalism.
Last updated: December 2025
