Rarely a day passes, in Central Florida anyway, when the name Casey Anthony fails to make newspaper headlines. Today, for example, The Orlando Sentinel’s front page read: “The Casey Anthony Trial: How to Get In.”
Why would anyone want to get in? The details of the case, involving Casey Anthony’s deceased two-year-old daughter, Caylee, and Casey's alleged culpability, are well known, frequently dissected, analyzed, and reported. Every nuance of the case is the subject of media discourse. Aside from the obvious question of why this case hasn’t been tried and disposed of years ago, what is it about this particular murder that holds the public in thrall?
Murder: It Couldn’t Happen to Me
According to Jungle Red, a web salon of eight murder mystery writers, it’s the lack of ”randomness of it all.” In real-life murders, people disappear, die at the hands of strangers, and are in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s horrifying to imagine a brutal death at the hands of a stranger. The Casey Anthony trial is nothing like that. Pictures of Casey partying with friends during her daughter’s disappearance, her failure to report her daughter’s alleged kidnapping, her lies to her parents and to the police are all actions that most people, especially parents, cannot relate to. In a strange way, it makes people feel safer. They think, ‘This horrible crime could never occur in my family. I am immune to such an unfathomable tragedy.’
Murder Statistics Are Dropping
Over one million people live in Orange County, home to Casey Anthony and her family. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement, reported that “the crime rate in Orange County declined by 10.1% in 2010 over the previous year.
In addition, The 2010 Uniform Crime Report (UCR) dropped the total number of murders by almost three percent. Statewide, the crime rate also declined, “reaching a rate that is the lowest in four decades.” An Orlando Sentinel article published in September 2010 quotes Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings announcing crime rates at their lowest level since 1996.
The news of the murder of two year old Caylee Anthony broke in 2008, during an emphatic decline in the number of murders in a densely populated urban and suburban area. There is no doubt that if crime were more prevalent, particularly violent crime, the news media would have been hard put to devote as much space to the Casey Anthony trial as it has. The tipping point of publicity, and Casey Anthony’s weird status as a murder celebrity, would never have occurred.
The Murder Voyeur
Last, a fascination with the unlawful killing of another human being, particularly with premeditated malice, smacks of voyeurism. As defined by the Webster English Dictionary, a voyeur is “an obsessive observer of sordid or sensational subjects.” The murder voyeur focuses on slaughter as his subject.
Characteristically, the murder voyeur does not directly interact with the object of his observation. Therefore it is unlikely that a voyeur, in the throes of his obsession, is a danger to others. There is no doubt, however, that voyeurs derive pleasure from watching, reading, and listening to the source of their peculiar attention.
According to psychological studies, emotional abuse in childhood may contribute to a fixated fascination with distasteful crimes for purposes other than professional, social, or spiritual enlightenment.
Another reason for the intense public scrutiny of Caylee Anthony's unfortunate demise may be simpler. In the opinion of Brian Albrecht, Ph.D., who writes in his blog, “Brain Snacks,” as far as news is concerned, “…if it bleeds, it leads.”
