If you were to kill someone...

[Eiri]

I have to agree as well. Every time I watch those types of shows I always think "Jeez, way to put ideas in peoples head"

[YukisUke]

Originally Posted by Suki

So I was watching CSI the other day... I never fully followed the show, just catch episodes here and there and it got me thinking of how they give pretty great ideas on how to murder someone and get away with it.

I know they always catch the bad guy in the end but it's always some kind of genius plan and I wonder if this kind of shows -CSI, Dexter, etc.-, might inspire someone to actually commit a murder and come up with a twisted plan he's seen on one of these shows to not get caught. Because some of the crimes they work on are seriously elaborate and not easy to solve.

Take Dexter. It tells you exactly how to kill a guy and leave no clues behind so that it could never be traced back to you. Seriously, if I was to kill someone I would totally go Dexter style. It is genius! When I first watched it I was actually surprised they were showing it as fiction when actual serial killers could totally learn from his methods and become better at it; if I was one of them I'd find it super useful. Don't you ever think it may be kind of counterproductive to have these shows on TV that can inspire actual psycho killers to do some crazy shit? Seriously, I am all sane and in my senses, but when watching these shows I do wonder how I'd manage to hide a body and leave no clues that could lead to me when looking for the killer, and I think I'd do a pretty good job cause after all I've seen I have truly learned a thing or two, no lies xD

Have you ever thought about it? Do you think these shows make it easier for someone who's planning to kill someone to get away with it and give them ideas as to what would be the perfect way to do it?

Me and my mom watch CSI all the time. So I know what you mean. It's just mind-boggling the way they come up with these crime scenes!! And I too have been thinking whether or not people have used these crime shows to commit a murder. They have to be.

[ColinHowell]

This topic just recently came up on the English Wikipedia as a Featured Article of the day: CSI effect.

The whole article is interesting, but specifically the "Crimes" section. It's debatable whether there's any real impact. For one thing, it turns out there are a lot of stupid crooks out there, as you might imagine if you spend any time reading a site like FARK, for instance.

[pumpum]

Originally Posted by Suki

So I was watching CSI the other day... I never fully followed the show, just catch episodes here and there and it got me thinking of how they give pretty great ideas on how to murder someone and get away with it.

I know they always catch the bad guy in the end but it's always some kind of genius plan and I wonder if this kind of shows -CSI, Dexter, etc.-, might inspire someone to actually commit a murder and come up with a twisted plan he's seen on one of these shows to not get caught. Because some of the crimes they work on are seriously elaborate and not easy to solve.

Take Dexter. It tells you exactly how to kill a guy and leave no clues behind so that it could never be traced back to you. Seriously, if I was to kill someone I would totally go Dexter style. It is genius! When I first watched it I was actually surprised they were showing it as fiction when actual serial killers could totally learn from his methods and become better at it; if I was one of them I'd find it super useful. Don't you ever think it may be kind of counterproductive to have these shows on TV that can inspire actual psycho killers to do some crazy shit? Seriously, I am all sane and in my senses, but when watching these shows I do wonder how I'd manage to hide a body and leave no clues that could lead to me when looking for the killer, and I think I'd do a pretty good job cause after all I've seen I have truly learned a thing or two, no lies xD

Have you ever thought about it? Do you think these shows make it easier for someone who's planning to kill someone to get away with it and give them ideas as to what would be the perfect way to do it?

No offence but this post is naive - i used to watch CSI and programs like it but grew bored of them after a while and never once did i have the kind of thought that you have.

Lots of people however share your views and what i have noticed is that youre all mostly law-abiding more "middle class" type people who are far removed from the reality of the common street and you get romanticised by the fantasy aspect of the crime becasue of the way it is displayed on screen.

In reality....Killing someone is not difficult at all and extremely commonplace without getting caught. Just go to any hood or ghetto and see how many people have been murdered no matter where they have been.

In the UK which is where im from the cops have tried to set up special task forces to infiltrate communities because of just how unsolveable some of the murders are. I personally know people who for just a little amount of financial gain will run into a packed family restaurant and shoot you to death with no regard for "how to dispose of the body" the very idea would be laughable to them. Actually i was going to post a couple of real instances here to prove my point but i think you'll get my drift anyhows, which is there is a difference between how they portray death on tv and how uncomplicated it really is.

[Ryzorian]

Yeah, most gangland killings don't care about trying to hide anything, useually they want people to know as a warning.

[steel]

In 1994, three former high school buddies in Vancouver Canada thought they could get away with the perfect murder. Inspired by Nietzsche, apparently. They bludgeoned the family of one of them with a baseball bat - naked so as to avoid incriminating evidence. Sebastien Burns welded the bat while Atif Rafay and Jimmy Miyoshi watched... they could taste the juicy insurance money already....

Nietzsche inspired Hitler and other killers -- — Partners in Crime — Crime Library on truTV.com

....At 2:00 A.M. on July 13, 1994, the police in Bellevue, Washington received a panicked phone call from a young man named Sebastian Burns. He and his high school friend, Atif Rafay, had found his parents murdered in their home. The police arrived to investigate.

The first body they saw was that of Sultana Rafay, a former nutritionist. She lay on the floor, seemingly bludgeoned to death. In another room, her husband, Tariq, lay dead, also bludgeoned and covered in blood. One officer estimated that the structural engineer had been hit forty to fifty times. A third person in the home, Basma, their autistic daughter, had been attacked in her room but was still alive. She was rushed to the hospital, where she died from her wounds without being able to tell investigators what had happened.

The police quickly identified the two young men as "persons of interest," and detectives thought the crime scene had the appearance of being staged. Atif had reported that his Discman and a VCR had been taken, but nothing else. That made little sense to the police; nor did Burns' insistence that it had been a break-in, because the door was unlocked. In addition, Rafay had done nothing to help his dying sister, although he had to have heard her moaning in pain, as the responding officers did. He had no explanation for it. And while there was no trace of blood on either young man when they were searched at the station, the police discovered that the killer had used the shower. Even so, they had no real evidence with which to hold the young men.

Yet on the day of the funeral services for Atif's family, he and Burns boarded a bus and headed to Canada. Other relatives could not understand why Atif hadn't attended. The young men were both Canadian citizens, so once they were in Canada, the investigation and legal issues were more complicated. A few days later, the police received a tip that someone had recently offered $20,000 to kill a family that fit the Rafays' description, but they did not follow up. It took six months for the police to actually name them as suspects. They remained in Canada. The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer Reporter published the details, and 48 Hours Investigates on CBS ran the entire story in 2004. Web sites have also recorded the controversial story. Did these two believe they were superior beings who could do as they liked?

The boys, known to be intelligent, apparently enjoyed philosophical literature. Rafay had just finished his freshman year at Cornell University, an Ivy League school, when the murders occurred. What caught the attention of investigators, and what became part of their theory of the crime, was the fact that Burns had been in a high school play, Rope, about two young men who commit what they think is the perfect murder. "The only crime we can commit," says the character that Burns was playing, "is to make a mistake." And in fact, Rafay did inherit a good deal of money.

They may have gone to Canada, but they were not forgotten...on either side of the border.

Later on after all were charged with three counts of first degree homicide, Jimmy Miyoshi was allowed to go free in return for promising he'd testify against his two accomplices....

Sebastian Burns & Atif Rafay


Jimmy Miyoshi

However, they got caught and stung by undercover police posing as members of organized crime to whom they willingly confessed details of the murder in order to impress them:

Give Them Enough Rope

Perfectly Executed - 48 Hours - CBS News

Recent murder

Opinion: Sebastian Burns, Atif Rafay and the Rafay Murders


Both Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay received three consecutive life sentences each in 2004. Jimmy Miyoshi who in an attempt to escape apparently changed his legal name to James Hiroshi Kira (his wife Ayako Kira's surname according to this blogpost). After graduating from college, he and his wife tried to hide away in Tokyo, Japan. However, when the trial started in 2004, prosecutors found "Jimmy" and contacted his employers at Lehman Brothers Japan who forced him to testify. After being fired by Lehman Brothers, James Hiroshi Kira aka Jimmy Miyoshi found employment at the Tokyo branch of a Canadian insurance company (!) called Manulife. However, by that time, angry relatives of Sebastian Burns discovered where he was working and anonymously notified Manulife Japan management about his notorious criminal background. After that, he managed to fool a consultancy called Ascendant but not for more than a year. Currently he remains unemployed and declares himself to be a supporter of Islamic terrorism:

Breaking Intel: Immunized, Confessed Murder Suspect wants “Jihad”

Oh, and Jimmy Miyoshi also wants to kill US President Barack Obama according to this post:

'Obama retains right to act in Pakistan' | Rebel News - Dissident News and Analysis



The 'Perfect Crime' indeed.

[RealJames]

Originally Posted by steel

The 'Perfect Crime' indeed.

The moral of the story is, don't confess if you don't want to get caught...

[Suki]

Originally Posted by RobinMask

You know, everyone always worries what effect watching these shows has on people, does anyone ever worry about the people who write them? I mean take a look at how horrific some of these crime shows are, or some movies like Saw, I think it's far more worrying that someone can actually get into the mind of a psycho and write these things than for someone to watch and be mildly occupied for an hour . . .

That's not how it works. The writers don't just sit in front of their Macs and type it off the top of their head. They get police reports and interview murderers in prison, so most of the crimes they write have actually happened, and all they do is add a bit of imagination to their research when writing the episode.

Since you mentioned Saw, the 6th movie was banned in Spain and never shown in theaters.

Thanks ColinHowell for the link. I'm gonna quote some of it for those of you who are too lazy to click on it:

The CSI effect may alter how crimes are committed. In 2000, the year that CSI: Crime Scene Investigation debuted, 46.9 percent of all rape cases in the United States were solved by police. By 2005, the solve rate had fallen to 41.3 percent. Some investigators attributed this decline to the CSI effect, as crime shows often explain in detail how criminals can conceal or destroy evidence. Several rape victims have reported that their assailants forced them to shower or clean themselves with bleach after their assaults.[45] In December 2005, Jermaine McKinney broke into a home in Trumbull County, Ohio, where he murdered two women. A fan of CSI, McKinney went to unusual lengths to remove evidence of his crime: he cleaned his hands with bleach, burned the bodies and his clothing, and attempted to dispose of the murder weapon in a lake. McKinney was eventually apprehended.[46] Ray Peavy, head of the Los Angeles County homicide division, commented that, in addition to teaching criminals how to conceal evidence, crime shows may even "encourage them when they see how simple it is to get away with [it] on television." [from: CSI effect]

Originally Posted by pumpum

Lots of people however share your views and what i have noticed is that youre all mostly law-abiding more "middle class" type people who are far removed from the reality of the common street and you get romanticised by the fantasy aspect of the crime becasue of the way it is displayed on screen.

So you're saying the type of crimes we see on these shows are unrealistic? Dude, you'd be surprised.

Originally Posted by pumpum

In reality....Killing someone is not difficult at all and extremely commonplace without getting caught.

Yeah, right. If you're a drop out with nothing to lose you may just kill the one you wanna kill and not bother to set it up so that it doesn't look like you're the murderer. BUT if you are psycho killer (that is, someone whose brains do not work properly) you're gonna wanna have it planned and you're gonna be looking at ways to do it without getting caught. Moreover, most of these people have admitted to enjoying planning the whole thing, so for someone who's psycho enough to plan a murder these shows are gonna be pure inspiration. Jeez, they make me wish I had someone to kill so that I'd get to try out all the things I've learned from watching it on TV!

Originally Posted by pumpum

there is a difference between how they portray death on tv and how uncomplicated it really is.

My point is not: killing someone is complicated and what they show on TV is all lies.

My point is: These kinda shows have some true in them because they're mostly based on actual cases that happened in the past. Also, watching it on TV may inspire other (potential) killers to imitate what they've seen.

[Umihito]

In my opinion, if someone really wouldn't kill someone, they wouldn't. And no TV show would convince them otherwise.
If they have it in them to do it, and have the capacity to actually carry it out, a TV show wont push them to it. If they really want to do it, they will.

Intelligent peple usually calculate the murder well in advance to get away with it, and so may well not need the show to come up with plans.

I mean, it takes 5 minutes to put a list of all the things that could get you, and then figure something to counter it, especially if it's an anonymous murder. I mean, forensics...

Hair - wear something that covers it all, and get a collection of hair from a salon discretely, spread it all around the scene
Fingerprints - layers of gloves from long ago so no sales records can be tracked
Blood - ... Well just try your hardest not to bleed
Sperm - Just don't do the deed lol
Car - Make a spinning numberplate so you can change it when need be, and spin it back up in the countryside

Plus masks and such to cover your identity from cameras.

I mean, I came up with this list in 5 minutes, and I think it's pretty solid.
The days of detectives like on the show 'Monk' are pretty dead. Forensics are king these days. And if you're not connected to the victim a detective would find things hard to piece together anyway.

So I think these shows generally don't drive people to do things, or the entire audience, and most of America and every country it shows in would be murder crazy.

[Salvanas]

They actually toned down CSI because criminals were using it to cover up quite well.