Book Review: Savage Appetites

Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession by Rachel Monroe

Honestly, I’m not sure if I’m a true crime fan or not. Let me get one thing straight: I hate serial killers. They are gross and disgusting and I think it’s seriously messed up that people treat them like celebrities. If I were queen of the world, we’d never publish any book, article, or movie about them. I also thought Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood was one of the most boring things I’d ever attempted to read. And yet, I love reading about forensics, find police procedurals and other mystery novels fascinating, and was as addicted to Serial as the rest of the podcast world when it came out. So, it’s hard to tell where I fall in the spectrum of true crime fans such as attended Crime Con along with the author.

Rachael Monroe divides this book into four sections: detective, victim, defendant and killer. She goes deep into the lives of four women who become obsessed with those roles.

The first section was about Frances Glessner Lee, the wealthy socialite who, having been prevented from a real career by misogyny in her family and the society at large, nevertheless proved a foundational contributor to the world of legal medicine and forensics. She’s most well known for her nutshell dioramas, crime scenes that teach police detectives the art of close observation in investigations. I have heard about these dioramas and dearly want to see them, as much because I am fascinated by miniatures as because of their unique history, so it was interesting to learn about the life of their maker (though I suspect she would be a difficult woman to get along with.)

The second section dealt with a woman who became obsessed with the Tate family. This is the Tate family whose daughter Sharon was infamously murdered by Charles Manson’s cultists in 1969. Sharon’s mother founded the nearly-as-infamous Victim’s Rights movement, which soon strayed away from its original purported goal into the “three strikes and you’re out” laws which led to our burdensome prison system we have today. I’m more interested in the legal ramifications of Deborah Tate’s activism than the ghoulist murders, but all of it is pretty creepy and horrific.

In section three, Monroe follows the story of a woman who, after seeing a documentary about three teens arrested for the killing of some boys in a rural town, became convinced that the teens were innocent, especially the so-called ringleader, who was mostly guilty of being socially awkward and non-conformist in a very conservative small town. His trial was in the height of the Satanic Panic, in which many people were locked up for imaginary crimes. While this crime was a real one, the woman who befriends the defendant believes fervently in his innocence.

What’s interesting is how the events of the previous section, namely Deborah Tate’s activism, affected the defendant in section three. He’s locked up for decades, and as the political winds shift, so do his relative freedoms within prison. And even without evidence supporting him (and evidence exonerating him) to let him free would make the state look like it made a mistake, and the state acts like it’s a small-minded narcissist that can’t ever admit to being wrong. Section three follows how much effort, and how much money, it takes to make appeals once someone has been convicted.

I find stories about the Satanic Panic to be horrifying, not because I think that there were real Satanists out there sacrificing babies and supposedly burying dozens of them, but because of people who capitalized on the literal witch hunt and stoked the fires by claiming to be able to identify Satanists by details such as “Satanists wear black nail polish” or “Satanists like the number 8.” While I give a hard side eye to the kind of women who become pen pals with men on death row for horrific murders, in this case I think the subject of the story was worthy of admiration for her loyalty and perseverance. I don’t know if I’d have the wherewithal to do what she did for her husband.

The last story was the hardest to hear. Monroe delves into the gruesome world of people who idolize monstrously evil people, in this case, people who fetishize the Columbine High School murderers. Monroe does a pretty good job, I think, of explaining what seems inexplicable: what appeal can there possibly be in such loathsome losers? But violence is one of the few things our species truly respects. As I thought about it, I realized how pervasive it was in the media, how many characters were handed the trait “good at kicking ass” to transform them into something the audience can cheer after (looking at you, Joss Whedon). It’s not something I have in myself, but I can almost understand how there can be a perverse kind of power in, as she puts it “being the one he doesn’t kill” which is why women write fan letters to murderers and stan after dead school shooters. I hadn’t heard of the girl she covers in the last section. In fact, I can’t even remember her name, which is really as it should be, as the girl dreams of murdering innocents. Not knowing if she was successful made me cringe in anticipation.

I like mysteries, and I like stories in which justice prevails, and I do think there’s a value in learning about crime because it helps us learn things which may keep us and our loved ones safe. That said, I’m offended by the existence of collectable cards for serial killers or Tumblr accounts where people write love letters to famous school shooters. There’s a scene at the end which was particularly disgusting, where a presenter is telling about some gross turd who was in prison for torturing and murdering women, and she says something like “not many of you have heard about him, but he deserves more recognition” and I thought, “No, he doesn’t. He deserves life in prison and an unmarked grave. He certainly doesn’t deserve a publishing contract for his sadistic porn.”

But then, I bought this book and listened to it, so it was like when you complain about traffic while knowing that you, yourself, are part of that traffic. Maybe it’s a spectrum. I want to think there’s a healthy interest in crime and murder fiction, like enjoying a good scare and loving Agatha Christie and Patricia Cornwall, and the other end of the spectrum is a bit depraved, like making little scrapbooks with details of the murderer who tortured and killed all those innocent people and then writing that actual man letters in prison. Where’s the line between trying to learn and prevent future murders by understanding what about their upbringing inspired them to violence, and simply fetishizing sickos? It does a grave disservice to society to imply through our actions that a person can become famous and lauded if they just murder enough people in one go. If someone shoots up a club, they don’t deserve fame. After listening to this book, I wondered if my interest in murder mysteries was like how I will sometimes watch those horrible pimple-popping videos that show up on TikTok feeds–like, it’s a sick fascination that one should probably be embarrassed by.

But then, I still do wanna see those nutshell dioramas.




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