‘Murder porn’ has its own channel, and we can’t get enough

If you know where to look, you can find a TV show about someone just like you being murdered — or murdering someone else.

Fantasizing about real-life murder, just like our other national pastimes, has its own channel.

Before the Investigation Discovery channel’s round-the-clock mystery thriller format was finalized in 2008, shows about real-life horrors were slightly harder to find. The History Channel or TLC might have a special on the Green River Killer. Bill Kurtis filled the A&E schedule with “Cold Case Files.” Court TV was always good for a “Medical Detectives” marathon late at night.

And then there was “Snapped,” the Oxygen channel’s celebration of women on the verge of violence that has churned out 15 seasons of female revenge fantasies since 2004. Spending a Sunday afternoon watching “Snapped” doesn’t mean you’re going to kill your husband. But it seems to mean something, spending leisure time languishing in stories about how happy marriages end in high-velocity blood splatter.

Even if true crime fans feel guilty about their habit, they can take comfort in their numbers — and their heritage. With literary roots in Edgar Allan Poe, the concept of violent crime as entertainment has woven itself tightly into America’s cultural narrative, entangling itself with a courtroom fascination dating back to Lizzie Borden.

When women ages 25-54 tune in to Investigation Discovery, the undisputed epicenter of true crime TV, they keep watching for twice as long as they do with other channels, broadcast or cable, despite network schedules filled with scripted tales of humanity’s dark side. Fictionalized tales ripped from the headlines just aren’t the same. The sense of reality, however removed, has made ID a top 10 network for women.

“We will always be anchored in these real stories. That’s what our viewers crave,” said Kevin Bennett, general manager of Investigation Discovery.

A quick perusal of Investigation Discovery’s programming confirms that ID is not shy about what it offers, even if some of its most rabid fans will confess their love only in private.

“They do say it in a hushed tone,” Bennett said. “They whisper, ‘ID is my favorite network.’”

Maybe that’s because the sun never sets on ID’s carnival ride of re-enactments. The more specific the focus, the campier the title cards.

“Sinister Ministers Collared.” “Wives With Knives.” “Handsome Devils.” “Elder Skelter.”

A woman with a treacly Georgia accent reads the teasers for the next installment of “Southern Fried Homicide,” the seduction-heavy, bodice ripper series that “South Park” lampooned last year with its “Informative Murder Porn” episode.

On the darker end of the ID spectrum, “Most Evil” barely bothers with a narrative at all, charting the nauseating misdeeds of its subjects until someone is declared marginally more monstrous.

But most Investigation Discovery programming falls somewhere in between playful and grim.

One of ID’s most successful shows blends gritty reality with re-enactment particularly well, largely because of its charismatic host, retired Colorado cop Joe Kenda. His “Homicide Hunter” series is a smartly edited mix of Kenda’s pithy recollections of the scores of murders he solved, bolstered by interviews with other grizzled ex-detectives.

The camera focuses tightly on Kenda’s face as he dispenses droll advice like the world’s most jaded grandpa: “Don’t worry about the bullet with your name on it. Worry about the one that says To Whom It May Concern.”

It doesn’t hurt that Kenda is portrayed in re-enactments by actor Carl Marino, who makes Don Draper look like a clumsy slob as he smokes his way through crime scenes in a dapper black suit. Marino conveys Kenda’s dour skepticism as suspects are eliminated, but usually real-life Kenda wraps up cases with deadpan lines straight out of “Dragnet.”

“A crazy boyfriend, you say?” he muses. “I love crazy boyfriends.”

Kenda outshines most of the celebrity hosts in ID’s stable, but they have Susan Lucci hosting “Deadly Affairs,” Roseanne Barr hosting “Momsters,” Jerry Springer hosting “Tabloid.”

Like “Homicide Hunter,” most true crime programming tells at least some of the story from law enforcement’s perspective. But Investigation Discovery is unafraid to tackle crime from all angles, and unreliable narrators tell tales of victimization with abandon. Once again, the titles are nothing if not descriptive. “I Was Murdered.” “A Stranger in My Home.” “Stalked.” “Catch My Killer.”

And then there are the shows that turn the camera squarely on violent criminals and ask them to explain themselves.

Former FBI profiler Candice DeLong hosts ID’s “Deadly Women” docu-series, back for its ninth season in August, as well as “Facing Evil,” a half-hour interview format with jailed killers that returned for Season 5 on Friday. DeLong said in an interview earlier this month with The Star that most people have no idea what most real murderers are like.

“We tend to think of the word ‘killers’ as degenerate psychopaths who live in trailer parks and have terrible upbringings,” she said.

In fact, she said, most people kill one other person for a specific reason and would never kill again.

“And most of them have a back story that will make you cry,” she said.

According to DeLong, that tragic back story usually involves an outside influence, someone who appears too good to be true. “Predators are everywhere and if you don’t know yourself, watch out.”

DeLong is proud that her shows function as cautionary tales. “I wouldn’t want to be involved in a show where the viewer didn’t say, ‘Wow, I’ll never do that,’” she said.

When she started working on “Deadly Women,” it took a while to master the entertainment vs. education equation, but it was important to her.

“In the earlier years, I thought some of the re-creations were much more graphic than I was comfortable with,” DeLong said.

Now she works with her teams of producers and showrunners to keep depictions from straying into the gory.

In her interviews with convicted killers, too, DeLong has some questions she won’t ask. For example, “How did you feel when you were stabbing them?”

“I’m not going to ask that,” DeLong said, though she acknowledged the question was a staple for other journalists. “What purpose in the world would that serve? I’m not looking for salacious details. That’s not what I’m going for.”

Instead, she asks, “What were you thinking right before it happened?”

Most often, killers say they don’t remember, and sometimes DeLong believes them, that their minds have blocked out the trauma of the murder. Other times, she thinks, they just don’t want to talk about it.

Addressing the nature of evil feels like a big task for a channel with “Secret Lives of Stepford Wives” on its lineup. But where else is evil publicly discussed these days? From the pulpit? On very special episodes of “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit”? On Nancy Grace?

People are drawn to stories of crimes that might actually affect them someday. Just like most true crime literature, Investigation Discovery focuses on tawdry domestic clashes and serial killers. Sure, it’s usually the husband or wife who killed the soccer mom, but sometimes it’s Ted Bundy.

Either way, the channel’s mission is about finding the moments when lives of privilege are disrupted, what Bennett calls “the shattering of the peaceful calm.”

“People are most concerned about violent crime when they feel safe,” said Bennett, who doesn’t make any apologies for ID’s format. “You tell a story in one hour. You’ve got to establish right away that the victim — or survivor — is someone you would have liked. And then the unbelievable happens.”

There’s some evidence that spending countless weeknights gazing at the domestic ruin of “Behind Mansion Walls” will skew your perspective. A 2014 study by Chapman University found that watching true crime shows led to a heightened sense of fear about personal safety, identity theft and even terrorist attacks.

“With so many shows in the scripted world, violence solves problems,” Bennett said, citing police procedurals where police can use their guns or their fists to resolve story lines.

Given the popularity of “CSI” and other shows of its ilk, he’s not willing to adopt the mantle of being the Violence Channel. Quite the opposite.

“We’re the Consequences of Violence Channel,” Bennett asserted. “We pick up the pieces.”

He also said he doesn’t worry about being a template for potential criminals.

“If you perpetrate, you’re gonna get caught. I honestly don’t think our shows would have any appeal if you don’t have any empathy for the victims.”

And there are so many victims out there — despite America’s recent dip in violent crimes — that the team making shows for ID maintains a database to keep all its cases straight.

“If we ever run out of stories,” Bennett said, “that would be OK with us.”

That doesn’t seem likely, and neither does any decrease in America’s appetite for them. True crime TV remains wildly popular because we seek the subversive catharsis of canned violence from the confines of our security. If evil really were lurking just outside our windows, watching a show about bloody murder would be no thrill at all.

This story was originally published June 13, 2015 at 5:00 AM with the headline "‘Murder porn’ has its own channel, and we can’t get enough."