Credit: Dangerous Minds / Tumblr / Public Domain

The line between having an interest in true crime and being weird about it is vanishingly thin.

This makes sense because true crime as a genre is undeniably interesting. I would say that it’s quite rare to find someone who has absolutely no interest in the vast, deep world of people breaking the law.

Whether it’s serial killers, bank robbers or my personal area of interest, cults, there’s absolutely something that draws people to the dark side of life. A need to understand how people can live so openly for themselves and say, “fuck the entire world, I’m going to get mine one way or another”. Interest in a world that is alien to most people is completely understandable.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons a person’s fascination with it can get morbid quickly, and outright sick if left to fester too long. It’s like alcoholism. It’s very easy to take pleasure in drinking alcohol too far when booze is so easily available, and there are entire cultures built around binge drinking. It can get unhealthy quickly, leading to people talking about the most horrific things imaginable happening to real-life people as if they’re events on a TV show.

Fortunately, many in the true crime fandom are aware of this and are keen to remind people of the reality of what they’re talking about. Principally because they’ve seen what happens when people go further down the rabbit hole. When people get into the really, really horrible parts of true crime fandom, and find themselves among people who aren’t fans of the people who cover serial killers, they’re fans of the serial killers themselves.

Who was the “death merchant” of true crime?

It was this kind of true crime fan that the Tumblr account TheDeathMerchant was set up to profit from. The blog wasn’t always like this, though.

For years, the true crime community on Tumblr knew her as Jessika, a witty, sensible true crime fan who blogged about her passions, but also her degree in psychology, her job as a real estate agent and her son. Then her blog took a truly disturbing swerve when she started selling memorabilia from imprisoned serial killers.

Not like keychains or totes, either, drawings, letters, photos, or even locks of their hair. No one knew how she had access to all this, but it did seem legit, and she wasn’t keeping the money, she said. It was instead going to the inmates for their commissary. Strange behaviour to be sure, but nothing unforgivable. Not just yet. Then came the big one. Jessika began blogging about getting married to convicted murderer Bobby Ray Gilbert.

Gilbert was on death row for a murder he committed when he was 17 years old, and Jessika was apparently exchanging letters and photos with him. Many didn’t believe her until she started posting photos of these letters on her blog, showing that they were in his handwriting with his signature. This crossed a line for many people, and online sleuths began looking into Jessika’s behaviour. It turned out that the two weren’t married, and she had been sending photos of people that very much weren’t her to him.

He wasn’t the only one, either. In fact, the letters and merchandise she’d obtained from these convicted criminals had been obtained by essentially catfishing them. Sending them photos of complete strangers, then claiming to be in love with them before receiving the photos, letters and locks of their hair she’d ask for. Then she sold them on and kept the money for herself. That was the case for a few of them at least. The rest she’d just faked.

A potent lesson of what happens when you forget the reality of something like true crime. It’s fascinating, sure, but it’s also easy to lose yourself in it for the sake of clout.