How Portrayals Affect Victims’ Families
There are TV shows specifically devoted to revisiting cold cases with the aim of closing those investigations. A&E’s The First 48 aired several episodes that focused on cold case homicides in the show’s featured cities. The 2019 murder of Ben Montgomery was featured in the 2023 installment “Unforgotten: Ben,” and three suspects were subsequently arrested in July 2025, January 2026 and February 2026. They are awaiting trial.
The challenge for these programs, and for those involved in the cases, is the ongoing balance between facts and entertainment. There are the risks of sensationalizing stories to hold viewer interests, omitting information (either due to time constraints or editorial decisions) or simply asking people to publicly revisit something that is traumatic.
In the case of Captive Audience, “there were a lot of emotional moments,” Ashley explained, “but I think when you’re surrounded by people that really care about the story and want it to be genuine, it was a lot easier to handle.”
“I told [director] Jessica [Dimmock] whenever I was watching it that I felt like the movie was made just for me, and I still very much believe that,” she continued, adding, “Seeing those aspects of his life that nobody else really saw, or at least I know I didn’t, really made it more real.”
Victims and their loved ones can also decline to participate in a project that doesn’t feel right to them; former NXIVM member India Oxenberg did not appear in The Vow but was later able to tell her story directly in the docuseries Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult, which specifically emphasized her perspective.
Legal Issues
However, not every production is like that, particularly in the podcast realm, where some true crime podcasts are created by “armchair detectives” who don’t have the benefit of professional training or access. And with the goal of many cold case projects being to find new information that can lead to an arrest and hopefully a conviction, that generates concerns about whether media exposure can compromise a potential criminal trial.
“Murder investigations are the highest level of investigation, and everyone wants justice and transparency. If you violate that and take liberties with the facts and blurt out unsubstantiated theories, you will eventually be dismissed,” Myers says when asked if there should be standards in place for these kinds of projects. “Because there are no restraints placed on filmmakers or content developers, we must be wary of cherry-picked items of info being reported as fact, or worse, bad information being reported to satiate a political leaning.”
Out of fear of legal repercussions, Myers feels "confident" that "content developers will just continue to get better; those [who] don't and who are caught contriving material will suffer an online and public persona non grata.”
That was an important concern for Captive Audience director Dimmock, who insisted on using words spoken directly by Steven himself. Though Steven died in a motorcycle accident in 1989, she enlisted actor Corin Nemec, who had portrayed him in the TV movie I Know My Name Is Steven, to represent him in the docuseries. “That was about being able to hear it straight from Steven’s mouth,” Dimmock said. “Since he’s not with us any longer, I didn’t want other versions or other interpretations of what he had said or a writer distilling it down.”
While there are concerns and risks that come with cases being republicized for true crime audiences, there are also benefits that balance out those risks. The exposure provided can lead to investigative breakthroughs and possibly provide justice for families left without answers. And even in closed cases, there is an opportunity for families and loved ones to be heard in ways they haven’t been—correcting misconceptions or simply having the chance to share information no one thought to hear before.
“I want everybody to see that we’re a family,” Ashley said. “Even though we’ve been through so many hard times and stuff behind the scenes that nobody really knows about, we’re still like anybody else, just trying to live life and go through the day to day … We’re still people that have a story to tell.”
