What's Your Local True-Crime Conspiracy Theory?
the true crime that's worth your time
Remember when conspiracy believers were most associated with the X-Files’ Lone Gunmen and Mel Gibson’s character in the (now nearly unGoogleable) 1997 movie Conspiracy Theory? Ah, the good old days, when as far as we knew, Gibson was “just” a garden variety homophobe, not a wide-ranging bigot, and a conspiracy-related discussion in mixed company would include some guy claiming JFK ordered the death of Marilyn Monroe’s, and not some guy arguing why it was actuuuually a good idea to storm the Capitol.
I was thinking about conspiracies when I was writing up the Hot Springs item yesterday: more specifically, when I was scrolling through the Facebook comments made by people who believe that investigators are covering up a serial killer. Comments like this one:
As I was writing yesterday’s Best Evidence, a press release landed in Sarah’s inbox. “Every State’s Most-Searched Conspiracy Theory,” the release from Direct TV promises. The business reason for this marketing move escapes me, and its methodology is pretty suspect, as all they say is that they “combed through the mothership of all intrigue databases, Reddit, for each state’s most-searched conspiracy theories.” That’s how you end up with a vaguely jokey take on “New World Order,” which appears to be the top conspiracy in all the states you’d pretty much expect it to be.
Except New Mexico, where the top conspiracy is the death — or, more precisely, the continued life — of musician and convicted sexual abuser Tupac Shakur. That’s the only state that claims a crime as its top conspiracy, but Sarah and I refuse to accept Direct TV’s claims. As she put it, “Let's just say you're not NOT going to find ‘jersey devil killed lindbergh baby?’ in people's caches in Ocean County N.J.” And here in San Francisco, well, we had Patty Hearst and still have some surviving Gettys, so…(but my personal true-crime conspiracy theory doesn’t involve anyone reportedly as famous).
What about your city or region? What are the cases you think are more complicated than media coverage/police spokespeople would have you think? What’s your hometown cover-up? What crime would have you posting Facebook trolls to the local PD, were you the kind of person to do such a thing? Let’s get into it.