The Tragedy of True Crime

OA1210 - This week we welcome journalist and author John J. Lennon, who is calling in from New York’s Sing Sing Correctional Facility where he is serving 25 years to life for murder. Lennon’s extraordinary new book The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us tells his own story alongside that of three other men whose crimes were sensationalized by the media--including Manhattan “Preppy Killer” Robert Chambers--after they were convicted for murders which they unquestionably committed. It challenges us to consider what life is like for the subjects of these documentaries and re-enactments after the credits have rolled, and to ask what our national obsession with true crime is costing them--and all of us.

1. The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories that Define Us, John J. Lennon (2025)

2. The New York Times review of The Tragedy of True Crime, Pamela Colloff (9/23/25)

3. “A Convicted Murderer’s Case for Gun Control,” John J. Lennon, The Atlantic (8/21/2013)

4. “The True Crime Stories You See on TV Are Leaving Out Something Big,” John J. Lennon, Slate (10/13/2025)

5. “When Your Crime Becomes a Dick Wolf Show,” John J. Lennon, Rolling Stone (7/19/2025)