True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

I've been meaning to write this post for a few weeks but I've been so busy with other things that I've only now just got around to it. If you're a fan of true crime or have your own podcast, youtube channel or blog, you will no doubt have heard about some of the well known podcasts that have recently been exposed as ripping off other people's work.

Not every popular podcast has done this but a small number have been found out to have done so. One of my favourite podcasts: Trace Evidence has fallen victim to other people copying his work many times. Trace Evidence is solely run and maintained by Steven Pacheco who spends hours thoroughly researching every case. He puts it all together and uploads it to youtube and it must take up quite a lot of his week but he doesn't get the recognition or views/subscriptions that he deserves. 

Some fans of his podcast brought to his attention that some of the other podcasts were using his work and not giving him a mention, worst still, some were even making money from Patreon whilst Steven says that he is lucky if he makes enough money from his work to buy a Blu-ray. It isn't fair and it annoys me (btw, check out, follow and subscribe to Trace Evidence on Twitter, the Trace Evidence Website and Youtube).

Hopefully you'll go and check out the quality content that Steven always posts and he'll continue to grow and grow. 

There is a divide in the true crime community and some people are suspicious of others. I've had some podcasts contact me asking for information on various crimes that I've researched, some want me to talk on their podcasts and some just want me to give them the information which I find to be very lazy. If I'm researching a case, I go to the actual court documents and police reports etc, I never go to another blog or a podcast to get the information because that is just lazy and unfair.

If a blogger and a podcast have agreed to do a collaboration and they each credit each other then that's fine but this situation of taking someone else's hard work and claiming it to be your own whilst making money from it is not on.

I'm pretty sure some of my work has been copied. I try to find cases that not many people know about and find out as much information as I possibly can and it can take me a full week to put a series of posts relating to a case together. There's times when I've had to publish 4 or 6 separate posts because I have done so much research and try to go into as much detail as possible.

A couple of weeks ago when there was all this drama about plagiarism in the true crime community, there was a lot of people arguing on twitter. I tweeted that I was listening to some true crime podcasts and someone had retweeted and commented a bitchy comment which basically implied that I was jumping on the bandwagon and copying other people.

I was furious and ranted about it on my Instagram story (not exactly the right way to go about things but I suppose I was having a little Trisha Paytas moment). I was angry that this person who didn't know me and had never even looked at my blog was accusing me of plagiarism. For someone like me who has put a lot of hard work into my blog and spent hours upon hours researching, this really upset me.

I confronted him and he changed his tune, claimed it was a joke and tried to follow me but by then people had already responded to his comments and were saying their bit as well.

I keep getting asked about creating a podcast but I don't think I have the time to do it and it's very expensive. Me being a perfectionist, it would have to be as fabulous as Trace Evidence (don't worry I'm not going to copy lol) with the music and everything. I think I'm going to stick to my little blog for now. 

There's so many true crime podcasts out there and some are amazing, you can tell a lot of time and research has gone into each episode and then there are others which are quick and sound like they either pinched someone else's work or read a few lines of wikipedia with no extra information or proper details.

So, that's my thoughts on plagiarism in the true crime community, I still think that it's going on and I wish there was something that could be done about it but what's positive is that people are waking up to it now and calling it out. 

If you're going to write about true crime and create youtube videos about cases at least be passionate about what you do and it's also more respectful to the victims that you are talking about, you're sharing their stories and they deserve to have their story told properly. 

What are your thoughts on this? Last week I posted about my experience of Meeting A Murderer which got a positive response. I also have some other stories I'm thinking of sharing. I am researching a case right now which will be in detail and in a few parts so if you're a fan of my longer posts stay tuned for that. 

In the meantime, hope you are enjoying my recent posts on here. 

Hope to see you elsewhere on my socials, I love interacting will fellow true crime, heavy metal & horror enthusiasts. 

See you in the next post x