Here’s Why Your Teenage Daughter Should Be a True Crime Fan

You Won’t Have to Nag Her About Safety. Plus, It Could Save Her Life.

Joni E. Johnston, Psy. D.
4 min readMar 17, 2022

Last Saturday night, my line dancing at the Grizzly Rose was put on hold by a can of pepper spray. Here I was, standing in line with my twenty-one-year-old daughter, two of her sorority sisters, and another mom when the bouncer opened one of our Alpha Chi’s purses and discovered it. The girls argued that they felt safer keeping it with them; the bar most definitely did not. Perhaps they’ve seen some ugly things happen when chemical weapons and chugged alcohol are in the same room. So, she and the other mom trekked back to the car to hide her safety blanket under the car seat. The rest of us waited.

used with permission from iclipart.com

The last time I went line dancing, I was older than my daughter but not by much. I don’t think pepper spray was around back then. If it was, I sure didn’t know about it. Safety just wasn’t something we thought about on a Saturday night. It wasn’t that I didn’t know bad things happened. They just wouldn’t happen to me.

That’s not the world my kids live in. They know bad things happen. Hell, they listen to stories about bad things that have happened all the time; all of my kids are true crime junkies. Perhaps it’s inevitable that, when your mom is a forensic psychologist who writes…

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Joni E. Johnston, Psy. D.
Joni E. Johnston, Psy. D.

Written by Joni E. Johnston, Psy. D.

Forensic psychologist/private investigator//author of serial killer book. Passionate about victim’s rights, the psychology of true crime, and criminal justice.