The Murder Police Podcast
The Murder Police Podcast
True Crime and Consequences: The book | Part 1 of 2
What happens when the lines blur between true crime fascination and real murder investigations? Former homicide detective David Lyons tackles this pressing question in his groundbreaking book, "True Crime and Consequences: Does the True Crime Community Help Murder Investigations or Hurt Them?"
On this special "hostile takeover" episode of the Murder Police Podcast, communication expert Scott Harvey interviews David about the delicate relationship between amateur sleuths and professional investigators. The timing couldn't be more relevant—as the true crime genre explodes in popularity, questions about ethics and responsibility have never been more important.
David reveals how his book serves as an essential primer for multiple audiences. For true crime enthusiasts, it provides the "playground rules" to engage with cases responsibly. For content creators, it offers guidance on avoiding pitfalls that could jeopardize active investigations. And perhaps most surprisingly, it challenges law enforcement to recognize the value that dedicated civilians can bring to cold cases.
Drawing from decades of investigative experience, David shares compelling insights about the differences between "virtue justice" (public condemnation) and criminal justice (proper legal proceedings). He points to troubling examples where social media campaigns have derailed prosecutions and potentially re-victimized grieving families.
The conversation highlights a powerful paradox: while investigators are bound by legal constraints, members of the public can sometimes access information and perspectives that might otherwise remain hidden. When these two worlds collaborate effectively—with proper boundaries and mutual respect—justice becomes more attainable.
Whether you're a dedicated true crimer, a law enforcement professional, or simply someone who cares about how justice works in the modern media landscape, this episode offers invaluable perspective on a relationship that continues to evolve. The question isn't whether true crime communities will influence investigations—it's how we can ensure that influence leads to justice rather than undermines it.
David's book, True Crime and Consequences is FINALLY available!
This book explores the intricate and often controversial relationship between the true crime community and law enforcement. For amateur sleuths, true crime fans, and social media detectives and cops everywhere.
http://truecrimeconsequences.com/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FBQ4BT5Q
See what you have been missing on YouTube!
Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast. I am not David Lyons or Wendy Lyons. I am Scott Harvey and this is the second hostile takeover of the Murder Police Podcast. For those of you that missed the first episode, I'm a former hostage negotiator, communication coach, consultant, speaker, author of a book called Silence Kills. But I'm also an avid listener to the Murder Police Podcast and it dawned on me lately, because I've been working with David, that he's written a book that came out and it's not been on the Murder Police podcast. So that explains the hostile takeover. Like I'm coming over and we are talking about your book, because your community and this world needs to hear about this book. So super excited to be here today talking to David about this new book and what that means for his world and your world, David, about this new book and what that means for his world and your world.
Scott Harvey:Warning the podcast you're about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults murder and a bunch.
David Lyons:You make a really good point. We were talking on a Zoom meeting this morning that after two years plus because of my procrastination but to the help of you and everybody on the Mastermind, christy and everybody is I finally get the book published. And then we were joking this morning that of all the people that I haven't really announced it to, I think we teased that it could be coming. But it's out. It's been published since June 17th and so I appreciate you coming because I want the people that listen and watch us to understand what the book is about and I think that when they get the ins and outs they'll be encouraged to buy it and I recommend it to people if you want to get a little more educated on the system and how all this really works in the background. So thank you for taking the time.
Scott Harvey:I'm excited. Like you own this land, you should be able to put a sign on this land for the cool things you're doing. So this Murder Police Podcast needs to know about ways that they can learn more about what it is you're up to and how they can apply this to their world. So I'm excited to talk about this book. Tell us a little bit. Give us the 30,000 foot view of this book. I haven't even revealed the title yet. Whether you've done that or not.
David Lyons:I know there's some video of it here Right, the book, probably the genesis of it is. A few years ago I jumped online with a young lady named Daisy Waits from the United Kingdom and Daisy was interviewing about the Gabby Petito homicide and she was looking for somebody in the business a murder to cop or a homicide detective rather that had an opinion about that. And it was neat because Daisy went down the road of where the book goes. I always say that I have to give her credit for inspiring me to some degree, because she talked about the sensationalism out in the media and the social media and where is that meeting the real investigation? And that sparked a thought because I think that, coming from somebody who did the work in the investigation side, and now that I do have a podcast that's fairly popular that people listen to because of the authenticity is, I got to thinking, hey, I can speak from both sides of that now. And looking at my own observations about when the world of true crime pushes a case forward, maybe, or helps it, but there's a lot of sad examples of when I think they're going to hinder an investigation. Yeah, I thought about that. That's when we connected, I think, on your mastermind and began to draft out the outline of what that looks like, and the book is called True Crime and Consequences, subtitled Does the True Crime Community Help Murder Investigations or Hurt them? Kind of a neat question to ask, because the answer would be yes and as a whole, I think there's a lot of well-intended people. So my book really is a primer about what really goes on with these things and I think the timing is good.
David Lyons:There's so many conversations in the industry right now about ethics and I remember just a couple of weeks ago Ashley Flowers, with Crime Junkies, dropped a quick reel on social media and she was asking the same thing Is there a point where we go too far? You know you've got opinions and conjecture, which is part of the fun of the true crime community, right, but as I talk about in the book, the louder you are and the more platform you have, is there a potential that you could harm people? Could you harm an investigation? Justice Roberts with the Supreme Court just in May this was amazing to see was making a comment at a law school, I believe, and he made a remark to the fact that we've raised some generations of people. I'm kind of tearing this quote up, but the gist was we've raised some generations of people who have not been educated on how this system works, which is sadly true, but they're quick to criticize how this system works, which is sadly true, but they're quick to criticize. And his perspective was the ad hominem attacks toward the Supreme Court and people who are offering emotional opinions on things and they don't understand the rule of law.
David Lyons:And there we go, so that's the genesis of true crime and consequences, and it's a discussion that ranges all over the place as far as ethics, commitment and doing no harm.
Scott Harvey:Yeah. So why now? Why write this book now? You're a couple years into retirement, you were a murder detective, you were a commander at the police department, so why? Now is this book kind of coming to fruition?
David Lyons:The timeliness of it. I think it's time to continue that conversation. Again, I'm getting a feel more of the crime cons are starting to panel up people on ethics and things like that. I think it's serving a purpose. It's not a lecture. I don't want people to think that it's a lecture on the environment so much but it's a very educational tool.
David Lyons:I tell people all the time that if you're a true crime fan and you read this book, I believe you're going to be able to be a little quicker in the conversation. As far as that, for example, this whole thing in investigations isn't about saying, well, I know for a fact. It's about saying what if? Yeah, and that's what investigations are. Is what if? So? From there and then I move into one of my target audiences.
David Lyons:I believe that they'll be available is the true crime content creator? There's probably the one that if I really want to help people, I think I can help them. Even when people are well-intended, if they don't understand the system. Even when people are well-intended, if they don't understand the system, they can put cases out too much information if a case isn't solved and actually jeopardize a case. You know, I teach nationally, right, and just about a month ago I met some people that were involved in an investigation and they talked about how, because of some social media gin up, for example, in this case the death penalty was removed from the possibility of the cases moving forward and, regardless of what people think about the death penalty, if that meant something to that victim's family, that was an exterior force.
Scott Harvey:Yeah.
David Lyons:That's how powerful this can be. The other thing, too, is that the responsibility I think true crime content creators really have in protecting the surviving victims, the family members and friends that are left behind. I see a lot of cases where one of the most critical things to deal with and you dealt with this in your career too was people in pain, and when people are in pain, they're emotionally hijacked to a great degree. One of the things I see a lot of times is that when somebody loses somebody, the truth is kind of ambiguous for a while and there's never enough questions to be answered. A true crime content creator sometimes might exacerbate that pain, and I've watched that.
David Lyons:There's times when somebody that survived something like that and they're left behind. They need cold card facts, logic and reasoning and people who aren't used to that, scott, like you and me were they don't know what that's like. When they see that, right, they get emotionally charged with them and they advance that stuff Right. And then lastly well, not lastly, but one of the next target audience would be when the true crime community goes live and they actually want to engage and participate in an investigation, which I think is beautiful, right, they've got time and they've got imagination, but if you don't know the rules you can screw some things up.
David Lyons:There's tons of examples of fantastic work.
Scott Harvey:Yeah, and I think the true crime community and you know them very well because of the niche you found yourself in with the podcast and everything 90% of them are really good-hearted, good-natured people who genuinely want to help. That's it. That's it, this book. Whether you coined the term true crimers or not, I'm going to give you credit for that because it's in the book. So the true crimers, this book allows them to kind of understand the rules and do that in a more effective way. Thank you, I see this book.
Scott Harvey:As you know, one of the classes I took in law enforcement was child passenger safety training, so learning how to install car seats and that kind of stuff. I just happened to have a kid in a car seat at the time who I thought I had done her car seat well. Every night I came home from that class I tweaked one or two things that I learned about in class Good intentions, not good information. This book takes their good intentions, gives them better information and allows them to tweak going forward to be better, just because they were ignorant to the other things ahead of time. There we go. So I didn't maliciously misinstall her car seat, I just did the best I could with the information I had. When I got better information I made better choices. So this book, I think, for the average true crimer, kind of gives them the playground rules to not get in trouble and to be able to do what they're doing without hurting the investigation and or hurting the victims, because I know this Murder Police Podcast is always victim-focused.
David Lyons:Most certainly, and I think that's where my heart goes to. And you're right, I agree that tons of people that do the right thing for the right reasons. The awareness piece to make sure we don't forget these people that's a big mantra of ours is we don't want any victim to be forgotten or to get absorbed in history as an old newspaper article, missing, unsolved or solved. We don't want that to happen. But again, I thank you for that because that was the goal. I'm giving you a coloring book with good, solid lines, yeah, and drifting out of those lines is a hazard enough for an investigator that does this as a living and it's a hazard for people that, even if you're well-intended that, it can be a problem. And I think it's a I call it a primer.
David Lyons:It may be a kind of like the resource for people who want to get involved, because it does it's a 36,000 foot view of how the system works, because there's variations and nuances and whatnot, but it definitely is that. So for people that really want to get involved, it's kind of that thing about maybe I'm saying take a breath, step lightly. One of the chapters is about landmines, the things that you can trip on you, and I all know how difficult they are. We've also seen in our career cases get jeopardized when we misstepped unintentionally and now we have a whole nother group of people that are in there, which that leads me to the next target audience, because I don't want to leave these people out. I'm talking to cops.
Scott Harvey:I was circling back to that.
David Lyons:If you didn't get there because that is one of your target markets.
Scott Harvey:There we go this is what you do week in, week out for FBI Lita, that's it.
David Lyons:I speak to thousands of people here across the country and so what I want to do is I don't want people to think I'm bitching and moaning about what they do or don't do. A lot of this conversation is for the police is to open your mind and pay attention to these people when they come to you, and I think it was pretty clear in the book that in all candid conversation you would have with anybody, we don't really solve cases. The community solves the cases, and I even make a remark in a book that, pretty much talking to the police, I'm like come on, you'll take a dope fiend or a prostitute and run with what they say which is fine I'm not degrading them, because some of my best witnesses were people that walked lifestyles.
David Lyons:You're not, didn't? Then what's wrong with somebody that comes in and says I'm a true crime enthusiast and I've been doing some stuff on the internet, right, and I found this Right?
Scott Harvey:Open your mind, it's a misconceived notion about the type of kook. This is because in law enforcement, you know, food shows up at the police department. The number one question is who brought this? Who's been abouts for him? Because there are some crazies out there, right? So I'm not eating an unnamed casserole that just shows up in the squad room, but I think for the true crime community to somebody say, hey, I've kind of been trained in this, I've got a working knowledge of this. Here's why I brought this to your attention, because I was thinking about this, and then for the law enforcement to say you know what, you may be right, that's it.
Scott Harvey:Yeah, that's one of my favorite expressions for anybody is you may be right, because then me as the investigator, I don't feel the need to defend myself and you feel like your information was taken into my investigation. I'm not saying that's a great idea. You know what. You may be right and I may think about it for a week and decide you know what they were wrong, but I at least have information in a different perspective, that's it and there are so many super talented people out there.
David Lyons:If you watch some of the latest documentaries, don't F with Cats. They call him mostly harmless. Both of those actually are. I don't know if the producer knewed, but then they both show incredible. I remember watching those and as a former investigator I'm like wow, I mean please be on my team. And that's the genesis of the book is in the end is how do we get together? So in the book talks about, I actually lay out to people how you and I perceive people Right, because we have a stereotype about that. But what is really going on?
Scott Harvey:Yeah, and when?
David Lyons:you meet this when you're going to go meet with the cops, is that I go into the why, and you know it comes down to we talk about in the book quite a bit. Is that you know they're going to want to know your motivation? Mm-hmm, because the motivation is going to see where your emotions are. Yeah, the motivation is going to see where your emotions are, yeah, and your emotions are either going to be hijacked or they're going to be okay. Yeah, and that's okay too. So I tell people all the time now that I really believe, if you get the book and you read it and you're a content creator, I probably am going to increase the odds of you sitting down with a murder cop. Yeah, and I believe that. Yeah. Same thing with police, though, is that let's, let's get our stuff together, let's open our heart to the fact that these people have imaginations and they have time to. Most of us have imaginations, but the number one rule in this business is the lack of time. Yeah, it doesn't exist.
Scott Harvey:Yeah, and you and I, both with a law enforcement background, we know the law enforcement audience is the harder sell. Yeah, like the crime community, the true crimers are very primed for this. We talked about this when you kicked around this idea like this book didn't exist, which is scary and exciting at the same time. Scary because maybe there's not an audience for it. Exciting we're first. You're the first one to really write this type of book that we've been able to find. Somebody may have written one and their mom bought a couple of copies, but this is the first book I've seen in this lane for this type of audience. So it's exciting to be the first one, but it's the most resistance is going to come from law enforcement.
David Lyons:I believe it, I believe it and again I tell people, I think we're just, I'm just starting a conversation, yeah, but it's out there Like I said when you've got crime junkies and she makes that statement who.
David Lyons:I respect them immensely. That's why they're wildly successful. And again I'm starting to see more talks about ethical considerations and things like that and maybe some more concern about, again, those people who have been left behind. Right, I'm a big believer that we don't need to see pictures of decedents and how they were left and how they were found.
Scott Harvey:There's people doing that. There's people writing those books. There's people running those websites that are, to me, exploitive 100%, and that's not you and that's not this. I want people to be very clear. No, exactly.
David Lyons:The podcast has never been that way and the book isn't about that. So I think it's a good discussion to start. I want people to be very clear. No, exactly, the podcast has never been that way and the book isn't about that. So I think it's a good discussion to start. I think that it'll be carried on more and more. But again, when I was researching, I couldn't find anything. Because what I learned about book publishing and you're too is that one of the first things you have to do is what else is out there. And my publisher, jill Carlisle with Empowered Press, she did research and came back to me and she goes I can't find it. And so if it's there, it just didn't get hats off to whoever did it.
Scott Harvey:And maybe this will boost the sales of that book, because we need that too so whatever that is.
Scott Harvey:So I think it's interesting that the law enforcement and correct me if I'm wrong, because you were more entrenched in the investigation's end of your job than I was but what I think law enforcement is missing in this book is we have confidential informants, right. We have people that work for us that we send out as our agents to collect information. Those people are governed by a lot of the same rules we are in law enforcement and they are as our agent. They bring a lot of the same rules we are in law enforcement and they are as our agent. They bring a lot of our restrictions with them. True crimers, who are not our agent, are able to participate in conversations, are able to see things when they're out and about that we in law enforcement might have to get a warrant for.
Scott Harvey:And then if they show up with that information and say, hey, I was nosing around this crime scene and I saw this thing and I brought my attention here's a picture of it that served up to us as a silver platter to put into our notebook that we may not have been able to gather on our own. There we go, because one thing we've been over that scene 50 times. You and I both know in the book writing process like we wrote these chapters four or five times each. Our editor saw them four or five times each, but a separate proofreader went over it word for word, line by line, to make sure that the punctuation, the spelling was right, because we were now blind to that. So when you're entrenched in these cases, you get so blind to the things you've already seen 50 times that somebody coming in with a fresh perspective and saying I just saw this, did you ever notice that? And then the humility to say you may be right, humility being the operative word Humility.
David Lyons:I'm pretty clear in a book that ego has no place in this game for either of us. Yeah, ego is. I think I've talked to you before about how Wendy always watches the true crime shows in First 48. And I'll walk through the room and watch a detective and I'll say I would never want to work with him or her. And she'll go why? And I'm like because they're all laid up with ego. And so there we go. It's a gentle reminder on that and the idea again that when you have that information what your approach path probably needs to look like, and using the patience of it and an understanding that you offer the information and you may wait. In the beginning of the book I highlight a few I call them exhibits of instances I've seen in the last few years that I wasn't crazy about.
David Lyons:And I strip the names off of them.
Scott Harvey:It isn't about calling people out.
David Lyons:But I do name a young lady from up in, I think, british Columbia or Canada that I interviewed and did a Zoom with to talk about how she actually put some things together using pictures and closed-circuit television and how she handed it over to the police and waited. She didn't go out on the Internet and blast it everywhere, she didn't brag about it and she talked about how neat it was to get a call from somebody from the police department saying hey, we just want to let you know that we followed through on that and you were right. And the cool thing when she was talking she felt so I don't want to say honored, but the idea that this person engaged her.
Scott Harvey:She felt validated.
David Lyons:That's it. Yeah, and here we go. You're a communications expert. To get that kind of a relationship with somebody that you've never met before takes work from both sides.
Scott Harvey:Yeah, it's with a book. And for her, from a tactical law enforcement standpoint, hopefully what she understood or maybe she learned in the process, is yes, I gave this to the police department. If I were to go out and blast it on social media, they lose any type of tactical advantage. I just gave them Because now the public knows what I know. That's it. There's so much that the police knows.
Scott Harvey:People think that we don't do media interviews because we don't want to or we don't know a whole lot. We know a lot. We can't say a lot because we're still piecing things together or we suspect a lot. I would say that there's sometimes we don't know a lot but we suspect a lot and we've got to make the connections to make it true. But I think in this situation with her, she gave them the time they needed to process it and to put it into their investigation without blowing it up. That's it and that's the ego piece you're talking about. It's like I did a really cool thing. I do want to post on social media about it I'm a social media guy but it's best for the victims and the families that the police do what they need to do with this. When it's all said and done. We'll talk about what I did.
David Lyons:There we go In the book. I coined a thing that's probably out there, but I talk about different types of justice, because there's all kinds of justice floating around and I compare what I call virtue justice to criminal justice. Virtue justice, in my humble opinion, is that where I'm going to yell really loud about what I think or I'm going to condemn somebody that I think is responsible for a crime and I'm going to dox them and I'm going to yell at the rooftops about them. The problem is, while that emotionally feels good, I guess in the short term the problem is the only place I think we need to see.
David Lyons:This is criminal justice, and you could defeat that. A big criticism I have of a lot of true crimers is that we meet families all the time on this show who have really good ideas what's happened to their loved one and the first thing we tell them is that we won't go to specifics. Because of that same reason, if I get out and blast the name of somebody who's suspected in something, at a minimum, scott, I'm reminding them to go low. At a minimum I'm reminding them to shut up.
David Lyons:At a minimum I'm reminding them don't speak of this, don't do things, and the reality in the long run of an investigation is waiting for that person to screw up. I've always said that it's not so much that cops are smart without taking anything away, but I always use the analogy that we wait on the bad guy, we wait for the bulb over their head to flicker and we jump on them in the dark. If I remind you in the media over and over again that you're a target, you'll probably stay smart for a while. Yeah, I need you to limber up. And so there we go and we see that. I see that a lot, to a point where it's just really not right. Yeah, Because again, it may feel good to stand on a mountaintop or on a social media platform and blast all this stuff, but you could undermine the case quite a bit and there's been recent cases where that balance has been in the flux.
David Lyons:Karen Reed was just found not guilty. We might do a show on some of the aspects of that case that I found fascinating, but one of the things that was pretty clear is the attempts by the outside what I call the outsider. The true crime community actually started throwing some leverage. That was in the wrong direction. There's a case here in Kentucky where a young woman was murdered and the people I think some of those people are still going to trial right now, and you could watch this same thing happening in a small town. That was happening up outside Boston, yeah, and one of the judges here locally was really leaned in and said careful. I remember I saw somebody online talking about show up outside the whole courthouse and I hope you can yell loud enough Well, good luck, yeah, Good luck. I mean that's a mistrial and could move it to another venue and cost the family justice again. So that's a lot of what we talk about in there.
Scott Harvey:And in those cases you could potentially victimize the family a second time.
David Lyons:There we go.
Scott Harvey:Because we're so closed, like we're going to get some type of resolution here, and then it blows up because these people who had good intentions got their pitchforks and their torches out and blew the whole thing up.
David Lyons:You can try them in public as a sense of virtue, or we can try them in a courtroom, yeah, at which is secluded and it's quiet and it's respected and everything. But just like what you talked about is that police don't withhold anything because we wanted to be the gatekeepers. The end goal is not happening now. It's going to happen in a very sterile environment where there's lots of rules, and we don't want to break those rules.
Scott Harvey:And appropriately so. We, as a functioning society, we need those rules. Yes, like you can say what you want about defense attorneys, I like the job a defense attorney does. Yes, because if I ever need one, if I'm accused rightly or falsely accused like, I want somebody who's going to make sure I get a fair trial Right and that's their job. That's it. Their job is not to get me off right, their job is to make sure I get a fair trial and you can see them as the adversary or you can see them as an important checks and balances on our system. That's it. To make sure we're dotting all of our I's and crossing all of our T's.
David Lyons:I told every recruit I ever trained if you tell the truth in your paperwork, hey, you know there's more to this story, so go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.
David Lyons:The Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded and edited by David Lyons. The Murder Police Podcast can be found on your favorite Apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at MurderPolicePodcastcom, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about our presenters and a link to the official Murder Police Podcast merch store where you can purchase a huge variety of Murder Police Podcast swag. We are also on Facebook, instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us. If you have enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe for more and give us five stars and a written review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you download your podcasts. Make sure you set your player to automatically download new episodes so you get the new ones as soon as they drop, and please tell your friends Lock it down.
David Lyons:Judy.
