‘I think there are dangers in this kind of armchair web sleuthing, but there are opportunities that should be harnessed.’
The rise of so-called internet sleuths is an aspect of investigations police need to learn to harness rather than simply turning a blind eye to, according to the UK’s top criminologist.
British teenager Jay Slater’s disappearance on Tenerife is the latest in a series of high profile cases to have attracted the gaze of amateur detectives eager to crack the case.
In the vacuum of official updates, social media was quickly flooded with conspiracy theories speculating about what may have happened to him and groups dedicated to poring over grainy CCTV images suggesting their own leads to follow.
Others have taken the more drastic step of flying out to the Spanish holiday island to undertake their own informal inquiries on the ground.
But while the terms ‘armchair detective’ and ‘internet sleuth’ can be used to dismiss those with a keen interest in a case, can there be a place for them alongside traditional police investigations?
Internet sleuths – a help or a hindrance?
Speaking to Metro, renowned criminologist, best-selling author and broadcaster Professor David Wilson says an interest in true crime ‘is not just normal – it’s essential’.
‘There is a kind of look-down-your-nose attitude sometimes about people who are interested in true crime, and I understand that label “true crime” is a catch-all label,’ he goes on.
‘On one level the label encompasses that gratuitous interest in a serial killer, who he might have killed and what he did to his victims.
‘But at the other level, at the broader level, it’s an interest in which people are genuinely concerned in finding justice.
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‘I think it’s interesting that we’ve found, though, negative labels to describe people who are interested in that.
‘We call them “armchair detectives”, we call them “web sleuths”, the police complain about “noise”.
‘But then on the other hand, the police can’t have it both ways.
‘The first group of people they will appeal to in any investigation is the public, because the public is likely to have information that is going to help solve the crime.
‘And whether they like it or not, because of the internet and social media this is now simply another element that has to be managed within any police investigation.’
Have ‘internet sleuths’ ever solved a crime?
Prof Wilson points to the hit Netflix docuseries ‘Don’t F**k With Cats’, about a murderer whose snuff films so appalled social media users that a mob of them made it their mission to track him down.
They dissected the gruesome clips frame-by-frame and used otherwise trivial background items like plug sockets and cross-referencing meta data with Google Maps to narrow down their search.
He also highlights the work done by Lissa Yellow Bird, who used her ties to several Native American tribes to bypass law enforcement red tape over who investigates cases on reservation land.
Rather than waiting for traditional investigators to take up the cases of missing indigenous women, Lissa and other like-minded activists took it upon themselves to highlight them on social media.
‘She took it upon herself to start doing investigations and she was incredibly successful,’ Prof Wilson says.
‘What she was doing was she was often using Facebook in a very creative way and creating an interest again in the case, a case that had perhaps gone cold.
‘But it was her knowledge of reservations, about the particular culture on reservations, about native American men, how they might operate and behave.
‘She was very good at tapping into that culture and being able to use her own knowledge of that culture to get results.’
Many armchair detectives have time on their hands, meaning they can pore over case files in a way that would be difficult for a scaled-back investigation team.
Some also have remarkably good web skills, allowing them to narrow in on things like particular plug sockets, as was the case in the ‘Don’t F**k With Cats’ series.
But when does amateur sleuthing become unhelpful?
‘It becomes a hindrance in a number of different ways,’ Prof Wilson observes.
‘It becomes a hindrance when they’re interviewing people who might get angry.
‘They are not trained to do those interviews, they might misinterpret what’s being said to them, they might therefore discourage those interviewees to want to be interviewed again by the police.
‘They might go into places where there was still forensic evidence being collected.
‘They might put on social media a hypothesis that tends to switch people off as opposed to a hypothesis that would encourage people to want to be respectful to what was happening.’
Prof Wilson fronts ‘David Wilsons Crime Files’ for the BBC and ‘In the Footsteps of Killers’ for Channel 4 among many other true crime documentaries.
Whereas he, and the rest of the mainstream media, is governed by strict legal and broadcast regulations, the same does not hold true for those running TikTok or Facebook accounts.
‘I think it just contributes to the noise, and surely the one thing we learned from the Nicola Bulley case is that all of that online speculation was wrong,’ he adds.
Ms Bulley, 45, vanished after dropping off her daughters, six and nine, at school, and taking her usual dog walk along the River Wyre in St Michael’s, Lancashire, on January 27.
Her body was found in the water on February 19.
During that time there were rumours about a derelict house on the other side of the river, a red van in the area, a fisherman seen nearby and a glove belonging to Ms Bulley, which were all dismissed by police.
Social media users also made false accusations about their being third-party involvement, which was not found to be the case.
Investigators said they were ‘inundated with false information, accusations and rumours’ relating to the case.
Prof Wilson contrasted coverage of the Jay Slater disappearance with that of TV doctor Michael Mosley earlier this month.
The circumstances of their disappearances were equally odd in many ways, but while Dr Mosley’s was reported respectfully, Slater’s has been mired in conspiracies about drugs and organised crime gangs.
‘Some of these hypotheses create Jay Slater as a less sympathetic victim and that’s unhelpful in an ongoing police investigation,’ Prof Wilson continues.
‘Because an ongoing police investigation does need to harness the information that the public would be able to give.
‘Michael Mosley, on the other hand, is seen as an ideal victim because of his status and because he was obviously a well-known personality who gave out medical advice that was useful to members of the public.
‘So, it’s about their status as victims, and the current online speculation tends to denigrate Jay Slater and therefore lessen his status as a victim.’
What can be done to clamp down on internet sleuths? Does anything need to be done?
From commenting on news articles, joining an online forum or using the web to view crime scenes they would previously have had to travel to, audiences have myriad ways of participating in investigations.
‘All of those things mean this is an aspect of an investigation that’s got to be managed and harnessed,’ Prof Wilson says.
‘I think the police have been behind the curve in terms of how to do that and have hoped that it would simply go away as opposed to seeing it as an opportunity.
‘Crisis is often seen in Chinese culture as being a danger, and also an opportunity.
‘I think there are dangers in this kind of armchair web sleuthing, but there are opportunities that should be harnessed.’
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