Nearly a decade after The Jinx and the debut of Serial, true crime is no longer a trend. It’s an institution—a genre as elemental within the entertainment industry as comedy or horror, and one whose conventions have saturated pop culture. The “citizen detectives” who populate online message boards are themselves characters on shows like Yellowjackets and Veronica Mars; from Truth Be Told to 2018’s Halloween, podcasters are always poking around fictional crime scenes.