True crime accounts once focused on the crime and the perpetrator—typically a man—while marginalizing the victim, usually a woman. That’s begun to change in recent years, and PW spoke with three authors whose forthcoming books continue to shift the narrative.
Podcaster and true crime historian Kate Winkler Dawson recounts the scandalous murder trial that divided 19th century America and inspired Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter in The Sinners All Bow (Putnam, Jan. 2025). When the body of Sarah Maria Cornell was discovered hanged in rural Rhode Island in 1832, her death was originally thought to be suicide. The autopsy revealed that she was pregnant, and further investigation uncovered her involvement with a Methodist minister. Cornell had sought financial support and accountability, Dawson says; instead, she was found dead in a farmyard.
Dawson used modern investigative tools, such as forensic knot analysis and criminal profiling, and pored over contemporaneous accounts of the trial to get at a truth that still rings familiar today. “A woman from 1832, you think you can’t relate to her, but she’s pregnant, she’s the victim of a sexual assault, she’s demanding justice,” Dawson says. “She’s standing up for herself and she ends up dead. How many times have we seen this happen? You’ll read it and go, ‘I know this story.’ ”
Hallie Rubenhold, a social historian in the U.K., has dug into obscure corners of well-known stories before. She won the Baillie Gifford Prize for 2019’s The Five, which covered the Jack the Ripper murders from an atypical perspective: by reconstructing the lives of the victims. In Story of a Murder (Dutton, Mar. 2025), she reexamines the trans-
atlantic criminal investigation into Dr. Hawley Crippen, who was executed in 1910 for the murder of his wife, Vaudevillian performer Belle Elmore. Rubenhold trains her attention on the three women at the center of the case: Crippen’s first wife, Charlotte, who died a mysterious death nearly two decades earlier; his mistress, Ethel; and Belle, whose remains were discovered in Crippen’s basement.
As Rubenhold read through reams of documents and newspaper articles from both sides of the Atlantic, she noticed the original, sensational news stories were often repeated without verification. “I challenge you to go online and find a website that doesn’t victim-blame Belle Elmore for her murder, or call her a fat, slovenly, slutty woman. She wasn’t any of that,” Rubenhold says. “One of the most important things about the story is the way women were viewed. We have to go back and reassess all of it. These women were never able to tell the story from their perspective.”
In The Secret History of the Rape Kit (Vintage, Jan. 2025), which PW’s starred review called “part historical detective story and part vivid character study of a pioneering feminist,” journalist Pagan Kennedy sheds light on Martha “Marty” Goddard, a crisis hotline volunteer in 1970s Chicago. She counseled girls who’d been assaulted and, frustrated by the widespread failure to prosecute their cases, pushed to standardize the way evidence of sexual assault was collected. The rape kit, an hours-long examination administered in a hospital or qualified health facility, was first adopted in Goddard’s home city and later in New York City and beyond. Its champion, meanwhile, died in obscurity.
Kennedy sees a new genre emerging for survivors of assault. “As young women, we’re told we should walk through a parking garage holding our keys out like weapons,” she says. “The real message is that public space doesn’t belong to us. Everything has been built by and for men.” In addition to telling Goddard’s story, Kennedy examines the complicated history of forensics in the U.S. and the inequities in reporting sexual assault, and asks big questions: How can science make the kit more effective without retraumatizing victims? How much evidence is needed to prosecute a case?
As with Dawson and Rubenhold, Kennedy’s work is rooted in seeking justice. “A lot of people who live in rural areas or on reservations physically cannot drive three hours in the snow or whatever to get [the examination],” she says. “That makes it inaccessible for a lot of people. It’s so unfair. And that’s something we need to talk about.”
