The murder of Jennifer Alfonso

This chapter analyses the murder of Jennifer Alfonso by her husband Derek Medina in Florida on August 8, 2013. Jennifer's murder was what criminologists call an intimate partner homicide (IPH). International media reports of the case followed a well-established pattern that devalued IPH, treating the homicide as a one-off event where an otherwise ‘normal’ perpetrator ‘snaps’ and loses control in a moment of madness. The fact that Derek had posted on Facebook was at the very the centre of the story, if not the story itself. The chapter first describes the background of Derek and Jennifer's relationship, Derek's media practices, and his attempt at identity management after his arrest before examining his Facebook homicide confession. It also contextualises the murder in relation to the relevant literature on intimate partner abuse and IPH.

Homicide and media: ‘realities’ and ‘representations’

This chapter considers existing criminological insights into homicide and identifies the key themes and perspectives that emerge at the intersection of homicide and mainstream media. We might think of perpetrators like Derek Medina, Randy Janzen and Amanda Taylor as aberrations who are fundamentally different from the rest of us, or make sense of their social media posts in relation to the crimes they committed as simply another manifestation of their transgression. However, all three individuals have lived out their lives in the same world as us. Before they were killers — and indeed afterwards — they were ‘prosumers’ of mediated representations of homicide, as we all are. The chapter first addresses questions of definition, scale and nature before examining how the field of criminology has made sense of homicide in media in terms of what emerges as important and what is missing from such analyses.

The murder of Charles Taylor

This chapter analyses the murder of Charles Taylor by his daughter-in-law, Amanda Taylor, in Virginia. On April 4, 2015, 59-year-old Charles Taylor was killed by Amanda, then 24, and her friend, 32-year-old Sean Ball. During the visit, the conversation turned to the topic of Rex Taylor, Amanda's late husband, who had committed suicide in August 2014. Amanda blamed Charles for Rex's suicide. The case highlight the performance of valued gendered identities through networked media prior to, during and following the homicide. The chapter first provides a background on Amanda's relationship with Rex and Charles Taylor as well as on Sean Ball before considering the context that yields some insight into Amanda as a homicide perpetrator. It also examines Amanda's media practices and her social media posts about the murder, media coverage of her while she was in prison, and her identity management as a killer.

Approach to the study

This chapter outlines the ontological, epistemological and methodological considerations of the empirical research reported in this book and proposes a new approach towards analysing media in crime, termed Ethnographic Media Practice Analysis for Criminology (EMPAC). It also explains the rationale for the selection of the three cases to which EMPAC has been applied: the murder of Jennifer Alfonso, the Janzen familicide, and the murder of Charles Taylor. After establishing the view of the social world that this study proceeds from, the chapter discusses the approach to understanding that social world — or epistemology. The objective is to identify what tools and techniques would be most appropriate for making sense of the social media confessions of homicide perpetrators.

Discussion: the complex contexts of social media homicide confessions

This chapter examines the cases of Jennifer Alfonso, Randy Janzen and Charles Taylor collectively in the context of the relevant conceptual frameworks. It first considers the perpetrators' media practices prior to becoming involved in homicide before discussing their confessions, focusing on continuities and changes. It shows that the family emerged as a prominent social group in the perpetrators' social media archives, and that the perpetrators all admitted responsibility for taking the lives of others but in very different ways. The narratives, the chapter suggests, were rooted in perpetrators' social realities and structural locations. The chapter also highlights the broader structures and contexts in which people like Derek Medina, Randy Janzen and Amanda Taylor make homicide confessions on social media and concludes by proposing directions for future criminological enquiry into media in homicide.

Media in homicide: from consumption to participation

This chapter examines the extent to which criminologists have addressed issues relating to media representation of homicide. It first considers the shifts in media and the degree to which criminologists have accommodated these changes in their work. In particular, it discusses one strand of the mediatisation literature that focuses on the concept of ‘media logic’ and draws on the criminological literature around school shootings to address the question of how homicide is portrayed in media. It then explores cultural criminology's concern with the superficial nature of wider criminological sense making around media. It also looks at several studies that focus on homicide perpetrators' use of media, noting that some scholars have pointed to the killer's pursuit of celebrity status. The chapter concludes by calling on criminologists to push the boundaries and engage with questions of media as practice.

The Janzen familicide

This chapter analyses the Janzen familicide that took place on April 28, 2015 in British Columbia, Canada. The perpetrator of the crime was Randy Janzen, who made a confession in his Facebook page that he shot his nineteen-year-old daughter, Emily, in the head because she suffered from migraines. He also admitted to fatally shooting his wife, Laurel, and his sister, Shelly, that same day. Randy eventually committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. His Facebook confession appeared to be the focal point of the stories in international mainstream media and was the factor that first drew the author's attention to the case. The chapter first considers the individual, familial, local and structural context of the Janzen family before discussing the Janzens' social media lives and practices. It also compares Randy's use of networked media with that of Derek Medina.

From ‘happy slapping’ to ‘Facebook murder’: networked media in violent crime

This book offers an analysis of three cases in which perpetrators confessed on social media to committing homicides: the murders of Jennifer Alfonso and Charles Taylor, and the Janzen familicide. The confessions included text-based content justifying the killings and, in two cases, images of the victims' dead bodies. The book also explores the role of networked media in violent crime from a criminological perspective and shows how networked media are being used in relation to homicide. In particular, it considers the phenomenon called ‘happy slapping’, which is essentially a crime enacted for the camera — a concept that has recently been termed ‘performance crime’ — and ‘Facebook murder’. This introductory chapter explains how the author was drawn to topic of media in homicide, discusses the foundations of her research, and provides an overview of the chapters that follow.