Possible Link Between Two Murders and a Popular Television Show



Author Everaldo Coelho
Picture from Wikimedia Commons 



Everyone has heard the accusations time and time again that violent media is suspected of playing a role in recent acts of violence, particularly among teenagers and children. One may wonder how something as seemingly harmless and fun as watching television could possibly be a player in such horrors? According the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, while television violence is not the sole factor affecting violent behavior, they still feel it plays a large role. Please see Children and TV violence for more information.

While the world may never know with any certainly how true these associations are, there are strong indicators to be found in recent murder investigations.

Seventeen-year-old Anthony Conley’s case gives credence to the view that media violence can be a strong, negative influence. In late 2009, Conley turned himself in to police for the murder of his ten-year-old brother Conner. The method of murder was strangulation. An article about the killing on the ABC news website written by Emily Friedman states -

“Negangard said that when Conley was asked to explain his behavior by investigators the teen said he identified with Dexter Morgan, the main character in Showtime's "Dexter," which chronicles the life of an undercover Miami blood spatter expert who doubles as a serial killer.”

The article later goes on to talk about how Conley likened his need to kill to a craving for a hamburger – a very chilling analogy that speaks volumes of the boy’s state of mind.

Also mentioned in the article about Conley is a Canadian man, Mark Twitchell (you can read this story by Josh Gaynor on the ABC news website here), also accused of imitating the show “Dexter” when he murdered John Brian Altinger, a complete stranger he met on an internet dating site while posing as a woman.

These incidents and their connections to a popular television show raise the uneasy question: As violence on television becomes more acceptable and widespread by mass media as well as the general viewing public, are we setting ourselves up for many more incidents such as these in the future? Unfortunately, this is not an easy question to answer, and while many firmly believe that the answer is yes, there are those that firmly deny that violence in media plays any significant role in most, if any, violence. In a blog entry by Rhonda Callow, the theory that children who commit murder or other acts of violence are mentally ill and at worst, violent games and television just triggered what was already there. This point is argued against in an article published on sciencedaily.com, citing research done by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine. The study found that factors other than mental illness were often better indicators of future violence.

The theory of media violence and exposure is a convoluted and hard to follow one at best, but I feel strongly that evidence points towards exposure to violence being a key factor in many violent acts. Not to say it plays a role in every single act of violence, of course, as people have been violent throughout history. However, there are so many strong links between certain recent acts of violence and media exposure that one should put some serious thought into whether the incidents in questions would have ever happened if not for the media violence exposure. In future posts, I shall examine several of these incidents as well as general arguments for and against this theory.