Jonathan Mann can’t close the worst chapter of his life. In 2017, his father was murdered by a formerly incarcerated person he had invited into his home. In 2019, Mann found himself troubled by the death sentence handed to his father’s killer, Thomas Knuff. Then, in 2021, when Mann believed the media frenzy around his father’s death had finally fizzled out, he received an e-mail from a producer.
“It froze me like a deer in headlights,” recalls the 41-year-old system administrator from Columbus, Ohio. The e-mail explained that a production company was creating a documentary series about killers. They wanted to do an episode about Knuff, and they wanted Mann to be a part of it.
Since the investigative podcast Serial debuted, in 2014, so-called true crime has exploded in popularity; Pew Research Center found that it is the most popular podcast genre today, and half of Americans are said to “enjoy” consuming this content, according to a YouGov survey. In recent years, co-victims of crimes, who are rarely, if ever, paid for their participation in these projects, have begun speaking out. When Netflix released Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, in 2022, families of the serial killer’s victims found it “re-traumatizing” and branded the show greedy, harsh, and careless.
In November, British broadcaster Channel 4 aired Interview with a Killer, a documentary about Brandon Clark, who murdered 17-year-old Bianca Devins in 2019. Bianca’s mother, Kim Devins, condemned the show, which she said gave Clark “the attention he has been seeking.”
Many people have been affected by the public’s relentless appetite for trauma, and Mann is on a mission to convince true-crime fans to rethink what they consume. “That’s someone’s loved one that’s on that coroner’s table or is being talked about in that courtroom,” he says.
Mann’s father, 65-year-old John Mann, was stabbed to death by a formerly incarcerated person who was a friend of his girlfriend’s, Regina Capobianco. Capobianco, a 50-year-old on misdemeanor probation at the time of her death, first got to know Thomas Knuff as part of a prison-pen-pal program—they wrote to each other for a decade—and after Knuff was released on parole from prison, in 2017, Capobianco said Mann invited him to stay. Yet because Knuff was recently released and Capobianco had her own felony record, the pair quickly realized the terms of Knuff’s parole prevented them from living in the same home. Mann asked Capobianco to stay, and Knuff to leave. Prosecutors gleaned that an argument broke out, and Knuff stabbed them both to death.
“That’s someone’s loved one that’s on that coroner’s table or is being talked about in that courtroom.”
Knuff hid their bodies beneath blankets and trash, and, weeks later, he was arrested for an unrelated crime. Mann found out about his father’s death through a phone call from a close childhood friend who was watching the news and assumed that Mann already knew what had happened.
The first time he heard about his father’s murder, Mann wanted Knuff to die, “and I didn’t care how that happened, frankly.” Yet frustration, anger, and feelings of helplessness started to scare Mann, who worried he would have a heart attack. “I was afraid that the hate was going to kill me,” he says. He changed his stance on the death penalty, which he had previously supported, and today he is vice-chair of Ohioans to Stop Executions. In this role, he liaises with co-victims and offers emotional support.
It was years after Mann had gone on this life-altering journey that he was contacted by the TV producer. It was a stressful time at work, and he was disturbed to receive the e-mail.
Immediately, Mann knew he wanted nothing to do with the show. (He has asked Air Mail not to print its name so it doesn’t benefit from any publicity.) He was especially troubled when the producer told him they only make episodes about murderers who have admitted their crimes—Knuff denied responsibility at his sentencing, and the judge remarked that she had “hardly seen someone with so little remorse.”
Mann reached out to his local police captain so they could let Capobianco’s family know not to engage with production; he also contacted his family liaison officer to see if they could stop the show. Ultimately, there was nothing they could do—as a last resort, Mann got on the phone with the show’s director.
“I was like, ‘Hey, man, what’s your worst life experience? Describe it to me in detail,’” Mann says. The director spluttered in response and said he hadn’t experienced anything comparable to Mann’s tragedy. He accused the director of making “murder porn,” and within a few days, an executive producer e-mailed Mann to say they weren’t going to proceed with the episode.
While Mann was relieved, he found the experience dehumanizing. “How much of my humanity did I lose, having to debase myself to this person to get the most simple form of respect?” he says.
Although this particular show was never made, other true-crime programs have referenced John Mann’s murder. A few years ago, a colleague at Mann’s former job came up to him and tapped him on the shoulder. Mann removed his headphones—which he’d been wearing as “the universal sign of ‘I don’t want to talk to you’”—and listened as his co-worker said, “Hey, man, I just heard about your dad on a true-crime podcast.”
Mann understands that he can’t eradicate the entire true-crime category, but he hopes that viewers will think more carefully about what they consume. “If people spent more time thinking about it, what they’re watching … then it wouldn’t be as interesting or titillating,” he says.
Not every co-victim has been as successful in squashing these portrayals. In 2016, the British broadcaster ITV aired The Secret, a dramatization of a 1991 murder pact between a dentist named Colin Howell and nursery-school teacher Hazel Stewart; Howell murdered his wife and Stewart’s husband. Howell’s daughter has said that the media coverage of the tragedy “can be as devastating as the murder itself.” She said the incident was trivialized and her family was dehumanized by ITV’s show; producers even spelled her dead mother’s name wrong in e-mails.
Today, Mann is still suffering. “Do you know what I want to do? I want to disappear,” he says. “I want the death penalty to end in Ohio. And I want to go somewhere where nobody knows me because of this stuff.”
Amelia Tait, a London-based writer, frequently contributes to Wired, The Guardian, and The New York Times