Call it ‘CrimeTok’ or just 'True Crime TikTok', but there’s no denying that the social media platform is a hotbed of activity for sofa sleuths and bedroom-based detectives. Here are just some cases which have been propelled to greater infamy by the video-sharing site.
1. The Cameron Herrin homicides
Pretty privilege is nothing new in the annals of true crime, and it’s certainly not something that’s been spawned by social media. Think back to how the likes of Ted Bundy and Richard ‘The Night Stalker’ Ramirez were flooded with fan letters by besotted admirers. But TikTok allows us to see the phenomenon unfold in real-time, as has been the case with Cameron Herrin.
While Herrin is far from a Bundy-like monster, he took two innocent lives in May 2018, when he accidentally ploughed his Ford Mustang into a mother and her infant child while drag-racing against a friend on a Florida boulevard. Then aged just 18, the doe-eyed Herrin made a strikingly unlikely perp, and his delicate features helped exacerbate the online outrage which greeted his 24-year jail sentence.
TikTok videos featuring clips of Herrin in court racked up millions of views, with hashtags like #justiceforcameron bringing him to the attention of swathes of people who might otherwise never have paid attention to a tragic but relatively non-sensational vehicular homicide case. Even Herrin’s mother has spoken out about the unhealthy obsession with her son, who some TikTokers dubbed ‘too cute’ to be imprisoned for so long.
While it’s widely believed that many of the posts were being generated by bots (a common problem on social media), Herrin’s popularity with a certain section of TikTok users is undeniable, much to the distaste of many commenters who reiterate that Herrin’s reckless actions killed an innocent mother and her child.
2. The Ruby Franke child abuse case
Given that Ruby Franke was herself a social media star who’d clocked up millions of subscribers to her YouTube parenting channel, it’s no surprise that TikTok pounced on the case when the Utah-based ‘mommy vlogger’ was accused – and eventually convicted – of physically abusing some of her children.
Tags like #rubyfrankeisabadparent started cramming the platform in 2023 when the news of her arrest broke. In true TikTok fashion, creators spliced together many of Franke’s videos to provide their own scandalised theories on what the influencer had really been up to.
Also, in true TikTok fashion, many of these conclusions were at best unhelpful, and at worst potentially libellous, with some sofa sleuths and amateur psychologists singling out innocuous clips – such as a kid eating a banana – as evidence that Franke was guilty of sexual as well as physical abuse. In reality, Franke faced no such charge. Other theories popularised on TikTok, such as that the kids were being held in an underground panic room, also remain utterly unsubstantiated.
3. The murder of Gabby Petito
In the summer of 2021, young US couple Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie embarked on a ‘vanlife’ adventure of a lifetime – a cross-country road odyssey in a Ford Transit which would be chronicled on Instagram. But things got very strange and sinister when Laundrie returned to his parents’ home in September, on his own.
Gabby’s fate became a TikTok sensation, perhaps because so many social media users could easily relate to the young woman who’d worked hard to save up and go travelling with her boyfriend. Sure enough, online sleuths were soon posting their theories on what could have happened. The #gabbypetito hashtag went into overdrive when Laundrie disappeared and Gabby’s remains were uncovered in a Wyoming camping area.
One alleged witness even posted on TikTok to say she and her boyfriend had picked up a ‘freaked out’ Laundrie when he was hitchhiking in the aftermath of Gabby’s disappearance. As it turned out, Laundrie had – as many theorised – killed Gabby before committing suicide while on the run.
While this grim revelation brought closure to the case, it is sure to be long remembered as a standout example of CrimeTok at its most fevered and viral.
