After American Crime Journal was featured on Dr. Phil, a growing wave of online accusations, misinformation, and family conflict threatened to overshadow the search for Karlie Guse

April 20 will mark the one-year anniversary of American Crime Journal’s launch, and what a roller coaster ride it has been. There have been plenty of highs, plenty of lows, and more than a few unexpected twists along the way. I’m still not entirely sure what the destination is, but the journey has been remarkable nonetheless.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet some incredible people, hear extraordinary stories, and learn lessons I never expected when this project began. Covering crime, corruption, disappearances, and injustice has a way of changing your perspective. It costs sleep. It tests your patience. It forces humility upon you. Most importantly, it teaches you that instinct alone is never enough. In this line of work, something can appear painfully obvious and still mean absolutely nothing at all.

Perhaps that’s why ACJ evolved into something very different than what I originally envisioned.

When the site launched, the plan was relatively simple. Build a small but loyal readership, continue improving my writing, and eventually recruit contributors who specialized in areas that deserved deeper coverage. I wanted writers who lived and breathed their subjects, whether that was wrongful convictions, unsolved murders, missing persons, organized crime, or cases that required constant updates and long-term attention.

Along the way, opportunities emerged that I never anticipated. I began helping others with research, podcast development, and writing projects, which naturally limited the amount of time I could devote to ACJ. Fortunately, we had built a steady audience and maintained something that is increasingly rare online: accessibility. Readers could ask questions, challenge conclusions, offer information, and actually receive a response from the people running the site.

To be honest, I liked it that way.

It gave me the freedom to experiment, sharpen my skills, and find my voice without the pressure that comes with a large audience. While I had written privately for years, much of my public work had been published under various pen names. If I’m being truthful, that was largely because I was afraid. Launching ACJ was my way of stepping out from behind the curtain and seeing whether my work could stand on its own.

For the most part, it did so quietly.

The readership grew steadily. Traffic spiked occasionally. Every email could be answered personally. Every comment could be acknowledged. The plan was to continue growing gradually and prepare for a much larger launch somewhere down the road.

Then, two weeks ago, that larger launch happened whether we were ready for it or not.

ACJ Featured on the Dr. Phil Show

On March 25 and 26, 2019, American Crime Journal was featured during Dr. Phil’s two-part special examining the disappearance of Karlie Gusé.

Several months earlier, I had published an article about Karlie’s case. To my surprise, producers from the show reached out and requested permission to feature the article’s headline and graphics during the broadcast. At the time, I didn’t think much of it. My understanding was that the headline would briefly appear among a series of graphics during a monologue and quickly disappear from the screen.

That is not exactly how it played out.

The article received considerably more exposure than I anticipated over the course of the two-day special, including appearances during the program and in the closing credits. Almost overnight, American Crime Journal found itself in front of a much larger audience than I had ever expected.

To everyone who reached out afterward with screenshots, emails, messages, words of encouragement, and support, thank you. Many of you discovered ACJ through those episodes and took the time to share your thoughts or ask questions about the case. Your kindness and support were greatly appreciated.

More importantly, I hope some of that attention helped keep the focus where it belonged.

A young woman was missing.

A family was desperately searching for answers.

And a small rural community was struggling to understand how a sixteen-year-old girl could seemingly vanish without a trace.

Whatever disagreements people may have about the circumstances surrounding Karlie’s disappearance, the personalities involved, or the various theories that have emerged over the years, those realities should never be forgotten.

Karlie Gusé was, and remains, the reason people care about this case.

The exposure from Dr. Phil brought significantly more attention to American Crime Journal than I ever anticipated. It also brought a flood of readers looking for additional information, many of whom were encountering the case for the very first time.

What followed, unfortunately, was a lesson in how quickly public interest can evolve into something far less constructive.

The Rise of the Virtual Lynch Mobs

Of course, with the positive came the negative.

Not long after the Dr. Phil episodes aired, my inbox began filling with emails and messages from people upset that I hadn’t chosen a side in the increasingly bitter public feud surrounding Karlie’s disappearance. The criticism was remarkably consistent. Why wasn’t I attacking Zac and Melissa Gusé? Why wasn’t I repeating the allegations being promoted by Lindsay Fairley? Why wasn’t I calling people murderers? According to some, I had failed as a journalist because I refused to draw a line in the sand and declare guilt based entirely upon accusations.

Apparently, I was “soft.”

Apparently, skepticism had become a liability.

Apparently, journalism now required a person to select a team, abandon objectivity, and join a digital firing squad.

I declined.

What struck me then, and still strikes me today, is how many of the loudest voices were hiding behind anonymous social media accounts, screen names, and profile pictures that bore no resemblance to the people behind them. Individuals unwilling to publicly stand behind their own statements were demanding that complete strangers be publicly accused of murder. There is an irony there that seemed completely lost on them.

Over the years, I have come to refer to these groups as Virtual Lynch Mobs.

The names change. The targets change. The facts change.

Their certainty never does.

One of the unfortunate realities of modern true crime is that some people become far more interested in the drama surrounding a case than the facts within it. The louder the accusation, the more attention it receives. The more outrageous the theory, the faster it spreads. Before long, the search for answers becomes secondary to the spectacle itself. The missing person fades into the background while online factions wage war against one another, each convinced they possess knowledge that investigators somehow missed.

That is precisely what was beginning to happen in Karlie’s case.

Now let me be clear about something.

Family members of missing persons deserve an extraordinary amount of grace. They are living through circumstances most of us cannot begin to comprehend. They have every right to be angry, suspicious, frustrated, and critical. They have every right to challenge investigators, journalists, and anyone else they believe is failing their loved one. We should give them the benefit of the doubt whenever possible.

But there is a line.

That line is crossed when allegations become more important than evidence. It is crossed when rumors are repeated as facts. It is crossed when every disagreement becomes proof of a conspiracy and every challenge to a narrative becomes evidence that someone is hiding the truth.

By the time Karlie’s case reached national television, I watched people become absolutely convinced of things they could not possibly know. Witnesses were dismissed as liars. Investigators were accused of corruption. The FBI was accused of looking the other way. Entire theories were built upon assumptions, then repeated so often that many began treating them as established facts.

The problem, of course, is that repetition is not evidence.

No matter how many times a claim is made, it does not become true simply because people want it to be.

What made the situation particularly frustrating was that the allegations themselves required increasingly elaborate explanations. To believe some of the theories being circulated, one would have to accept that local law enforcement, federal agents, witnesses, neighbors, volunteers, and countless others were somehow participating in an elaborate conspiracy and managing to keep it secret indefinitely.

Human beings are terrible at keeping secrets.

Most families cannot organize a holiday dinner without somebody saying something they shouldn’t. Yet we are expected to believe that dozens of unrelated individuals have flawlessly maintained a cover-up for years without producing a shred of credible evidence.

Come on.

The truth is usually much less dramatic.

The truth is that Karlie Guse disappeared, and nobody knows exactly what happened to her.

People dislike uncertainty. They crave answers. They want villains, heroes, and tidy conclusions. Missing person cases rarely cooperate with those desires. Sometimes the most honest answer available is also the least satisfying one.

We simply do not know.

Years later, after extensive reporting, countless interviews, and enough research to fill filing cabinets, that remains the reality. American Crime Journal would eventually spend years examining Karlie’s disappearance through field research, investigative reporting, and what later became Riddle of the Roads. We walked the roads, interviewed witnesses, studied the geography, reviewed timelines, and spoke with people connected to nearly every aspect of the case.

And after all of that, one fact remains unchanged.

Karlie is still missing.

Not Zac.

Not Melissa.

Not Lindsay.

Karlie.

That fact has a tendency to get lost whenever people become consumed by social media drama, personal feuds, and competing narratives. A sixteen-year-old girl disappeared. The goal should be finding out what happened to her.

Everything else is secondary.

If people spent half as much time looking for facts as they do looking for someone to blame, we might be much closer to understanding what happened on that October morning in Chalfant Valley.

Until then, I will continue doing what I have always tried to do.

Follow the evidence.

Question assumptions.

And refuse to mistake certainty for truth.

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Resources & Further Reading

The Disappearance of Karlie Guse – American Crime Journal |

The Definitive Timeline of the Disappearance of Karlie Guse – American Crime Journal |

Riddle of the Roads: In Search of Karlie Guse – American Crime Journal |

Has the FBI Failed Karlie Guse? – American Crime Journal |

The Tonopah Lead, Highway 6, and the Statistical Problem with Assumptions – American Crime Journal |

Top Scientist Joins Team Karlie and the Evolution of the Karlie Guse Investigation – American Crime Journal |

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