History Main / IncriminatingIndifference

* This was noticed about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Downs Diane Downs]] from the moment she arrived at a hospital with her three children, claiming that a stranger had shot them all while trying to carjack her--she cared far more about the damage to her car and her own injury than that of her children, ''laughed'' while reenacting the crime for the police, and had the same giddy demeanor when discussing it with the media* The murder of Kristine Fitzhugh is an inversion. Her husband Kenneth staged the scene to look like she'd fallen on the basement stairs due to unstable shoes he said he'd warned her about. His performance in the interview room trying to sell the story was an over-the-top scenery-chewing performance (including MilkingTheGiantCow) that [[https://youtu.be/F_-KdKJ-s48?t=820 has to be seen to be believed]]. Needless to say, no one believed it.

* Cited on ''many'' crime shows, both fictional and real, as the reason why cops get suspicious of supposedly grieving loved ones. Inverted too--they get just as suspicious of people acting too upset, suspecting that they're putting on an act.

* This accusation was also leveled at the [=McCann=] parents about the still-unsolved disappearance of their child Madeleine in Portugal in 2007.

* This trope was in full effect and immediately noted by the police officers who responded to Scott Peterson's house when he reported his wife [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Laci_Peterson Laci]] missing, who was also pregnant with his unborn child. They both noted his calm demeanor and when they went to check the garage, Peterson was more concerned with making certain they didn't scratch the paint on one of his cars than seeing if Laci had been in there. There's also the infamous picture of him ''laughing'' at a candlelight vigil for Laci, taken either before or after he called his mistress and chatted with her about how much he was enjoying the New Year's festivities in Paris.
* Josh Powell couldn't even be bothered to act concerned about his missing wife [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Susan_Powell Susan]], offering the cops vague, ridiculous answers as to what could have happened to her and even saying he wanted to "''wait a few days''" (time is of the essence in a missing person investigation) before coming to the police station and speaking with them some more.

* The DA who prosecuted Susan Smith for [[OffingTheOffspring murdering her sons]] claims to have known she was guilty from the very night she was claiming they'd been kidnapped when he watched the interview they gave to the news. While her estranged husband David looked legitimately terrified, she could be seen smiling and giggling "We're going to be on TV!" She had a similar reaction when the detective questioning her asked her if the alleged carjacker had sexually assaulted her, piquing his suspicions as well. The same DA also doubted that she had any remorse for her actions as she claimed, noting that during her trial, while a tape simulating how her children drowned was played, she played TabletopGame/TicTacToe. Even the police sketch artist noticed this, citing how she acted hysterical when her husband David was present but was completely matter-of-fact whenever he left and while describing the alleged kidnapper.
* The murder of Kristine Fitzhugh is an inversion. Her husband Kenneth staged the scene to look like she'd fallen on the basement stairs due to unstable shoes he said he'd warned her about. His performance in the interview room trying to sell the story was an over-the-top scenery-chewing performance (including MilkingTheGiantCow) that [[https://youtu.be/F_-KdKJ-s48?t=820 has to be seen to be believed]]. Needless to say, no one believed it.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Lee_Andrews Lowell Lee Andrews]] had a completely apathetic reaction to the death of his family, telling the cop "look inside" and saying he didn't care how his family was buried. The family minister was able to get him to confess and he was later hanged for the crime.
* This was noticed about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Downs Diane Downs]] from the moment she arrived at a hospital with her three children, claiming that a stranger had shot them all while trying to carjack her--she cared far more about the damage to her car and her own injury than that of her children, ''laughed'' while reenacting the crime for the police, and had the same giddy demeanor when discussing it with the media.

* A rape victim's stoic demeanor, along with some minor inconsistencies in her story, caused her account to be [[https://www.propublica.org/article/false-rape-accusations-an-unbelievable-story disbelieved by police]], and even charged with false reporting. Years later, they learned that she [[OhCrap not only told the truth]], but there were [[SerialRapist many other victims]] of the same man who attacked her.
* This was noted by ''everyone''--friends, neighbors, police, the media--about [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_family_murders Christopher Watts]] regarding his missing [[ImperiledInPregnancy pregnant wife]] Shanann and their daughters, despite his attempts to act as if he was concerned.

* The media had a field day with [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Caylee_Anthony Casey Anthony]]'s apparent lack of interest in finding out what happened to her missing daughter Caylee. The fact she didn't report the disappearance for ''a month'' and [[BlatantLies her feeble attempts at her claims of "investigating"]] didn't help her in the long run either.

* One aspect of the controversial case of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlie_Routier Darlie Routier]], on death row for stabbing her two sons to death, was a video played at trial of Routier at the funeral laughing and spraying Silly String over her son's grave. The prosecution claimed the video was this trope, but family members pointed out that it was a posthumous celebration of his seventh birthday and the jury wasn't shown an earlier video of a solemn ceremony honouring the children. This has led some of her defenders to say that she was "convicted by the Silly String", although there was other evidence against her.
* Inverted in the case of Gerard Baden-Clay, who was so eager to appear concerned about his missing wife [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Allison_Baden-Clay Allison]] that he called the police long before she had been missing long enough to justify it, which made police suspicious.
* When author [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Bailey Helen Bailey]] went missing, her partner Ian Stewart called the police to report her missing. Not only did he seem surprisingly unconcerned given that she'd been missing for four days, but he also took another phone call while in the middle of reporting the disappearance. Sure enough, he turned out to have killed her and dumped her body in a septic tank. After his conviction, he was [[TheBluebeard charged with the murder of his first wife]], who he'd strangled and claimed she'd died of an epileptic fit, with the evidence in that case including testimony from paramedics that he'd stood around completely calm while they were trying to save his wife and hadn't bothered to perform CPR when a 999 dispatcher told him to.
* [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t5y2-0CX2c Thomas Randolph]], the "[[TheBluebeard Black Widower]]", aroused suspicion while re-enacting the murder of his sixth wife, who had been shot by a burglar who was then shot by Randolph, when he stopped his dramatic re-enactment to go off on a tangent about how his wife always left her shoes lying around for people to trip over. It is now believed that he hired the burglar to kill his wife before shooting him to cover it up, and that he murdered three of his previous wives.
* TheBluebeard [[https://.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Amos Lowell Amos]] was placed under surveillance after the highly suspicious death of his third wife and was observed by undercover police officers going on a thousand-dollar spending spree and having a threesome a mere two days after his wife's death, only deepening their suspicions.
* Luke Mitchell didn't seem at all worried when his girlfriend [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Jodi_Jones Jodi Jones]] went missing in June 2003 and the reason he gave for not being concerned varied depending on who he was talking to. When he later found her body while out helping her family look for her (doing so suspiciously quickly given that he'd only just arrived on the scene), he barely registered any emotion, whereas her family became hysterical and broke down in tears. He would go on to be found guilty of her murder.
* When [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_R._MacDonald Jeffrey MacDonald]]'s wife and two daughters were beaten and stabbed to death, [=MacDonald=] did initially appear concerned, screaming and crying when he was removed from the house and remaining steadfast in his efforts to convince the police to find the woman he claimed had committed the murder. However, his stepfather-in-law Alfred Kassab became suspicious of him after seeing his casual, dismissive demeanour in a TV interview about the murders and when [=MacDonald=] refused to let him see the transcript of an evidentiary hearing where evidence that implicated him was discussed. When [=MacDonald=]'s case went before a grand jury, he didn't help himself with his sarcastic responses to questioning, dismissal of Kassab's attempts to find his daughter's killer as "bizarre" (even focusing more on how much it irritated him than on the fact that his family were murdered) and admission that he had made no effort to investigate the case himself despite publicly vowing to do so. A psychiatrist also testified that when asked about his family [=MacDonald=] would cry for a few moments then stop and answer the question like nothing had happened.
* [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dawson_(rugby_league) Chris Dawson]] played the grieving husband after murdering his wife [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lynette_Dawson Lyn]] in 1982 but didn't do a very good job: not only did he fail to report her missing until she'd been missing for six days, but a mere two days after her disappearance he moved his teenage lover into their house, gave her Lyn's clothing and jewellery to wear and had all his wife's possessions thrown out. Amazingly, police still believed him and he wouldn't be arrested until 2018. During the interim multiple coronial inquests were held into the possibility that Lyn had been murdered and Chris didn't bother showing up to any of them, which further heightened the perception of his guilt.

* ''Manga/ShiNiAruki'': Played with. Tokiko doesn't appear to mourn at any point, which gives Detective Shuichi Yashiro reason to suspect her of planning most of the deaths that occurred over the first two volumes. However, the rest of the police precinct decides early on that she's innocent despite his skepticism, and the reader is quickly made aware that Tokiko simply [[LackOfEmpathy lacks the capacity and mindset]] to even be saddened by most of these deaths, much less visibly show it for the ones that ''do'' bother her. In Chapter 25, [[spoiler:this is subverted, as while she didn't directly kill him, it is revealed that she did orchestrate the means for her adoptive father's death]].

* ''Manga/ShiNiAruki'': Played with. Tokiko doesn't appear to mourn at any point, which gives Detective Shuichi Yashiro reason to suspect her of planning most of the deaths that occurred over the first two volumes. However, the rest of the police precinct decides early on that she's innocent despite his skepticism, and the reader is quickly made aware that Tokiko simply [[LackOfEmpathy lacks the capacity and mindset]] to even be saddened by most of these deaths, much less visibly show it for the ones that ''do'' bother her.

* TruthInTelevision. This has been cited on many crime shows as the reason why cops get suspicious of supposedly grieving loved ones. Conversely, cops have also gotten leery of those who are overly upset, feeling that they are putting on an act. Of course, as most people will be killed by someone they know, the cops have to suspect them in any case, regardless of emotional reaction. Though they might feel bad about having to do it if they show just the right kind of reaction.

* TheBluebeard [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_Amos Lowell Amos]] was placed under surveillance after the highly suspicious death of his third wife and was observed by undercover police officers going on a thousand-dollar spending spree and having a threesome a mere two days after his wife's death, only deepening their suspicions.

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dawson_(rugby_league) Chris Dawson]] played the grieving husband after murdering his wife [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lynette_Dawson Lyn]] in 1982 but didn't do a very good job: not only did he fail to report her missing until she'd been missing for six days, but a mere two days after her disappearance he moved his teenage lover into their house, gave her Lyn's clothing and jewellery to wear and had all his wife's possessions thrown out. Amazingly, police still believed him and he wouldn't be arrested until 2018. During the interim multiple coronial inquests were held into the possibility that Lyn had been murdered and Chris didn't bother showing up to any of them, which further heightened the perception of his guilt.
* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Elizabeth_Wilson Mary Elizabeth Wilson]], an English BlackWidow known as the "Merry Widow of Windy Nook", aroused suspicion partly due to the frequency with which her husbands died (all four married her and died within four years of each other, with one dying only twelve days after the marriage) and partly due to her rather cavalier attitude towards their deaths: she constantly joked about her husbands dying, including commenting at her fourth wedding that the leftovers would still be fresh in time for the funeral, and at one point requested a discount from the local undertaker as a reward for bringing him so much business. She also aroused much suspicion by not bothering to attend her fourth husband's funeral.

* While never accused of the crime (in fact she was one of the victims) something very close to this happened to Emma Jangestig in Sweden in 2005. Jangestig and her two small children were assaulted by [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_Sch%C3%BCrrer Christine Schürrer]], an ex-girlfriend of the children's father. Schürrer bludgeoned Jangestig and her children with a hammer, killing the children and leaving the mother in a serious condition. In the aftermath of the crimes, Jangestig was never seen crying in public and often smiled for the cameras when being interviewed, which sparked a large debate on whether she really cared about her children's deaths at all. Eventually, Jangestig wrote a book titled "''Varför gråter inte Emma?''" ("''Why Doesn't Emma Cry?''") about the murders, her recovery in the hospital, and the aftermath. As the title suggests, the book also deals with why she didn't cry in public and makes it clear that the loss of her children is the biggest tragedy of her life.

* In ''Film/SherlockHolmesAGameOfShadows'', Watson uncovers an assassin at a banquet by slapping a tray of plates out of a waiter's hands and watching for the one person too preoccupied with maintaining his disguise to properly react.

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dawson_(rugby_league) Chris Dawson]] played the grieving husband after murdering his wife [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lynette_Dawson Lyn]] in 1982 but didn't do a very good job: not only did he fail to report her missing until she'd been missing for six days, but a mere two days after her disappearance he moved his teenage lover into their house, gave her Lyn's clothing and jewellery to wear and had all his wife's possessions thrown out. Amazingly, police still believed him and he wouldn't be arrested until 2018.

* [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Dawson_(rugby_league) Chris Dawson]] played the grieving husband after murdering his wife [[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Lynette_Dawson Lyn]] in 1982 but didn't do a very good job: not only did he fail to report her missing until she'd been missing for six days, but a mere two days after her disappearance he moved his teenage lover into their house and had all his wife's clothes thrown out. Amazingly, police still believed him and he wouldn't be arrested until 2018.

* Inverted in the ''Franchise/SherlockHolmes'' story when a man is arrested for the murder of his father in “The Boscombe Valley Mystery”. The fact that he accepts arrest so calmly and he expected it is used as evidence by the police of his guilt. Holmes, however, points out that it simply shows he was aware of the overwhelming evidence against him and that it was futile to protest; only a guilty man would try and cause a scene.

* ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiIVApocalypse: During the Massacre path, Skins and Fujiwara have seemingly cottoned on to the fact that you've [[spoiler: [[CameBackWrong brainwashed Flynn to serve you]] and intend to [[OmnicidalManiac destroy and recreate the universe.]] After slaughtering them and what remains of their army, Stephen shows up to warn you and Dagda that you will eventually face the same fate as the other gods. As it turns out, Stephen had told the humans the truth and Dagda calls him out for nonchalantly sending them off to be slaughtered at the hands of the player.]]

* In ''Videogame/DeusExMankindDivided'' a sidequest deals with the murder of Angela Gunn, with her ex-husband Johnny Gunn being the primary suspect due to his history as a cyborg mercenary as well as his seeming indifference towards her death. When questioned, while clearly frustrated by the accusations it's made clear that Johnny did care for Angela but doesn't show his grief openly. That and his cybernetic limbs leave no fingerprints unlike the ones left at the scene of the crime, which officially rules him out as a suspect.

* Lori Vallow making idle chit-chat with neighbors and police when they show up after her brother Alex Cox called 911 to report that he had shot and killed her husband in "self-defense" in her house, who was nonchalant while nursing a head wound that was way too minor to have been inflicted by the baseball bat he claimed Charles Vallow tried to kill him, then going on to host a pool party at that same house that very night. Incredibly, it didn't set off alarm bells with local police closing the case and not investigating either Lori or Alex any further. Lori would later move from Arizona to Idaho with her kids, J.J. and Tylee, to be close to her new (married) boyfriend, Chad Daybell, whom she had met the previous year. As soon as she did, both J.J. and Tylee disappeared, and she once again didn't seem too bothered by it, neglecting to inform police and even telling numerous people that she had never had any children or that they had died years ago. Chad's wife suddenly died in her sleep just a month later, and both Lori and Chad would then move to Hawaii and get married two weeks after that, still apparently not caring about the missing kids. They were both ''finally'' arrested a few months later[[note]]Alex Cox died of natural causes during this time[[/note]], and an investigation of Chad Daybell's Idaho home revealed the remains of both J.J. and Tylee.

* When author [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Bailey Helen Bailey]] went missing, her partner Ian Stewart called the police to report her missing. Not only did he seem surprisingly unconcerned given that she'd been missing for four days, but he also took another phone call while in the middle of reporting the disappearence. Sure enough, he turned out to have killed her and dumped her body in a septic tank. After his conviction, he was [[TheBluebeard charged with the murder of his first wife]], who he'd strangled and claimed she'd died of an epileptic fit, with the evidence in that case including testimony from paramedics that he'd stood around completely calm while they were trying to save his wife and hadn't bothered to perform CPR when a 999 dispatcher told him to.