Not Fame. Not Even Close

There’s a particular kind of accusation that says more about the person making it than the one receiving it, and it’s usually rooted in small thinking and even smaller understanding. Recently, someone told me that I must be doing this work because I want to be famous, and I’ll be honest, I didn’t feel offended as much as I felt stunned by how deeply they misunderstood what this actually is. Famous for what, exactly? For digging through decades-old case files that most people have long since stopped caring about, for sitting with families whose grief never had the dignity of resolution, or for writing about the worst day of someone’s life and choosing, again and again, not to look away from it?

There is nothing glamorous about cold cases, and anyone who believes otherwise has never spent time in the reality of them. There is no spotlight waiting at the end of this work, no applause for reopening wounds that never properly healed, and no reward that balances the emotional weight of carrying someone else’s story long after the rest of the world has moved on. What exists instead is persistence, the kind that requires you to show up even when it’s uncomfortable, and the quiet, often thankless decision to keep saying that this mattered, this still matters, and it will continue to matter whether people are paying attention or not.

I did not choose this work because I wanted recognition, and I certainly did not choose it because I thought it would make me known. I chose it because some stories do not let you go once you hear them, and Melissa Witt’s story is one of those. There are cases you read about and move on from, and then there are cases that stay with you, that sit with you in a way that feels almost impossible to explain to someone who has never experienced it. Melissa is not a headline to me, and she is not content; she is a young woman whose life was taken, whose future was stolen, and whose case has remained unresolved for far too long.

I understand that not everyone will see it the way I do, and I have made peace with that. There are people who will never understand what it means to carry a case like this in your heart, to feel the weight of it long after you close the file or step away from the screen, and to know that somewhere, someone is still living freely after taking something that can never be returned. There are people who will reduce that kind of commitment into something easier to dismiss, because it is far more comfortable to label it as attention-seeking than to confront the reality that some of us simply refuse to let certain stories die.

Writing books about Melissa Witt will not make me famous, and creating a documentary about her case will not turn this into something glamorous or desirable. If anything, it opens the door to criticism, to scrutiny, and to the kind of commentary that attempts to shrink your intentions into something shallow and self-serving. It would be easier to stay quiet, to move on to something less heavy, and to choose a path that does not invite this kind of misunderstanding, but easy has never been the point of this work.

This has never been about me, and it never will be. It is about a young woman who deserved more than what she was given, both in life and in death, and about the belief that attention—real, sustained, relentless attention—can still move something forward, even after all this time. It is about dignity, about memory, and about refusing to let her name become something people vaguely recall instead of something they actively care about and fight for.

I know who I am, and I know what sits in my heart when I do this work, and it is not ambition and it is not ego. It is a refusal to accept silence as an ending, a refusal to let time be the thing that buries her story, and a refusal to stop asking for justice simply because it has taken longer than it should have. I do not need everyone to understand that, and I do not need their approval to continue doing what I know is right.

If someone wants to call that fame, they are welcome to it, but they are wrong. What this is, and what it has always been, is a commitment to a woman who cannot speak for herself anymore and a determination to make sure that someone still is.