My Best Friend’s Murder Was a Tabloid Circus. Now, I’m Looking for the Truth.

Mary Jane Gibson’s account of Nicole DuFresne’s murder is a sharp critique of the ways in which media coverage can expand the blast radius of violent crime. In her memoir for Rolling Stone, Gibson spends little time on the murder itself; she is clear about the limits of her “scattershot version” of the night, in which she and DuFresne were ambushed by seven young people, most of them teenagers. Instead, she tallies the complex dynamics that shaped a fatal encounter, then notes how her best friend’s actions were weaponized against her in reactive, fearmongering news coverage.

Reporters were waiting at LaGuardia Airport for Tom and Linda DuFresne when they flew in from Minnesota to identify their daughter’s body; members of the media camped out on our doorstep to snag a photo of Scott and me looking pale and shell-shocked. It was surreal to read tabloid accounts that the gun had been aimed at me too, that Scott thought he had heard it go off. My reality was fracturing.

Before internet ubiquity as we know it existed, the story of her death went viral; Nicole’s face was on newsstands across the country, and every major media outlet showed up at her memorial. The Village Voice noted that “DuFresne is on her way to becoming one of New York’s super-victims.”

After Evans’ allegation was reported, the media narrative shifted — now Nicole’s death was her fault because she’d “dared” Fleming. Safety advocates said that Nicole’s “defiant” stand had prompted Fleming to shoot her, and the National Crime Prevention Council circulated a memo on how to survive a mugging, advising potential victims to “stay cool and comply with robbers.”

The Stranger, a Seattle alt-weekly, ran an anonymous letter addressing Nicole that read, in part, “It seems you misplayed your role as mugging victim. This was not street theater you were involved in. It was real-life drama, which you helped turn into a tragedy.… Your last words suggest you did not understand the material. I’m sad that you will not get another audition.”Cosmopolitan published a feature titled “How Not to Let Your Fearlessness Go Too Far” with tips on what not to do when held at gunpoint, next to a list of mistakes that Nicole had supposedly made.