How Annie Elise Gives Victims A Voice

Annie Elise is a podcast host and content creator in the true crime genre who has a mission to give a platform to the voices of victims and their families. She hosts the podcast Serialously and the YouTube channel 10 to LIFE. 

With no intention of professionally covering true crime, Annie consumed all kinds of true crime content and felt the desire for a deeper understanding of the cases she came across. “I started realizing that there was just this huge void in justice [and] accountability. There were a lot of cases that I came across where I felt like victims’ voices weren’t being heard,” Elise explains.

With some extra time on her hands during the 2020 pandemic, Elise began diving into true crime coverage and was met with a positive response. “I decided to start talking about some of the cases that really did deeply affect me and that bothered me—or [cases that] I felt like didn’t have enough awareness. I just started talking about them candidly on social media and it gained traction so quickly, and people then wanted longer recaps. They wanted to know the deep dive version, so that’s what led me to creating longer videos and putting them on YouTube,” recalls Elise. After successfully building an online following, Elise began a live podcast tour to get out of the online bubble and connect with listeners and victims’ families in person. 

Elise’s process for deciding which cases to cover includes a rigorous research system with her team. Listeners submit cases they want to be covered. “We log every single request that we get,” she says. From there, Elise and her team evaluate whether or not coverage of a case has been thorough or if they can add value to the coverage by amplifying the voices of the victims. 

While researching cases with intense and dark elements can be difficult, Elise tries to remember the emotional experience of the victims. “Imagine how difficult it was for this victim to experience that. The least that we could do is bring that story to light and try to get justice and create generate awareness and accountability,” she says. 

Elise hopes her work in true crime coverage can help her audience identify red flags and stay safe. One of the reasons she continues her work is the feedback she receives from families of victims, who are encouraged by her thorough coverage and consideration of their experience, being careful not to let the perpetrator’s voice be louder than the victim’s. One of her more recent experiences like this is helping a victim’s family get their story told through a full documentary, an upcoming project that she can’t give more details about yet.

When asked what she wanted our readers at SLUG to know, she says, “If you ever find yourself in a horrible situation, or if you feel as though you’ve been in a bad relationship, or something has happened to you personally … There’s so much stigma and shame that can be attached to that, and I would just want everybody to know there’s nothing to be ashamed of, there’s nothing you should feel embarrassed [by] or come down on yourself hard about.” 

You can find Annie Elise on Instagram at @_annieelise, her podcast Serialously wherever you get your podcasts and her YouTube channel at 10 to Life. Her live show in Salt Lake City is taking place October 17, 8pm at The Depot. 

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