What is the point of true-crime documentaries? This is the uncomfortable question that those of us who consume them by the bucketload must sooner or later confront. If it’s just someone else’s suffering dressed up as diverting entertainment, then that can’t be OK, can it? But if there is also the possibility that these documentaries might illuminate an important aspect of cultural history, or human psychology, or even prevent future suffering by bringing perpetrators to justice, then there is some value to our viewing, after all.

The case that is the focus of Netflix’s latest true-crime docuseries, Crime Scene: the Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, has the potential to do