The body of an unidentified woman was found on Weise Island wearing only a thin gown, with stab wounds and an autopsy incision shaped like a ‘Y’ on her body. According to the article dated September 30, 1967, this ‘Jane Doe’ had been dead for at least 36 hours before she was found by recreational boaters. Other than that, little is known about what happened to her.
That newspaper clipping from an unspecified outlet is just one of several items including a picture of a swan, a constellation chart, a small crushed paper cup and two letters: one a letter of welcome from a fictional organization called ‘Listening Friends of America’, the other an ominous, typewritten letter from a man named John William James.
At first glance it all seems random, but together every bit and piece comes together to solve a murder mystery – albeit it a fictitious one.
This is Hunt A Killer, a monthly subscription service based out of Essex, Maryland, that sends participants a box filled with clues, codes and ciphers every month so they can solve a murder mystery themselves. Each box is set up almost like an episode of a television show and a series of boxes follow a storyline like a season.
Hunt A Killer has tapped into the crime and true crime genres, which have been made popular by the likes of true crime documentary series such as The Jinx and Making a Murderer, crime dramas like Mindhunter and Criminal Minds and even full channels devoted only to true crime such as Oxygen and Investigation Discovery.
Dr Scott Bonn, a criminologist and author, told that ‘true crime has always been an entertainment genre’ because it brings people closer to evil without actually being personally affected by it – plus, people love to be the detective and solve the crime themselves, especially from the comfort of their own home.
Hunt A Killer is a subscription service where subscribers are sent a box filled with letters, ciphers and clues every month to guide them through an interactive murder mystery they are supposed to solve from their home
The premise of the game is that subscribers are part of a fictional organization called ‘Listening Friends of America’ and will be receiving packages from a ‘Friend’, someone who spends their time in isolation, whether in a prison, a hospital, hospice or a psychiatric ward. The contents of the first package are pictured
Hunt A Killer was first launched as a live event in 2016 where participants were supposed to solve a murder mystery in teams of six on a 200-acre property in only three hours. Because the event was a success, the founders decided to make it more accessible and turn the game into a subscription service
Among the items in the first episode is a letter setting up the premise of the interactive series. Subscribers are told they have joined a community called the ‘Listening Friends of America’ and will be receiving packages from a ‘Friend’, someone who spends their time in isolation, whether in a prison, a hospital, hospice or a psychiatric ward. That ‘Friend’ will send subscribers letters, pictures, articles and other items which all together is meant to lead recipients to solve a murder mystery when they solve the puzzles and crack the codes.
Childhood friends Ryan Hogan and Derrick Smith created Hunt A Killer first as a live event in 2016 in Darlington, Maryland, where teams competed to solve a murder mystery on a 200-acre campground in only three hours.
Hunt A Killer was co-founded by Ryan Hogan (pictured) and Derrick Smith in 2016, first as a live event. The two childhood friends had previous experience in live events when they organized adventure 5K races called Run For Your Lives, where participants had to avoid ‘zombies’ along the obstacle race
The event was a success and proved to Hogan and Smith, who had previous experience in live events, that there was demand for that kind of interactive entertainment, but there was a problem. It had taken Smith a full six months to develop the design for the specific location while Hogan was on active duty with the Navy. Instead, they wanted a game they could recreate elsewhere without taking months to plan for a specific location, so they came up with a box subscription service, essentially the Blue Apron or BirchBox for true crime fanatics.
The monthly subscription service launched in October 2016 and Hunt A Killer has since had 36,000 customers.
‘I think what we’re both very, very passionate about is just creating mind blowing experiences,’ Hogan told DailyMail.com about himself and co-founder Smith. ‘It was never about money or growth or this or that. That was our pinnacle, was can we break reality for people? And that’s stuck with us this entire time. That’s what we’re constantly trying to do. And as crazy as that sounds, I think at certain points we’ve been able to do that. And that’s what we’ll continue to try and do is blow minds with crazy experiences.’
Every month, Hunt A Killer subscribers are sent a box (left) with manila envelopes filled with different clues inside (right). In the first episode box, participants are sent a couple of newspaper clippings, a picture of a swan, a constellation chart, a small crushed paper cup and two letters
The premise of Hunt A Killer is that subscribers have joined a fictional community called ‘Listening Friends of America’ and they and will be receiving packages from someone who spends their time in isolation, whether in a prison, a hospital, hospice or a psychiatric ward. That person will send subscribers letters, pictures, articles and other items which all together is meant to lead recipients to solve a murder mystery
Hogan, Smith and Hunt A Killer head writer Adam Mueller have done a pretty good job of making each Hunt A Killer episode convincing by grounding everything in some amount of reality or at least the appearance of reality, even down to the actual website for the ‘Listening Friends of America’
Hogan, Smith and their head writer Adam Mueller have done a pretty good job of making each Hunt A Killer episode convincing, from the differently textured papers (the fictional 1967 clipping is on thin, newsprint-like paper while the letter from John William James is on a nicer stationery), to the actual ‘Listening Friends of America’ website.
What we’re both very, very passionate about is just creating mind blowing experiences. It was never about money or growth or this or that… As crazy as that sounds, I think at certain points we’ve been able to do that. And that’s what we’ll continue to try and do is blow minds with crazy experiences
Ryan Hogan, Co-founder and CEO of Hunt A Killer
In the first package there is a scanned copy of an actual Baltimore Sun article (with some words redacted), the second episode includes a poem with what appears to be a bloody thumbprint on it and the third includes an actual photograph of a building – all to draw participants into the creepy murder mystery and bring it to life in front of their eyes.
This obsession with true crime has always been around, according to Dr Scott Bonn. Before getting his Master’s in criminology, Dr Bonn worked in marketing for news outlets where he realized ‘crime is really a source of entertainment and people are drawn to it almost like a moth to a flame’, he said.
Dr Bonn ended up interviewing serial killers, specifically David Berkowitz, the Son of Sam and Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, who both gave themselves nicknames, or ‘brand names’ before he wrote his book: Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers.
‘I think one of the reasons that people love true crime and love these stories is it allows you to get close to evil but in a non-deadly way,’ Dr Bonn said. ‘You get to be close to these individuals [serial killers] who are as close to evil as anyone can imagine, but yet you can do it in the safety of your own living room or bedroom with a book, or watching a TV show.
‘When we’re kids we love to have the crap scared out of us by going to haunted houses and Ferris wheels and roller coasters. We love that adrenaline rush and true crime gives us that adrenaline rush. It gives us a visceral reaction to these things. But again, we’re safe. We can do it in the safety of our own homes. It ceases to be interesting when Jack the Ripper shows up at your front door. Then it’s no longer entertainment,’ he chuckled.
‘Also, people love to play armchair detective… Clue is an iconic, timeless game that everyone loves because everyone loves to try to figure out whodunit.’
Criminologist and author Dr Scott Bonn said there has always been an obsession with true crime because ‘it allows you to get close to evil but in a non-deadly way’ and because people love to be their own detectives from the safety of their own homes
![Dr Bonn said: '[True crime entertainment] gives us a visceral reaction to these things. But again, we're safe. We can do it in the safety of our own homes. It ceases to be interesting when Jack the Ripper shows up at your front door. Then it's no longer entertainment'](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2017/12/13/22/474B628D00000578-0-image-a-10_1513204424676.jpg)
Dr Bonn said: ‘[True crime entertainment] gives us a visceral reaction to these things. But again, we’re safe. We can do it in the safety of our own homes. It ceases to be interesting when Jack the Ripper shows up at your front door. Then it’s no longer entertainment’
Hunt A Killer isn’t as easy as Clue, though. It can be difficult at first and it takes some intuition to know what exactly to do with everything in an episode and to figure out how they all fit together. There’s also no telling when exactly you’ve solved everything in an episode until you make it to the ‘finale’ of a season. Hogan said that’s an issue they’re working on resolving now, to give subscribers the chance to check on their progress more regularly instead of waiting until the end.
‘What you’ll see us do starting in January is that we’re going to break that up so that people don’t have to get all the way to episode eight and then we’ll put the scroller card in each episode.’
That’s just one of several areas of the Hunt A Killer game that is still being developed by Hogan, Smith and Mueller, who was hired as the head writer soon after Hogan and Smith decided to launch Hunt A Killer as a subscription service last October. Until several months ago Mueller and Smith, the Creative Director, were developing episodes ‘on the fly’ according to Hogan, who does more of the business-side of things as the company’s CEO.
Hogan said: ‘This is one of these things where it’s like, hey I’m a part of this journey and it’s developing as I continue through the process. I just think there’s a huge appetite for that right now and when everything is digital and everything is online, you know, we kind of bring the best of both worlds and we bring in analogue and we bring back USPS to shipping on your doorstep. I think there’s obviously a demand for that’
Now that they’ve caught up in a sense, they’ve been able to develop more premium experiences – one-time mysteries contained in a single box – and they’ve decided to slightly change the way the seasons work. Instead of having clearly defined seasons, ‘you’ll be able to actually pick which pen pal you want. And that’s very in line with the Listening Friends of America’, Hogan said.
But they haven’t just stuck with murder mysteries. Earlier this year, they soft launched a ‘paranormal investigation’ subscription service called Empty Faces, which will be hard launched in January.
I think everybody always had an interest in [true crime], but nobody really talked about it. Everybody was [a] closet crime head and it’s because people feel kind of weird saying that this stuff interests them… So I really think that once this community got together and realized, holy crap, we all have something in common, this genre really exploded
‘What we’ve believed this entire time is that we’ve created this new, innovative form of storytelling. But the problem is, is that we had to test that. Were we just Clue in a box that was delivered each month? Or did we kind of revolutionize a new format for [entertainment] that could blend across genres? And so that really is what Empty Faces was, was trying to prove to ourselves that we have done that.
‘We were able to acquire about 500 customers in the first week and so now we’ve kind of taken it back offline and we’ve said, okay perfect, this will work in other genres. Now we’re really working hard at the tremendous opportunity that’s in front of us.’
Hogan added: ‘My partner and I have been fortunate enough to be in this position twice and this is one of those things where every day you turn around and you’re like, is this real? How is this happening? How has this happened twice? But really it’s a lot of luck and timing. The genre was up and coming before we got here and that wave was already cresting and so we kind of hopped up and piggybacked off of that.’
Hogan and Smith haven’t just stayed in the realm of murder mysteries. Earlier this year they soft launched another subscription service called ‘Empty Faces’ that leads subscribers through an interactive ‘paranormal investigation’
Hogan and Smith got their start with creating live events back in 2011 while Hogan was still on active duty with the Navy. With Tough Mudders and Spartan races becoming more popular at the time, Hogan thought they should create a race when Smith suggested they ‘put zombies in it’, which became Run for Your Lives and was held around the world until 2013.
‘We kind of created this unique model where people donned flag football belts,’ Hogan said. ‘We game-ified the experience of an adventure race where zombies were chasing you and trying to take your life and your life was the flag football belt.
When we’re kids we love to have the crap scared out of us by going to haunted houses and Ferris wheels and roller coasters. We love that adrenaline rush and true crime gives us that adrenaline rush. It gives us a visceral reaction to these things. But again, we’re safe. We can do it in the safety of our own homes. It ceases to be interesting when Jack the Ripper shows up at your front door. Then it’s no longer entertainment
Dr Scott Bonn, criminologist
‘We saw pretty big success in that for the first few years and then it just kind of evolved from there. It evolved to knowing that we can look at what the industry is doing and what genres are doing and what type of experiences are out there and take a little bit of all of these things and put them together and create something that’s truly unique.’
At first with Hunt A Killer, the two founders wanted to create something that combined popular experiences such as interactive theater performances, escape rooms and adventure races. They also looked to see what popular trends were going on, which at the time, they noticed was true crime. Hogan attributed this trend to My Favorite Murder, a podcast that was started in early 2016.
‘My Favorite Murder really kind of created and cultivated this community,’ Hogan said. ‘I think everybody always had an interest in it, but nobody really talked about it. Everybody was [a] closet crime head and it’s because people feel kind of weird saying that this stuff interests them, like death and killing and stuff, so I really think that once this community got together and realized, holy crap we all have something in common, this genre really exploded.’
‘And that’s what we were trying to do was put together immersive or interactive theater. A kind of escape room, figure out clues to unlock the next levels and then putting it over sort of like an adventure race where we had a 200-acre campground that we turned into this live experience.’
Hogan said: ‘People no more want to be fed things with a silver spoon. For people to be able to open up their imagination and explore and be a part of this story, that’s really where we feel our competitive advantage is. So instead of going to movies or watching your TV or doing this, you become a part of our story. Somebody is speaking to you in the first person and kind of leading you and guiding you through this experience’
Though they turned that first live experience into a subscription service, they were planning on organizing another live event earlier this year. However, they realized that the demographics of their subscribers had changed since that first live event.
‘We had more males that came out to our first event and right now our primary demo is females between 25 and 45. And what females want between that age and what males want are two completely different things.
‘So what we’re looking at is doing a cruise and this’ll probably be mid-to-late 2019. You’ll see a partnership with a cruise line where we put on a murder mystery three-day cruise. This is just something that we know would be more conducive to the 25 to 45 year old females versus bringing everybody to a campsite for a weekend.’
However they end up organizing another live event, the important thing is that Hogan and Smith have developed a new kind of entertainment that people are craving.
‘People no more want to be fed things with a silver spoon. For people to be able to open up their imagination and explore and be a part of this story, that’s really where we feel our competitive advantage is. So instead of going to movies or watching your TV or doing this, you become a part of our story. Somebody is speaking to you in the first person and kind of leading you and guiding you through this experience.
‘So it’s no longer just, hey feed me the story what is it, what’s the start, finish, middle, end? This is one of these things where it’s like, hey I’m a part of this journey and it’s developing as I continue through the process.
‘I just think there’s a huge appetite for that right now and when everything is digital and everything is online, you know, we kind of bring the best of both worlds and we bring in analogue and we bring back USPS to shipping on your doorstep. I think there’s obviously a demand for that.’