It's always the husband. Some version of that statement gets circulated damn near every time a married woman with a male partner goes missing. My wife, Lindsay and I have darkly joked about it over the years. However, if she goes missing, I am fucked. After all the shit I said on this show, and in my stand-up over the years, combined with how I look, oh, I will for sure be guilty until proven innocent. Sometimes the, it's always the husband is a call to action, delivered with the confidence of

people who have watched so much true crime, they believe their pattern recognition counts as

actual professional expertise. Sometimes it's a half joke, a throwaway comment that nevertheless

reassures us that there is a clear explanation

for what happened here if we can dig into the relationships around the case enough to see it.

And sometimes it's a rallying call against jumping to conclusion.

If it's always the husband, does that mean that investigators will look too much at the person

closest to the case and then miss other

important credible leads. If, as a culture, we assume it's always the husband, does that put

untold pressure, even unwarranted aggression on a person who may be totally, perfectly innocent,

and grieving the greatest loss of their life? Indeed, in the early hours of a disappearance before bodies

or timelines or evidence, suspicion fills the vacuum. And the husband becomes the most convenient

container for fear. People scrutinize his expressions, the way he phrases, his sentences,

is he too calm, too brief in what he says?

Is he grieving too much?

In a showy theatrical, oh, he's playing a part kind of way.

Is his willingness to talk openly proof that he's not involved, or is he just that confident that he committed the perfect crime?

But I think a lot of us tend to forget when watching developing true crime

stories, when someone's partner is suspected in their disappearance and or murder, is that

there's no correct way to behave when your partner vanishes. We all handle and process grief and

fear and loss and trauma very differently. And most of us are not psychologists or criminologists,

trained in spotting when someone looks guilty because they probably are guilty.

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