Die, die my darling

Susan Zirinsky’s fascination with true crime began in her own childhood neighborhood of Neponsit, Queens.

The executive producer of “48 Hours Mystery” was playing dodgeball with her friends on Beach 147th Street when they heard shots coming from a Cadillac convertible parked at the end of the block.

“The car had a red interior so we didn’t really know what we were seeing,” Zirinsky says. Two bodies were slumped inside, one of them the daughter of a man who owned a gas station a mile away. The other corpse was her boyfriend. “He had killed his girlfriend and himself,” she says. “The cops came and the next thing I remember 12 of us kids were in a theater on Beach 116th Street. watching ‘Lady and the Tramp.’”

As producer of “48 Hours Mystery,” Zurinsky has made murder her business. She’s just one of the forces behind the TV phenomenon of true-crime shows geared toward women. This particular blood thirst has proved insatiable and is regularly fed by series such as “Dateline NBC” and those on the Investigation Discovery Channel. With pulpy titles such as “Blood, Lies and Alibis” and “Happily Never After,” these adaptations stir women’s most persistent nightmares: not only will your husband/lover betray you, he’ll kill you, dump your corpse somewhere and have the replacement wife/lover warming up the bed at home.

That these shows appeal so strongly have to women may seem puzzling, as the vast majority of them feature female victims, but forensic psychologist Dr. Richard Levak says they actually help viewers keep anxiety at bay.

“One way we deal with fear is to watch the fearful object, to observe it, to engage with how awful it is and then to be relieved that it’s not happening to us,” he says. When justice is served and the killer is brought to justice, Levak says viewers have found “a happy ending. Someone has been punished.”

Zurinsky notes that women are natural crime solvers. “The complexities of most crimes are dynamically interesting to women. They want to understand the human dynamic,” she says. “Women understand that life can be so problematic that something just snaps in somebody.”

In the minds of true crime producers, it’s the love that really counts, though.

“The stories that women like are about betrayal and justice,” says Liz Cole, executive producer of NBC’s “Dateline.” “They’re about people who knew each other, loved each other and how things can go so bad, so fast. Everyone has relationships that don’t go well, but these are taken to an extreme.”

Henry Schlieff, president and general manager at Discovery Communications, which owns the ID channel, thinks women viewers make a “visceral” connection with his lineup.

“The most watched shows are those that deal with interpersonal relationships. When you have a crime that involves relationships, you have passion, and these shows are fundamentally about passion,” he says.

“There are endless variations on a theme: ‘Happily Never After’ — where these people don’t even get off the honeymoon — premiered to big numbers.”

Cole says that her audience uses social media such as Twitter to play “armchair detective,” watching “Dateline” with their laptops open while NBC correspondent Keith Morrison guides viewers through another twisty murder story.

To feed the true-crime machine, Cole says that her staff works the phones, talking to NBC affiliates and combing through small-town newspapers.

“It’s not that we’re trying to top ourselves,” she says. “We’re looking for that unimaginable crime. Some are really surprising stories.”

The formulaic nature of the true-crime drama is very deliberate, says Levak. “You set the stage, raise the level of anxiety, get the viewer hooked and then feel relieved when the murderer is punished. Then you want to watch it again.”

For his part, Schlieff is now targeting true crime to an audience that thrives on passion — and shocking twists: the soap opera fan, who has been left in the lurch since the cancellation of “All My Children” and “One Life to Live.”

“We are even starting a time block in the afternoon, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., when traditional soaps used to be on, and having the shows hosted by legendary leading soap opera stars,” he says. “On September 8, Susan Lucci will be hosting the prime-time show ‘Deadly Affairs.’”

True crime hit parade

* ID’s “Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets” told the story of Benjamin Appleby’s arrest for the murder of Ali Kemp.

* The gruesome murder of Sheila Bellush by Jose Luis del Toro was seen on “48 Hours Mystery.”

* “48 Hours Mystery” profiled husband-killer Susan Wright.

* Wife-killer Rafael Robb’s story ended up in “Stolen Voices, Buried Secrets” on ID.