Mass casualty violence is rising across the United States, and a striking number of the attackers share a common thread. RosettiStarr’s Security & Risk team began investigating this connection in April 2026, months before it drew broader public attention, after a shooting at a tourist site in Mexico raised questions few researchers had yet examined. What we found was an online subculture few people have heard of: the True Crime Community, or TCC — a world apart from the mainstream true-crime fandom of podcasts and documentaries.
No leader. No ideology. No manifesto. Just a shared obsession with the mass shooters its members call “saints.” From the Columbine massacre (April 1999) to the Christchurch mosque shootings (March 2019), each attack becomes a template — studied, honored, and sometimes reenacted by the next member seeking their own moment of notoriety. Members find each other through gaming platforms, encrypted chats, and social media platforms. They never explicitly state their membership. Rather, they signal their allegiance to the TCC through a recurring set of symbols, gestures, and notable dates. The FBI reported a 300% rise in this category of violence between late 2024 and late 2025, and RosettiStarr’s own data shows no signs of that trend slowing.
Because the TCC lacks a clear ideology, its attacks are frequently missed, misclassified, or overshadowed by other news. However, our research shows that these attacks are far from random. Using open-source intelligence, RosettiStarr’s team built its own database systematically tracking TCC-linked incidents since 2021, uncovering patterns in timing, target selection, and geographic spread that point to where the trend could be heading.