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From serial killer Samuel Little’s Ohio murders to Ireland’s prolific murdering sibling duo labeled the “Scissor Sisters,” Heather Wright attempts to make sense of some of the world’s most senseless acts.
Heather Wright’s Nature vs. Narcissism podcast is a weekly examination into true crime cases, some of which occurred right here in Cincinnati. The podcast uses a blend of dark humor and psychological inspection to analyze the environmental and biological makeup of each criminal.
Wright, a Cincinnati resident, claims that her interest in true crime was cultivated in childhood as she bonded with her father, a former Amelia police officer.
“It’s so funny because people are like, ‘So what got you into true crime?’ and I’m like, ‘Well, I don’t know. I just grew up with it,’” Wright tells CityBeat. “It was always kind of my dad and I. We were buddies, and we would do yard work and work on cars and talk about horror stories like The Amityville Horror case. You know, it has paranormal and true crime, and just those were things that interested us because they were mysteries. We wanted to solve them. It was like a puzzle.”
Wright’s father became a police officer when she was in middle school, and she remembers constantly prodding him for details after every shift. Later, when she was studying criminal justice in college, she became a dedicated listener to true crime podcasts such as The New York Times’ Serial and PodcastOne’s Court Junkie. Her family encouraged her to start her own podcast, but Wright brushed it off until her husband gave her a full set of podcasting equipment for her birthday.
When Nature vs. Narcissism first debuted in 2017, Wright hosted the podcast with her sister. Since then, the podcast has undergone audio and format changes, and Wright now flies solo with the occasional guest host.
In each episode, Wright analyzes a true crime case and examines the criminal from a behavioral-psychological perspective. With a Master’s degree in behavioral psychology, Wright says her background helps her perceive things differently than hosts from other true crime podcasts. Rather than just telling the story of what happened, she examines the criminal’s mental history and environment.
“I kind of like to dig a little bit more and find out why — like what affected this person so incredibly where they felt that they needed to lash out or they felt that they needed to solve their problem by committing this terrible, egregious crime when plenty of people have bad things that happen to them throughout their life and they choose a different direction,” Wright says. “So is it mental related? Is it a biological thing, an environmental thing? Is it a combination?”
It ties into the title of the podcast, an allusion to the classic “nature vs. nurture” question. In her research on every case, Wright reads a criminal’s psychological evaluation and court records and shares a summary with her audience.
“We’re not doctors, but we do have opinions and we’d like to discuss them and maybe see the different angles,” Wright says. “Did this thing that happened in their past affect their behavior here? Did this relationship that they had or this bad thing that happened to them in their home, did that affect their behavior later?”
Wright covers national and international crimes like those committed by Aileen Wuornos — the American serial killer who murdered seven men and whose story served as the basis for the Charlize Theron film Monster — but she also dives into Cincinnati-based crime, claiming that she keeps a notebook of local crimes to research for future Nature vs. Narcissism episodes. Wright recently discussed serial killer Samuel Little, who was convicted of two murders that he committed in Ohio in the 1980s. In another episode, she speaks about Alton Coleman and Debra Brown, a couple who were convicted of murdering two women in Cincinnati and Norwood.
Wright says local cases are particularly striking to her. She remembers hearing about some cases, like Marcus Fiesel’s murder in 2006, as they were being investigated.
“It kind of gives you chills sometimes,” Wright says. “You watch the shows and things like that, but when you’re older and your specific goal is to research a certain type of crime in a certain type of area, then you start searching. You’re like, ‘OK, I remember when that happened, but I was just at school or I was at work that day and I didn’t really pay much mind while it was on the news.’ But when you start realizing how small these towns and these areas are, you’re like ‘OK, I drove by that every day’ or ‘That was two doors down for me.’ It’s kind of wild.”
Nature vs. Narcissism episodes follow a new theme each season. The current season’s theme is “Blood and Water,” which focuses on cases where siblings kill together or kill each other. The podcast premieres weekly on Podbay, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
This article appears in Best Of Cincinnati 2021.