Time & Perspective Quote by Catherine Crier

Memory, in Catherine Crier's framing, isn’t a mystical flashbulb; it’s a timecard. The line quietly demystifies what audiences often treat as “the cases that haunted me” and recasts it as “the cases that consumed my life.” Coming from a journalist trained in the brutal arithmetic of airtime, deadlines, and trial transcripts, “most memorable” becomes less about emotional imprint and more about exposure: the longer you sit with a story, the more it colonizes your attention.

That “Obviously” does two jobs at once. It projects calm authority (I’ve been in the room; I know how this works) while also pre-empting a more sentimental reading of true-crime remembrance. Crier nudges the listener away from voyeuristic fascination and toward the labor behind public narratives: long stretches of watching, verifying, waiting, re-watching. In a media ecosystem that rewards instant takes, she points to duration as the hidden engine of significance.

Naming the Westerfield and Peterson cases is loaded, too: both are high-profile murder trials that became national spectacles, with clear villains, telegenic courtroom beats, and a public hungry for moral certainty. By placing them “up at the top of the list,” she acknowledges the gravitational pull of cases that offer narrative completeness while hinting at a professional hazard: the stories that dominate the news cycle also dominate the reporter’s inner archive, potentially crowding out quieter injustices that never get the same sustained attention.

The subtext is a critique of our own memory economy: what we remember is often what we’re made to watch the longest.