Legal scholars sometimes bemoan what they call the “ CSI effect”—the tendency, in courtrooms, for jurors’ familiarity with true-crime TV shows to skew their expectations of how crimes are investigated and solved. The effect emerges from a paradox: People’s interest in televised versions of the criminal-justice system can, regardless of their compassion or sympathies, impede justice in the real world. The disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, an unsolved mystery playing out in real time, embodies a