I used to think that was the beginning of it, but it actually started far earlier and closer in than the Crime Watch Daily show. It actually started pretty much the day of the murder with the downstairs neighbor, who has talked in at least three separate accounts about how Karena wasn’t as upset as she should have been (Marisol gets dragged into this too at least once.) Then, in one of the Pursuit Podcast episodes (it was in one of the first four that are now unavailable), she talked about how the day Karena moved out, she asked her to “let her know if she heard anything new about the investigation.” She acknowledged this was the only time they’d talked for any real length of time, and it was obviously just Karena asking her to pass on any news, but she puts this hilariously sinister spin on it, like Karena was trying to turn her into a mole or something.
I agree it (fingerpointing at KR) started early on, but I think what really pushed it along was the ballyhooed linguistic or content analysis of KR’s 911 call which led to all manner of conspiratorial speculations — while there have been places and cases where such analysis has been valuable I think in this case it was especially misleading and bogus, and it is far from the “science” it purports to be (especially when dealing with such traumatic situations).