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35 great true crime stories: true crime articles to read online, murder stories, the body in room 348 by mark bowden, the case of the vanishing blonde by mark bowden, true crime by david grann, the lazarus file by matthew mcgough, the truck stop killer by vanessa veselka, the girl in the picture by nile cappello, mysterious circumstances by david grann, the unbelievable tale of a fake hitman, a kill list, a darknet vigilante... and a murder by gian m. volpicell, the sicario by charles bowden, the untold story of silk road by joshuah bearman, the young and the reckless by brendan i. koerner, the most deceptive hack in history by andy greenberg, how an entire nation became russia's test lab for cyberwar by andy greenberg, the most devastating cyberattack in history by andy greenberg, organised crime, crimetown usa by david grann, cocaine incorporated by patrick radden keefe, the hunt for el chapo by patrick radden keefe, white collar crime, the $9 billion witness by matt taibbi, the biggest tax scam ever by tim dickinson, only fools and horses by barney curley, how i became a con artist by jason jellick, see also..., 150 great articles and essays.

Robbery, Heists and Theft

The untold story of the world’s biggest diamond heist by joshua davis, the greatest heist in british history by mark seal, the art of the steal by joshua bearman, pipino: gentleman thief by joshua davis and david wolman, stealing mona lisa by dorothy and thomas hoobler, bike batman by christopher solomon, other true crime cases, coronado high by joshuah bearman, the crypto trap by andy greenberg, foot. loose. by christopher solomon, an unbelieveable story of rape by t. christian miller and ken armstrong, the dangers of stash by brendan i. koerner, uncatchable by michael finkel, the great paper caper by wells tower, the ultimate counterfeiter by david wolman, in cold blood by truman capote, midnight in the garden of good and evil by john berendt, the devil in the white city by erik larson.

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Our Long-standing Obsession with True Crime

Until quite recently, when someone who actually knew what he or she was talking about took the trouble to correct it, the Wikipedia entry for “True Crime” claimed that the genre originated in 1966 with the publication of Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood.” This all-too-common misconception gets the starting date wrong by roughly 400 years.

No sooner had Gutenberg invented movable type than enterprising printers began churning out graphically violent murder ballads. Whenever a particularly ghastly killing occurred, it was promptly cast in doggerel, printed on a large sheet of paper known as a “broadside,” and peddled to the hard-working masses eager to brighten their dreary days with a little vicarious sadism. Throat-slittings, stranglings, bludgeonings and axe-murders were among the many grisly subjects of these crudely written verses, though few atrocities could match the morbid titillation of a really gruesome child-killing, as in the case of the British “monster mom” Emma Pitt:

This Emma Pitt was a schoolmistress,

Her child she killed we see,

Oh mothers, did you ever hear

Of such barbarity?

With a large flint stone she beat its head,

When such cruelty she’d done,

From the tender roof of the infant’s mouth

She cut away its tongue.

Murder ballads weren’t the only kind of crime literature available in the old days. In England, true crime books can be traced as far back as John Reynolds’ “The Triumphs of God’s Revenge Against the Crying and Execrable Sin of Murther,” an Elizabethan anthology that dished up juicy real-life stories of homicidal violence under the moralistic pretext of demonstrating that Crime Does Not Pay. Even more popular was “The Newgate Calendar: Or, Malefactors’ Bloody Register,” a constantly updated compendium of sordid true crime accounts, which, after the Bible and Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” was the most widely read book in Britain for more than a century.

Here in America, the public’s appetite for lurid entertainment was fed by volumes like the “The Record of Crimes in the United States” (a particular favorite of self-confessed true crime junkie, Nathaniel Hawthorne). Throughout the 19th century and into the early 20th, similar compilations were churned out on a regular basis. Perhaps the best known was the 1910 “Celebrated Criminal Cases of America,” by former San Francisco police captain Thomas S. Duke, a collection of criminal case histories covering a wide range of reprobates, from infamous outlaws like Jesse James and the Daltons to Victorian serial killers like Theodore Durrant (aka “The Demon of the Belfry”) and the Chicago “multi-murderer” Dr. H.H. Holmes. Dashiell Hammett was so addicted to Duke’s book that he kept a copy of it on his night table for bedtime reading (as does his surrogate, Sam Spade, in “The Maltese Falcon”).

Though first-rate pieces of American true crime writing appeared throughout the mid-20th century, by such writers as Damon Runyon, Herbert Asbury, Jim Thompson, Dorothy Kilgallen and especially Edmund Pearson (revered by aficionados as the dean of American true crime), a distinct air of disreputability still clung to the genre. Then came “In Cold Blood,” which elevated the book-length true crime narrative to the rarefied heights of serious literature. Unfortunately, its author also set an unfortunate precedent by indulging in the kind of novelistic embellishment (not to say rank fabrication) that has become endemic to the form. People who write true crime, of course, aren’t the only authors of creative nonfiction who have been known to improve on the truth. Given the promise of absolute veracity that is embedded in the very name of the true crime genre, however, I believe such writers have a particular obligation to stick to the facts.

Not that I’ve always done so myself. Early in my writing career, I occasionally allowed myself a bit of what I referred to as “extrapolation” (less euphemistically known as “making stuff up”). My unacknowledged credo (cribbed from the first chapter of Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”) was “It’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.” In my defense, I restricted my fabrications to fairly minor atmospheric details. For example, in my book “Deranged: The Shocking True Story of America’s Most Fiendish Killer,” there’s a scene in which the main character—the wizened cannibal-pedophile Albert Fish (using his pseudonym, Frank Howard)—dines with the family of his future child-victim, Grace Budd. Here’s how I describe the meal:

The men retired to the kitchen, a clean but dingy-looking room illuminated by a single bare bulb that tinged the whitewashed walls a sickly yellow. The long wooden table, covered with a plaid oilcloth, held a big cast-iron pot full of ham hocks and sauerkraut—the leftover remains of the previous night’s dinner. The sharp, briny odor of the cabbage filled the room. Arranged around the pot were platters of pickled beets and boiled carrots, a basket of hard rolls and two ceramic bowls into which Mrs. Budd had transferred Frank Howard’s pot cheese and strawberries.

This lunch really happened, but I took the artistic liberty of inventing the menu. I hasten to say I did some research into the kind of food a working-class family like the Budds might have served a guest for lunch in the late 1920s. Still, I didn’t actually know what they ate; I just wanted to make the moment seem real for the reader.

I no longer permit myself even such minor bits of imaginative re-creation. My field is historic true crime—I’ve written about cases from the Civil War era to the 1950s—and I’ve come to see the genre as a legitimate branch of American historical study. After all, the Leopold and Loeb case tells us as much about the Jazz Age as Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight does, just as the Manson murders shed as much light on the culture of late-1960s America as Woodstock does. To be taken as seriously as history, however, a true crime book must adhere strictly to documented fact. There’s no reason why a book-length narrative about a 19th-century serial murderer shouldn’t be held to the same rigorous standards as, for instance, a biography of Teddy Roosevelt.

My task as a writer, as I see it, is to produce a serious work of historical scholarship (my last few books have included copious endnotes) that stays true to the sensationalistic roots of the genre by providing “murder fanciers” (as Edmund Pearson called true crime lovers) with the primal pleasures they crave. In looking for a suitable subject, I try to find cases that possess some larger social or cultural significance. Shocking murders happen all the time, of course, but few of them have the ingredients to make much of an impression on the public beyond momentary shock. In the early 1920s, for example, a former showgirl named Clara Phillips—“The Tiger Woman,” the tabloids dubbed her—took a claw hammer to the skull of her husband’s mistress and bludgeoned her to death. Her crime provided the public with some fleeting titillation but quickly vanished into permanent obscurity. By contrast, the 1927 “Double Indemnity Murder” perpetrated by Queens housewife Ruth Snyder and her milquetoast lover, Judd Gray, became one of the signature crimes of the Jazz Age. What made it so riveting wasn’t the homicide per se (the victim, Ruth’s husband, Albert, suffered a death no more or less gruesome than the one inflicted on Mr. Phillip’s mistress) but the colorful cast of characters, the deliciously tawdry storyline and—most important of all—the way the crime seemed to crystalize the cultural anxieties of the day: the breakdown of traditional morality, the threatening freedoms embodied by the “New Woman” and so forth.

Of course, there will always be highbrows who cast a contemptuous eye at the true crime genre. In an essay on “In Cold Blood,” Renata Adler deplores both the original book and the 1968 movie for playing to the bloodlust of the audience by using “every technique of cheap fiction” to intensify the emotional impact of the killings. This criticism, however, seems deeply wrongheaded since, on some fundamental level, one purpose of true crime writing is precisely to provide decent law-abiding citizens with primal, sadistic thrills—to satisfy what William James called our “aboriginal capacity for murderous excitement.” The worst specimens of the genre may not rise above the quasi-pornographic level, but the best—like those exquisitely ornamented war clubs, broadswords and flintlocks displayed in museums—are a testimony to something worth celebrating: the human ability to take something rooted in our intrinsically bloodthirsty nature and turn it into craft of a very high order, sometimes even art.

15 Best True Crime Authors Who Are Must-Reads For Genre Fans

Erin Mayer is a writer and editor specializing in personal essays and musings about face creams that probably won't cure her anxiety (but hey, it's worth a shot). Her work has appeared on Bustle, Literary Hub, Man Repeller, Business Insider, and more. She spends her free time drafting tweets she never finishes and reading in front of the television. Find her at erinmayer.com .

View All posts by Erin Mayer

I’ve always been drawn to crime stories . Despite (or perhaps because of) my struggles with anxiety, I’m interested in the dark side of humanity. Which is why I’m attempting the impossible task of listing the very best true crime authors in the history of the genre. These are the best true crime authors you need to check out if you love crime journalism, in no particular order.

Michelle McNamara

Michelle McNamara passed away before completing her first book on the search for (and her personal obsession with) the Golden Gate Killer. Even so, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark is a masterful blend of memoir and investigative journalism. While the book was posthumously completed by McNamara’s husband and research partners, you can see more of her writing at True Crime Diary .

Dave Cullen

Cullen has carved out a depressingly necessary niche as a school shootings reporter, starting with his iconic tome about the Columbine High School massacre, simply called Columbine . I cried at least three times while reading his first book, a gripping narrative that explores the killers’ motives and the aftermath of their crime. His latest is Parkland: Birth of a Movement .

Alfredo Corchado

Corchado is a Mexican American journalist. He currently works for the Dallas Morning News , where he reports on Mexico and its relationship with the United States as the Mexico City bureau chief. His autobiographical book Midnight in Mexico describes Corchado’s attempts to investigate corruption after receiving threats on his life.

The Stranger Beside Me , Rule’s best-known book by far, is a classic of the true crime genre. It’s follows the Ted Bundy case while delving into her personal relationship with the notorious killer. The two met working at a crisis clinic in Seattle. But don’t discount her other work; she’s one of the most prolific true crime authors around, with dozens of books to her name.

Erik Larson

Larson’s most famous work is Devil in the White City , which profiles Dr. H.H. Holmes and the making of the World’s Fair. In general, he specializes in nonfiction exploring personal stories at the heart of major historical events.

Susan Orlean

Orlean doesn’t write about violent crime, but her writing is no less gripping than that of the other authors on this list. If you have a weak stomach, check out The Orchid Thief or The Library Book . Both works have their fair share of intrigue, without the gory details found in most other books on this list

Jon Krakauer

Krakauer might be best known for Into the Wild , but several of his works fall under the category of true crime. Missoula is an exploration of sexual assault on a college campus. Under the Banner of Heaven investigates crime in the Mormon Fundamentalist community.

MAry Kay McBrayer

Book Riot’s own Mary Kay McBrayer is a newcomer on the true crime scene, but her forthcoming first book, America’s First Female Serial Killer: Jane Toppan and the Making of a Monster , is a must-read. The best part? It’s currently available for preorder and comes out on May 19, 2020.

Bryan Stevenson

Stevenson is a lawyer and an author. His most famous work is Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption , an autobiographical account of Stevenson’s work on the Walter McMillian case. This story about race and inequality in our justice system and should be required reading for all Americans.

Yudhijit Bhattacharjee

If you already know everything about Edward Snowden, check out The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell . It follows the FBI investigation into Brian Regan, a dyslectic codebreaker who sold government secrets to various foreign sources.

Mara Leveritt

Leveritt’s two books on the West Memphis Three paint a complete picture of the crime and false convictions. Start with The Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three . Then, pick up Dark Spell: Surviving the Sentence . Leveritt wrote this in conjunction with Jason Baldwin, the youngest of men known as the West Memphis Three.

Truman Capote

In Cold Blood is hailed as the ultimate true crime classic, and for good reason. Years after reading I remain haunted by Capote’s description of the crime scene—the family home where an entire family was slaughtered by two men. The book explores the before, during, and after of the murders that shook Holcomb, Kansas.

Deborah Blum

Interested in the scientific of crime? Blum has quite a few books on the subject, including her most famous, The Poisoner’s Handbook . It’s about two Jazz Age scientists who helped create the beginnings of forensics as we know it today.

James Ellroy

Ellroy is known for his fictional L.A. Quartet (the third book is L.A. Confidential ). Don’t sleep on the author’s nonfiction, however. His memoir, My Dark Places , is an origin story of sorts.

Rabia Chaudry

Rabia Chaudry expands on the story from Serial with Adnan’s Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial . The book presents new evidence and further seeks to prove Adnan Syed’s innocence in the murder of Hae Min Lee.

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15 True Crime Longreads and the Questions We Should Ask Ourselves When Reading Them

Promethea Unbound (Mike Mariani, The Atavist Magazine )

Yearian led Jasmine into a spacious room lined with textbooks and file boxes, then picked her up and set her in a chair opposite his desk. She swung her legs up and down, her feet nowhere close to touching the floor, before settling with her knees pulled up to her chest. As Yearian talked, Jasmine kept looking at a pink slinky perched on a shelf. Why, he asked, had she inquired about the accelerator melting down? Jasmine answered matter-of-factly: Particles moving nearly at the speed of light create an enormous amount of thermal energy that must be contained. The professor followed up by asking her about the physics principles behind a pendulum. Jasmine described oscillation, conservation of energy, and frictional damping. This is the real deal, Yearian thought. He called Georgia into the office. “You have an extremely bright child,” he said. “How did she learn so much?” Everything Jasmine knew, Georgia explained, she had taught herself.

The Innocent Man (Pamela Colloff, Texas Monthly )

On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter. “Your Honor,” he began, “I’m sure you remember me. I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.” He wrote each word carefully, sitting cross-legged on the top bunk in his cell at the Wynne prison unit, in Huntsville. “I have been told that you are to decide if I am ever to see my son, Eric, again. I haven’t seen him since the morning that I was convicted. I miss him terribly and I know that he has been asking about me.” Referring to the declarations of innocence he had made during his trial, he continued, “I must reiterate my innocence. I did NOT kill my wife. You cannot imagine what it is like to lose your wife the way I did, then to be falsely accused and convicted of this terrible crime. First, my wife and now possibly, my son! Sooner or later, the truth will come out. The killer will be caught and this nightmare will be over. I pray that the sheriff’s office keeps an open mind. It is no sin to admit a mistake. No one is perfect in the performance of their job. I don’t know what else to say except I swear to God that I did NOT kill my wife. Please don’t take my son from me too.”

Enrique’s Journey (Sonia Nazario, The Los Angeles Times )

His mother never returns, and that decides Enrique’s fate. As a teenager—indeed, still a child—he will set out for the U.S. on his own to search for her. Virtually unnoticed, he will become one of an estimated 48,000 children who enter the United States from Central America and Mexico each year, illegally and without either of their parents. Roughly two-thirds of them will make it past the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Many go north seeking work. Others flee abusive families. Most of the Central Americans go to reunite with a parent, say counselors at a detention center in Texas where the INS houses the largest number of the unaccompanied children it catches. Of those, the counselors say, 75% are looking for their mothers. Some children say they need to find out whether their mothers still love them. A priest at a Texas shelter says they often bring pictures of themselves in their mothers’ arms.

A Most American Terrorist: The Making of Dylann Roof (Rachel Kaadzi Ghansah, GQ )

I had come to Charleston intending to write about them, the nine people who were gone. But from gavel to gavel, as I listened to the testimony of the survivors and family members, often the only thing I could focus on, and what would keep me up most nights while I was there, was the magnitude of Dylann Roof’s silence, his refusal to even look up, to ever explain why he did what he had done. Over and over again, without even bothering to open his mouth, Roof reminded us that he did not have to answer to anyone. He did not have to dignify our questions with a response or explain anything at all to the people whose relatives he had maimed and murdered. Roof was safeguarded by his knowledge that white American terrorism is never waterboarded for answers, it is never twisted out for meaning, we never identify its “handlers,” and we could not force him to do a thing. He remained inscrutable. He remained in control, just the way he wanted to be.

Could an Ex-Convict Become an Attorney? I Intended to Find Out (Reginald Dwayne Betts, The New York Times Magazine )

After meeting with J., I sat in my office with his file, a thin sheaf of no more than a dozen pages. I pulled out my own criminal record. One hundred-odd pages spilled from the accordion folder. I stared at the documents scattered across my desk: my neat cursive on the handwritten confession; a faded yellow summons demanding my mother appear in court, as if my crime belonged to her; the sentencing order consigning me to prison. The prison scrubs that J. wore, the jail cell that held him, the early mornings when deputies would take him shackled and cuffed to court, connected us. I wanted him to believe that the worst of what might happen could be overcome. But I wasn’t sure if that was true.

The Spy Who Couldn’t Spell: How the Biggest Heist in the History of US Espionage Was Foiled (Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, The Guardian )

Whatever nostalgia he might have felt for his old school was tinged with bitterness. It was here that he had suffered some of life’s early humiliations: taunted by classmates for his apparent dimwittedness; held in low esteem by his teachers. If they remembered him at all, they would remember him as the boy who had difficulty reading. The boy who was so bad with spellings. His bearish frame may have protected him from physical bullying, but combined with his severe dyslexia and his social awkwardness, it had also cemented his image as a dolt. That image had stuck with him, despite a successful career in US intelligence, where he had been given access to some of the country’s most valued secrets. Being underestimated – by family, classmates and colleagues – had been the theme of his life, a curse he had borne silently since childhood. But for the mission he had now embarked upon, it was a blessing. None of his co-workers or managers in the intelligence community could have imagined that he of all people was capable of masterminding a complex espionage plot.

What Do We Owe Her Now? (Elizabeth Bruenig, The Washington Post )

I wanted to understand why it had to be as bad as it was — why she wasn’t just doubted but hated, not simply mocked but exiled — and why it had always lingered on my conscience like an article of unfinished business, something I had meant to do but hadn’t. I wanted to look directly at the dark things that are revealed when episodes of brutality unfold and all pretense of civilization temporarily fades, and I wanted to understand them completely. Otherwise, I thought, they could at any time pull me under. And I could watch mutely while something like this happened again.

What Happened at Brian Holloway’s House? (Jay Caspian Kang, Grantland )

There are two stories about the party in Stephentown. The first, the one we already know, stars an accomplished, morally stout man who took a stand against a horde of teenagers whose minds had been destroyed by Molly and social media. But that redemption saga holds up for about as long as a quick, three-minute segment on the news or a newspaper column about these goddamn kids these days. Prod just a little bit more, even gently, and Brian Holloway’s quest to save 300 lives starts to fall apart. The second story about the party in Stephentown is worse.

The Delay (Rachel Monroe, Esquire )

It wasn’t until 9:07 P.M. that the Navajo Nation Police Department finally requested an Amber Alert from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. However, Amber Alerts are typically initiated by state police, not the FBI. The lack of clarity about who was supposed to set the alert in motion meant that—for several crucial hours—no such process was taking place. Sometime after midnight, an FBI agent contacted the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. They, in turn, contacted the New Mexico State Police, formally launching the Amber Alert process. When Nez finally made it home that night, his wife couldn’t stop talking about Ashlynne. Sweet little girl , she said. She’s so petite. She’s so small. Hours later, they were jolted awake by the simultaneous buzzing of their cell phones. The automated text message informed them that an Amber Alert had been issued for Ashlynne Mike. It was 2:30 A.M., eight hours after Gary Mike had first reported that his children were missing.

Death at a Penn State Fraternity (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic )

Tim Piazza’s case, however, has something we’ve never seen before. This time the dead student left a final testimony, a vivid, horrifying, and inescapable account of what happened to him and why. The house where he was so savagely treated had been outfitted with security cameras, which recorded his long ordeal. Put together with the texts and group chats of the fraternity brothers as they delayed seeking medical treatment and then cleaned up any traces of a wild party—and with the 65-page report released by a Centre County grand jury, which recommended 1,098 criminal charges against 18 former members and against the fraternity itself—the footage reveals a more complete picture of certain dark realities than we have previously had. Once again, a student is dead and a family is shattered. And all of us are co-authors of these grim facts, as we grant both the fraternities and their host institutions tax-exempt status and allow them to carry on year after year with little change. Is it time we reconsidered what we’re doing?

The Counterfeit Queen of Soul (Jeff Maysh, Smithsonian Magazine )

Hardy’s “Aretha Franklin Revue” played three small towns across Florida. After every performance, “Aretha” dashed to her dressing room and hid. On the strength of these smaller shows, Hardy eyed bigger towns and talked of scoring a lucrative ten-night tour. Meanwhile, he fed Jones two hamburgers a day and kept her locked inside a grim hotel room, far from her boys, who were being cared for by her mother. Even if she’d been able to steal away to call the police, she might have felt some hesitation: In nearby Miami just a few months earlier, a “blacks only” rally had turned into a riot where police shot and killed three residents, and left a 12-year-old boy with a bullet hole in his chest. In Fort Myers, the promoters booked the 1,400-seat High Hat Club, where the $5.50 tickets quickly sold out. Hardy’s impostor had fooled a few small-town crowds, but now she had to convince a larger audience. He dressed Jones in a yellow, floor-length gown, a wig and heavy stage makeup. In the mirror, she looked vaguely like a picture of Franklin from the pages of Jet. “I wanted to tell everybody beforehand that I was not Miss Franklin,” Jones insisted later, “but [Hardy] said the show promoters would do something awful to me if they learned who I really was.” When Jones peered out from backstage she saw an audience ten times larger than those she’d seen at any church or nightclub. “I was scared,” Jones recalled. “I didn’t have any money, no place to go.” Through the fog of cigarette smoke and heavy stage lighting, Hardy hoped his hoax would work.

Remote Control (Sarah Marshall, The Believer )

For all the hours she has spent in the public eye prior to this moment, and for the many more hours she will spend there yet, she has been stoic, strong, reserved. She was famous before, for her skills as an athlete and as a performer, but this moment of anguish will make her an icon. Newspaper headlines and magazine covers and reporters and talk-show hosts and families joking in the car and around the breakfast table and on the couch as they watch her on TV will quote her, now and for years to come—or at least they will think they are quoting her. But they will say, without fail, the one thing she didn’t say: “Why me?” Twenty years later, we are still trying to answer this question. And if we have been mishearing something so simple for so long, we have to wonder what else we have been mistaken about.

The Disappeared (Hannah Dreier, ProPublica )

Miguel walked off toward the woods wearing a pair of black sweatpants and vanished into the darkness. The only clue his family would have to where he had gone and what awaited him there were the 84 Facebook messages he had exchanged that day with Alexander. They were discovered, weeks later, by his teenage sister — not the police. Miguel was the first of 11 high schoolers to go missing in a single Long Island county in 2016 and 2017, as the street gang MS-13 preyed with increasing brutality on the Latino community. As student after student disappeared, often lured out with the promise of smoking blunts in the woods, their immigrant families were stymied by the inaction and inadequate procedures of the Suffolk County police, according to more than 100 interviews and thousands of pages of police reports, court records and documents obtained through freedom-of-information requests. Many of the families came from countries where officials have historically looked the other way as gangs and death squads disappear young people. Now they felt the same pattern was playing out again, in the woods of Long Island.

What Bullets Do to Bodies (Jason Fagone, Highline )

The first thing Dr. Amy Goldberg told me is that this article would be pointless. She said this on a phone call last summer, well before the election, before a tangible sensation that facts were futile became a broader American phenomenon. I was interested in Goldberg because she has spent 30 years as a trauma surgeon, almost all of that at the same hospital, Temple University Hospital in North Philadelphia, which treats more gunshot victims than any other in the state and is located in what was, according to one analysis , the deadliest of the 10 largest cities in the country until last year, with a homicide rate of 17.8 murders per 100,000 residents in 2015. Over my years of reporting here, I had heard stories about Temple’s trauma team. A city prosecutor who handled shooting investigations once told me that the surgeons were able to piece people back together after the most horrific acts of violence. People went into the hospital damaged beyond belief and came walking out. That stuck with me. I wondered what surgeons know about gun violence that the rest of us don’t. We are inundated with news about shootings. Fourteen dead in San Bernardino, six in Michigan, 11 over one weekend in Chicago. We get names, places, anguished Facebook posts, wonky articles full of statistics on crime rates and risk, Twitter arguments about the Second Amendment—everything except the blood, the pictures of bodies torn by bullets. That part is concealed, sanitized. More than 30,000 people die of gunshot wounds each year in America, around 75,000 more are injured, and we have no visceral sense of what physically happens inside a person when he’s shot. Goldberg does.

The Uncounted (Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, The New York Times Magazine )

In the long hours between operations, when the painkillers afforded moments of lucidity, he tried to avoid ruminating on his loss. He refused to look at photos of his house, but occasionally at first, and then obsessively, he began replaying his and Mayada’s actions in the days and weeks before the attack, searching for an explanation. Why was his family targeted? Some friends assumed that an ISIS convoy had been nearby, but the video showed nothing moving in the vicinity. What it did show was two direct hits. “O.K., this is my house, and this is Mohannad’s house,” he recalled. “One rocket here, and one rocket there. It was not a mistake.” Basim’s shock and grief were turning to anger. He knew the Americans; he had lived among them. He had always felt he understood them. He desperately wanted to understand why his family was taken from him. “I decided,” he said, “to get justice.”

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How to Write Great True Crime

Hint: Branch out from serial killers coming through the window.

A hand holding a pen while surrounding by yellow crime scene tape

True crime is one of the most popular forms of entertainment. The genre grips audiences across mediums, in films and television, and—perhaps in its original form—literature.

Despite an arguably elevated cultural position, literary works can be as formulaic and mass-produced as anything onscreen. In the world of crime writing, that’s often the case. With demand high, creators can churn out whodunnits as fast as consumers can devour them.

Writing in World Literature Today , mystery novelist J. Madison Davis tackles the subject of what separates the wheat from the chaff in the craft of crime writing. It’s far more than a grisly backstory, he explains; the market is flooded with blood-soaked paperbacks. “ Judging the Edgar Allan Poe award for ‘best fact crime’ in 1992 was an incredibly depressing experience,” he writes. “Serial killers were popular as subjects, and their stories were monotonously consistent.”

In fact, Davis read so many books that used a similar structure that he produced a basic format in full (to the bemusement of anyone who has ever picked up a discounted crime novel).

The book opens with Joe Sicko sharpening his axe or climbing into the window of the victim’s house. About the time he reaches the top of the stairs, the author ends the chapter (often glorified by the title “Prologue”), suspending the gore and jumping all the way back to when Joe…began his life as a child. He doesn’t stand a chance, given his dysfunctional home. The book then follows the long progress of Joe to become the monster at the top of the stairs. If Joe’s unhappy development becomes too boring, the book may be interrupted with interludes portraying the indomitable avenger who will bring Joe down. After arriving back at the top of the stairs (so to speak), the book then fulfills its promise of carnage and unwinds with the detective work that brings Joe down.

So much for what makes a crime book formulaic. The more pertinent topic Davis discusses is what elevates a work into “the level of lasting literature.” While acknowledging that art is an intensely personal (and therefore subjective) experience, he also highlights that, in judging among hundreds of books submitted for an award annually, “writers of widely divergent backgrounds and locations create…similar lists of finalists,” suggesting a common understanding of what makes great crime writing.

“Writers know good writing, just as musicians know good music, and the elements of this seemingly intangible quality are much more specific than most people think,” Davis explains.

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In Davis’s view, a common misstep is thinking that true crime writing has to be equivalent to journalism: clinging closely to facts and dismissing artistry and interpretation, as though there is a sharp line between “nonfiction” and “fiction.” He points out two examples that reject this notion, to great success: Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood , arguably the germinal work of true crime and simultaneously recognized as a great work of literature, and Norman Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song , which won the Pulitzer Prize.

“In the end,” Davis explains, “it isn’t the oddity or excesses of the crime that allow true-crime books to earn the designation of literary excellence. That only comes from the writing.”

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The 50 best true-crime documentaries you can stream right now

(Ricardo Santos / For The Times)

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Cult murders, lottery heists, deadly dating apps, killer clowns: We’re in the midst of a true-crime wave, and television is the culprit. From HBO Max to A&E, true-crime programming is more prevalent than illegal weed dispensaries. So, like the authorities — at least the honest ones — we’re stepping in to help.

Here, selected by yours truly and compiled from Times coverage, are 50 of the best true-crime documentary films and TV series you can stream right now. The choices run the gamut in terms of subject matter and tone, tackling all matter of narratives: following the gumshoe detectives of “The First 48,” exposing miscarriages of justice in “Who Killed Malcolm X?,” chronicling crimes so bizarre it’s hard to believe they qualify as true in “Sasquatch.”

The filmmakers behind these productions have solved crimes, freed the wrongly accused, exposed the guilty and given voice to victims and survivors. And yes, they’ve also unraveled the twisted tales of heinous murders, heartless scams and wanton corruption for the sake of entertainment. Critics of the genre argue that true crime is exploitative and voyeuristic, and there’s no doubt that’s part of its allure. True-crime buffs often point to the thrill of playing armchair detective (see “Don’t F— With Cats”) and the satisfaction of solving a real-life puzzle. I’d like to believe the form has become so popular because perps and their wrongdoings are exposed in the majority of the programming, and accountability is in short supply elsewhere these days.

Like any list, of course, this one comes with limitations: I’ve excluded programming from networks dedicated to the genre, such as Investigation Discovery and Oxygen, which feature so much content they deserve their own guide. How else to do justice to national treasures such as “Snapped” and “Homicide Hunter: Lt. Joe Kenda”? I’ve also sought to strike a balance among many tones and subjects, so the reasons for including the titles vary as much as their production values. Some are bar-setting films from master documentarians, others are necessary works from filmmakers who uncovered incredible stories. Some were simply too juicy to pass up.

And you may be surprised by a few of the big titles that didn’t make the list, like “Making a Murderer” and “The Staircase.” I could write lengthy essays on my issues with both docuseries, but I’ll spare you. In short, I left them out because I found problematic the artistic license both series used to make their point. Go ahead. Arrest me.

To my fellow true-crime aficionados: I’ve undoubtedly overlooked your favorites or promoted others that have no business on this list! I get it. But once you’ve stopped fuming, I hope you’ll discover titles that are new to you, or give another shot to one you previously dismissed. Sleuth away. — Lorraine Ali

Curated by Lorraine Ali Compiled by Ed Stockly

50. Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal

A blond couple with their arms around a young man and woman

2023 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason

The Murdaughs. Perhaps you’ve heard of them? The prominent Hampton County, S.C., family once renowned for their wealth and power are now at the center of so much death that multiple documentaries are required just to keep up. Netflix’s series is perhaps the best of the bunch when it comes to organizing the mayhem into a cohesive, crisp narrative, and there’s a lot to catalog: the 2014 murder of a student with ties to the family. The 2018 death of the Murdaughs’ longtime housekeeper, Gloria Satterfield, and the dubious life insurance scam around her demise. The 2019 death of Mallory Beach during a reckless boating collision. And the 2021 double homicide of Alex Murdaugh’s son Paul and his wife, Margaret. “Fyre Fraud” filmmakers Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason chronicle the downfall of the family dynasty and now-disgraced former attorney Alex Murdaugh over three episodes using interviews with former friends, lovers, law-enforcement officials, attorneys and journalists to show how the Murdaugh clan’s stunning abuse of power and privilege spiraled into a national obsession. Alex was sentenced to life for the murders of his wife and son, but with so many dubious deaths in his wake, this story isn’t over — not by a long shot. Expect a second season. — Lorraine Ali

49. Jimmy Savile: A British Horror Story

A man claps at a microphone next to Prince Charles and Princess Diana in a black-and-white photograph.

2022 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Rowan Deacon

Generations of British children grew up watching Jimmy Savile as the jovial host of the kids show “Jim’ll Fix It” and the effervescent emcee of “Top of the Pops.” The affable DJ and philanthropist was renowned for his bizarre hairdos, quirky demeanor and ability to charm everyone from Muhammad Ali to the royals. But after his 2011 death, a U.K. investigation found that Savile sexually abused at least 500 victims throughout his career from 1955 to the mid-2000s. He preyed upon children in BBC’s broadcasting studios, at children’s hospitals and inside schools. The majority of Savile’s alleged victims were between ages 13 and 15, but some were as young as 2 years old. The late entertainer’s decades-long abuse of the young people he purported to be helping is chronicled in this two-part documentary, and though the film could use some reorganizing, it tells the fascinating tale of a predator who hid in plain sight. The film shows how many in the U.K. media and entertainment worlds knew something was wrong but chose to ignore his troubling behavior. After all, Savile was a “national treasure.” Prepare to be enraged. — Lorraine Ali

48. Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story

Three people in scrubs in an operating room

2021 | TV-14 | 1 Season | Documentary series Peacock: Included Created by Sara Mast

In the hands of neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, surgical tools were deadly weapons. The bad doctor (now serving a life sentence) injured, maimed or killed 33 of the 38 patients who trusted him with their routine spinal surgeries in the Dallas area over a two-year period in the early 2010s. “Dr. Death: The Undoctored Story” chronicles an erratic history, from his beginnings as a manipulative, below-par medical student to a rampant drug abuser to an egomaniac whose impunity and incompetence in the operating theater injured or killed his patients and stunned his colleagues. Scarier yet, the healthcare system knew about his fatal spree but still allowed him to practice. Surgeons and nurses interviewed in the film recall in jaw-dropping detail how they continually blew the whistle on Duntsch as he continued to find employment at hospitals across the state. A serial killer with a scalpel or simply an inept doctor with a license to kill? Watch this series and decide for yourself. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

47. Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost

A black-and-white photograph of a journalist and photographer in front of a small plane.

2018 | TV-PG | Documentary special Hulu: Included

Created by Monica DelaRosa and David Sloan

The largest mass murder and suicide in modern history is recounted in this documentary. Over 900 members of the Peoples Temple church, many of them American, died on the cult’s remote jungle compound outside Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978 after they’d consumed a deadly cyanide-laced drink on the orders of their paranoid leader, Jim Jones. The special traces the origins of the eccentric pastor, from his church’s racially integrated beginnings in Indianapolis through its exodus from San Francisco to Guyana to avoid increased media attention and investigations.

The doc utilizes seldom-seen, raw footage, audiotapes and recently declassified FBI documents to paint the picture of a cult where grueling manual labor, abuse and starvation were everyday realities. But it’s the interviews with those who survived the horror, and the posthumous diaries and letters from those who died, that capture the downward spiral of the delusional Jones. He ordered the massacre after U.S. Congressman Leo Ryan visited Jonestown out of concern for the well-being of Jones’ followers. As Ryan was preparing to leave, he and four others (including U.S. journalists and defectors) were shot to death on the airstrip by Temple gunmen. The murders prompted Jones to command his flock to drink the poison punch. “There’s no way we can survive” he told the anguished, crying crowd. “Truth and Lies: Jonestown, Paradise Lost” is a must-watch for anyone who wishes to understand why 909 souls — many of them children — perished on the command of one demented man. — Lorraine Ali

46. Crime Stories: India Detectives

2021 | TV- MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by N Amit and Jack Rampling

The frenetic bustle of Bangalore is the backdrop for this four-episode docuseries about crime-solving in the city of 11 million. Each episode follows a different precinct of Indian detectives from the moment a victim reports a crime to the capture of the suspects. Extortion, kidnapping and murder are among the offenses chronicled here, but it’s the distinctive setting of the series that makes it a fascinating watch. The investigations take viewers around Bangalore, from crowded slums where sex workers are found killed to the comfortable flats of tech workers in a region known as India’s Silicon Valley, a setting where nothing bad should ever happen — but does. It’s a unique window into the lives of Bengaluru’s police force, and an unexpectedly moving look at the people they’re charged with protecting. Brace yourself: A&E’s “Interrogation Raw” has nothing on the inquisition scenes here. — Lorraine Ali

45. Undercurrent: The Disappearance of Kim Wall

A woman with glasses looks at blueprints.

2022 | TV- MA | 1 Season | Documentary series HBO Max: Included Created by Erin Lee Carr

An eccentric entrepreneur, an intrepid journalist, a submarine, a murder. Swedish reporter Kim Wall disappeared in 2017 on assignment, covering what should have been a tame human interest story about a celebrity inventor and his latest contraption. She was was last seen interviewing media darling Peter Madsen aboard his self-made submarine in Danish waters, a trip from which only one of them returned. This two-part documentary chronicles the bizarre events around Wall’s demise, from her experience reporting in hot zones around the globe to the hubris of a wealthy predator who assumed he’d charm his way out of a homicide conviction. Police, prosecutors and Navy scientists are among the cadre who waded through Madsen‘s multiple lies in search of the real story. As details about Wall’s last moments emerge, the truth is far more horrific and barbaric than anyone imagined. — Lorraine Ali

44. Helter Skelter: An American Myth

Charles Manson in handcuffs flanked by police officers

More than half a century later, memories of the Manson Family still resemble a fever dream. It’s no wonder storytellers can’t help but reexplore the rise and fall of Charlie Manson, a diminutive ex-con, pimp and aspiring musician who amassed a following of mostly young women, plied them with LSD, sex and antiestablishment jargon, then convinced them to kill in the name of a race war. They lived on a commune. They mingled with, and murdered, celebrities. And it all happened behind the deceptive cloak of peace and love.

Compelling and comprehensive documentaries on that anomalous period in American crime are hard to come by, and while “Helter Skelter: An American Myth” isn’t perfect, it does do an excellent job of capturing the cultural confusion that ensued when a band of hippies crept into the homes of the LaBiancas and Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate to murder them in the most gruesome of ways. The six-part production follows the history of the “Family,” from its flower-power beginnings to its barbaric killing spree in the summer of 1969. Full of illuminating archival footage of Manson, his followers and the environs that shaped their unlikely ascent, the series’ hourlong episodes feature exclusive interviews with former cult members, survivors of the victims, and the men and women involved in investigating a chilling crime spree that’s now part of L.A.’s dark history. ( Read more ) —Lorraine Ali

43. How to Fix a Drug Scandal

A lab technician holds a small bag containing white powder in "How to Fix a Drug Scandal” on Netflix.

2020 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created b y Erin Lee Carr

This four-part series can be frustrating to watch due to its over-the-top re-creations and clunky attempts at artful camera work, but the subject at its heart is worth your time. Erin Lee Carr focuses on Sonja Farak, a chemist at a drug lab in Amherst, Mass., that was one of the state’s two main testing facilities. Her role was to test evidence gathered from drug-related cases. Her lab work and her testimony on the stand secured thousands of convictions. But she also happened to be stealing and partaking in the controlled substances she was meant to be testing, including methamphetamines and LSD. But there’s more. Across the state, a chemist at the Hinton Lab was caught forging tens of thousands of tests, and that was just the beginning of the malfeasance uncovered by authorities when they investigated Annie Dookhan. She wasn’t getting high on evidence, but she was consistently misidentifying samples, and claimed to have tested substances that she’d never in fact examined. She even falsified evidence in order to impress her bosses and move up the chain.

Together the women compromised more than 47,000 criminal cases, affecting the lives of thousands. Dookhan’s arrest resulted in an avalanche of appeals, and numerous faulty convictions were overturned, but the state attorney general’s office went to great lengths to downplay Farak as a liability, burying proof of her drug addiction, lying to district attorneys and misleading judges for five years while keeping defendants from appealing their convictions. — Lorraine Ali

42. West of Memphis

A young man sits in a courtroom with an attorney, with two men in the background.

2012 | Rated R | Documentary Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Rent/Buy Directed by Amy Berg

Satanic panic plagued the Bible Belt the 1980s and 1990s, when devil worship was thought to be behind seemingly every inexplicable, heinous crime. It was against this paranoid backdrop that the teens later known as the West Memphis Three were wrongfully convicted for the 1993 murder of three 8-year-old boys in West Memphis, Ark. The crime was particularly gruesome: The bodies of the boys were found naked and hogtied in a drainage ditch, and one of the young victims’ genitals had been mutilated. The unthinkable levels of cruelty and violence were assumed to be the work of a demonic cult — villains who dressed in black and listened to heavy metal, as local teens Jessie Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols did at the time. The trio were arrested and convicted of the murders despite a stunning lack of evidence and coerced confessions. Filmmaker Amy Berg chronicles this gross miscarriage of justice through interviews with those deeply involved in the case, including family members, witnesses and the West Memphis Three themselves. Berg rightly argues that the teens were railroaded, and DNA evidence years later appeared to implicate the stepfather of one of the deceased. After 18 years in prison and celebrity campaigns to free the men (Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp and Natalie Maines were among those calling for their release), the West Memphis Three were released in 2011. Produced by Echols, his wife, Lorri Davis, and filmmaker Peter Jackson, “West of Memphis” is a searing indictment of the criminal justice system that shines a light on the dangers of institutional classism. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

41. Monsters Inside: The 24 Faces of Billy Milligan

A close-up photo of a man with shaggy hair and a mustache

2021 | TV-14 | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Olivier Megaton

In 1978, Billy Milligan became the first person in U.S. history to cite multiple personality disorder in an insanity defense. But were his multiple personalities really controlling his actions, or were they simply the pretext of a dangerous, narcissistic sociopath? Netflix’s four-part investigative series revisits those questions, and the crimes of the rapist who terrorized Ohio State University before his arrest and made subsequent claims that he had no memory of the assaults. French film director Olivier Megaton (“Taken 2” and “Taken 3”) applies a cinematic lens to the docuseries format as he follows the Milligan family, friends, doctors and law enforcement who are still trying to understand Milligan’s state of mind at the time of his alleged crimes and at trial.

A litany of psychiatrists diagnosed Milligan, who was in his 20s when he was accused, with “multiple personality disorder” (known now as dissociative identity disorder). They determined he had as many as 24 distinct “multiples,” which led a jury to find Milligan innocent by reason of insanity. The landmark verdict rocked the criminal justice system, and its repercussions are still being debated today. ( Read more ) —Lorraine Ali

40. Catching Killers

A balding man in a beige suit rolls his eyes.

2021 | TV-MA | 2 Seasons | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Simon Dekker

Homicide detectives recount in vivid detail the extreme measures they took to track and capture the globe’s most notorious serial killers in Netflix’s docuseries “Catching Killers.” The Green River Killer, Aileen Wuornos, BTK and the Happy Face Killer are among the subjects covered in this two-season, eight-episode collection of captivating stories told by the investigators at the forefront of solving the cases. There’s no narration or outside talking heads here, just compelling sit-down interviews with the women and men who worked on some of the country’s most notorious crimes, poring over hundreds of clues, risking their lives and suffering emotionally after witnessing gruesome scenes and interrogating sociopaths, sadists and cannibals. Their frank and humanizing testimonials, paired with archival police and news footage from the cases, illustrate the momentous effort that went into cracking some of the most egregious serial homicides in modern memory. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

39. The Vow

A seated woman wears glasses and an orange scarf.

“ The Vow ” follows disaffected members of NXIVM as they extricate themselves from the alleged cult and speak out against its leader, Keith Raniere. You might be wondering how seemingly intelligent people got involved in such a dubious operation. Weren’t they freaked out by the color-coded sashes that members wore to denote their rank? What about the outlandish claims about Raniere’s supposed intelligence or the midnight volleyball games he insisted on playing? Was anything really worth moving to the suburbs of Albany, N.Y., where the group was based?

Sarah Edmondson and Mark Vicente, two of the primary subjects of “The Vow,” say they never planned to join a cult. They were well-meaning spiritual seekers who found a sense of purpose through the group’s “Executive Success Program” — or ESP — personal development seminars supposedly designed to help people overcome their “limiting beliefs.” As recounted in “The Vow,” Edmondson and Vicente worked their way up the organization’s internal hierarchy — known as “the stripe path” — and became enthusiastic boosters of its mission, recruiting Hollywood actors and other artists to join NXIVM and helping it expand across North America.

Their decision to become whistleblowers, chronicled by “The Vow” directors Jehane Noujaim and Karim Amer , helped lead to Raniere’s 2020 conviction on charges including sex trafficking. Other high-profile NXIVM members, including Seagram’s heiress Clare Bronfman and “Smallville” actor Allison Mack , also have faced legal action. ( Read more ) — Meredith Blake

38. Cocaine Cowboys

A black-and-white still from the documentary movie "Cocaine Cowboys."

2006 | TV-MA | Documentary Hulu: Included Directed by Billy Corben

Before the cowboys came to town, Miami was a quiet place that featured, someone says, “a lot of old people sitting around in beach chairs waiting to die.” Then Colombia’s Medellín Cartel, “the world’s largest cocaine-smuggling organization,” discovered the place, more and more Americans got the drug habit, and lots of numbers in Miami skyrocketed. Those included the millions of dollars placed in local banks and the murder count, which went from 104 in 1976 to 621 in 1981.

“Cocaine Cowboys” tells this story with an all-sleaze-all-the-time attitude. The story is told largely by a trio of men who were there. Jon Roberts claims to have overseen the shipping of more than $2 billion worth of cocaine from Colombia, pilot Mickey Munday says he personally flew in some 10 tons, and Jorge “Rivi” Ayala is currently in prison for murder. These gentlemen are all capable storytellers, albeit invariably self-serving ones. While the filmmakers clearly got a contact high from hearing all these war stories, most civilians will find a little of this goes a long way. ( Read more ) — Kenneth Turan

37. John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise

A black-and-white mug shot of a man with a mustache

2021 | TV-14 | 1 Season | Documentary series Peacock: Included Created by Rod Blackhurst

John Wayne Gacy seemed like a stand-up guy to his friends and neighbors. He performed as a clown in parades and at the bedsides of sick children. He was a former Jaycee who founded a construction company where he generously hired young men with little experience. He was jovial and had a great sense of humor. But when 26 bodies were discovered under the floorboards of his Chicago home in 1978, it was clear they’d all been hoodwinked by the middle-aged guy next door. This six-part docuseries reveals how one of the country’s more prolific serial killers hid in plain sight as he preyed upon young men throughout the 1960s and 1970s. “Devil in Disguise” features interviews with Gacy’s sister and never-before-seen footage from his meeting with FBI profiler Robert Ressler, providing clues into how a monster convinced everyone he was a harmless jester. Warning: There’s clown art. — Lorraine Ali

36. The Lady and the Dale

A black-and-white photo of a woman holding a model car and a handful of cash

2021 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series HBO Max: Included Directed by Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker

Liz Carmichael, a transgender woman, brash automobile entrepreneur and Ayn Rand-loving libertarian with purported Mafia ties, is the subject of “The Lady and the Dale.” Directed by Nick Cammilleri and Zackary Drucker, the four-part series paints a riveting portrait of Carmichael, who gained notoriety as the iconoclastic maker of a supposedly revolutionary three-wheeled car called the Dale — touted as the greatest vehicle since the Model T. At the height of the oil crisis, in the mid-1970s, Carmichael made grandiose claims that the vehicle could get 70 miles to the gallon and would upend the auto industry.

But in 1977, she was convicted on charges of fraud and conspiracy for bilking investors in her L.A.-area Twentieth Century Motor Car Corp. — merely one twist in a much-stranger-than-fiction life story that also involved a roadside flower business in Texas, an appearance on “Unsolved Mysteries,” plastic surgery, the FBI, Cuban gunrunners and political commentator Tucker Carlson’s dad.

Using archival video, interviews with family members and colleagues, animated photo-collage re-creations and expert commentary, “The Lady and the Dale” depicts Carmichael as a deeply flawed yet undeniably charismatic transgender pioneer — a true-crime antihero who never sought to be a role model, yet inspired fierce devotion and radical acceptance from many who knew her. By allowing Carmichael to be so completely herself, rife with fascinating contradictions, the series represents something of a breakthrough in transgender representation on the small screen. ( Read more ) — Meredith Blake

35. Murder on Middle Beach

A young man looks at a photograph as a woman looks on.

2020 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series HBO Max: Included Created by Madison Hamburg

Madison Hamburg, whose mother, Barbara Beach, was killed in 2010, is convinced that, if used in the right way, true-crime TV can be of value in the hunt for justice — even in spite of the hurdles he’s come across in his own efforts to solve the crime, documented in HBO’s “Murder on Middle Beach.” The series brought Beach’s perplexing murder in the yard of her affluent Connecticut home back into the spotlight, but Hamburg wanted to focus on the other victims — the entire Hamburg/Beach family — as he sought to exonerate his sister, his aunt and others identified as “persons of interest” by the local police department. Throughout Hamburg’s own detective work, he ran into one central problem: Detectives don’t want to share information.

The media frenzy around a case, cold or otherwise, is a double-edged sword: It can be devastating for the family to relive the horror, even as the media’s attention may be able to grab the public’s attention — and put pressure on the police. A few years ago, Hamburg himself confided in an old friend who also happened to be an ex-FBI agent about his challenges with “Murder on Middle Beach.” He feared exploiting his mother’s story or his family, and was unsure whether airing it would make any difference. His friend asked him, “Would you rather find justice or the truth?” ( Read more ) — Valentina Valentini

34. Love Fraud

2020 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Included Created by Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing

The hunt and capture of lonely-hearts con artist Richard Scott Smith is at the center of this Showtime thriller. For over 20 years, Smith used the internet and multiple aliases to lure in dozens of women. He’d woo them, professing his love mere weeks into their relationship, convincing the women he was The One. Then he’d breach their bank accounts, dignity and sense of trust. But his victims eventually find one another, compare notes and unite under the banner of revenge. The chase practically plays out in real time here as Smith’s exes take things into their own hands after they’re dismissed by law enforcement. The pacing along with the colorful cast of characters make this series pop, from doting soccer moms to a tough-as-leather female bounty hunter to Smith himself. When filmmakers Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing finally catch up with him, he explains away his crimes by pointing to a loveless childhood that made him the hopeless romantic he is today. The con never ends. — Lorraine Ali

33. The Witness

Kitty Genovese sits on the hood of a '50s-era car.

At first glance, the title of “The Witness” would seem to reference the 38 residents of Kew Gardens in Queens, N.Y., who were pilloried in the press for their apparent indifference to the screams of 28-year-old Kitty Genovese as she was stabbed to death outside their windows. In the decades since that night in March 1964, Genovese has been held up as a tragic victim of bystander apathy in the big city, though one of the key accomplishments of this quietly revelatory documentary is that it sees the people in this tragedy as more than just convenient scapegoats or symbols. Not all those 38 neighbors were as cruelly indifferent as the public was led to believe, and Kitty herself, as one person passionately attests here, “was so much more than her last 30 minutes.”

That person is Kitty’s younger brother, Bill, the film’s chief camera subject, its driving force and the real witness of the title. No passive observer, he is instead an active investigator and interpreter of events that forever changed his family’s life. Only 16 at the time of his sister’s death, Bill joined the Marines a few years later and went to Vietnam, where he lost both his legs — a setback that, whatever it may have cost him in mobility, seems to have sapped none of his determination. Now in his 60s, hoisting himself up stairs and climbing in and out of a wheelchair, he could scarcely seem more energetic — or more inspiring — in his dogged pursuit of the truth.

The strength of “The Witness” lies in its recognition that the truth is often not just elusive but unattainable. To call the film a debunking or a corrective would ascribe to it a level of knowledge that neither Bill Genovese nor director James Solomon, a screenwriter making a fine nonfiction filmmaking debut, claims to possess. Instead they throw themselves into the hunt with unflagging resolve, turning a sober reflection on tragedy into a lively and unpredictable detective story, and evincing at every step a sense of initiative that is the very opposite of apathy. ( Read more ) — Justin Chang

32. The Hillside Strangler: Devil in Disguise

Kenneth Bianchi speaks on the witness stand as a judge looks on.

2022 | TV-MA | 1 season | Documentary series Peacock: Included Created by Alexa Danner

Los Angeles has been called many things: City of Angels, Tinseltown. But it also gained a name for a decidedly less glamorous distinction in the 1970s and 1980s: Serial Killer Capital of America. In the decades between the 1969 Manson Family murders and the 1989 conviction of Richard Ramirez, a.k.a. the Night Stalker, there were so many serial murders to keep track of that traumatized Angelenos needed a flow chart to keep up. There was the Skid Row Stabber. The Sunset Strip Killer. The West Side Rapist. The Toolbox Killers. The Grim Sleeper. During this period, more than 20 serial killers were reportedly operating simultaneously in Los Angeles.

“The Hillside Strangler: Devil in Disguise” focuses on one of the more notorious cases to rise out of that dark era. The four-episode series revisits the killing spree of the so-called Hillside Strangler, a phantom behind the killings of 10 women in Los Angeles in 1977 and 1978. The city was gripped with fear as body after body was found dumped in the hills above Glendale and Eagle Rock, near Dodger Stadium in Elysian Heights, on a residential street in La Crescenta, near a freeway offramp in Los Feliz. The men ultimately convicted of the slayings were cousins Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, who appear in interrogation rooms in the latter half of this documentary. It’s a trip back in time to the terrifying true stories of the serial kidnappings and murders that held the quiet neighborhoods of East Los Angeles hostage during the 1970s. ( Read more ) —Lorraine Ali

31. Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story

Social justice, personal loss, systemic racism and national reckoning are explored in “Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story,” a potent, moving six-part documentary offering fresh insight into the 2012 killing of the unarmed teen by 28-year-old vigilante George Zimmerman. The docuseries chronicles why this slaying of a young Black man — a crime that often goes uncovered in the media — made headlines, inspired protests and forced a national reckoning.

“Rest in Power” delves deep into the specifics of the 17-year-old’s homicide, the police investigation, the trial and the acquittal. But it’s the way in which directors Jenner Furst and Julia Willoughby Nason connect new and old details of the case with its widespread effect that makes “Rest in Power” a comprehensive, emotional and brutally honest look at America since that fatal shooting. Martin’s killing and Zimmerman’s acquittal helped ignite social justice movements such as Black Lives Matter, galvanized alt-right advocates around issues of white separatism and ultimately influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

The series, inspired by a 2017 book by Martin’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy Martin (they co-produced the series along with Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter), uses the scope of history to string together all these events, as well as the ensuing protests over the shootings of unarmed Black men and women across the country. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

30. 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets

2015 | Rated 13+ | Documentary HBO Max: Included | Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Rent/Buy Directed by Marc Silver

A documentary that shouldn’t have to be made, about a law that needn’t exist, explored via a crime that could have been avoided: “3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets” is a thought-provoking, mournful experience. The film’s focus is the trial of Michael Dunn, a middle-aged white man who on Nov. 23, 2012, in Jacksonville, Fla., shot and killed black teenager Jordan Davis at a gas station during an argument over the decibel level of the rap music coming from the SUV that Jordan, 17, and his buddies were in.

Director Marc Silver won approval to film the trial, and the sobering narrative his fixed cameras capture — of a tragedy parsed for some measure of institutionalized justice — extends to the more personal connecting tissue of interviews with Jordan’s family and friends. Silver artfully layers that, coolly and calmly, so the weight of the issues — namely how racial profiling and a self-defense law like “stand your ground” malevolently feed each other — sinks in. The heartache and outrage are there already. The movie wisely doesn’t force it. And if you don’t know the outcome, the suspense may prove to be unbearable. ( Read more ) — Robert Abele

29. Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer

Aileen Wuornos in prisoner orange garb stands with two uniformed officers behind a counter marked “Officer’s station.”

2003 | Rated R | Documentary Sundance Now: Included | Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Included Directed by Nick Broomfield

Controversial documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s first film on Florida serial killer Aileen Wuornos, 1992’s “Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer,” was a biting critique of the ascendant tabloid media culture and portrayed the accused killer as the most honorable and clear-eyed person involved in her unseemly tale. Broomfield’s second, “Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer,” finds him and his footage subpoenaed for one of Wuornos’ death-row appeals. Broomfield, then 55, conducted Wuornos’ final interview the day before she was executed in October 2002. ( Read more ) — Mark Olsen

28. Tales of the Grim Sleeper

A seated man wearing glasses and orange prison garb

2014 | TV-MA | Documentary Plex: Included Directed by Nick Broomfield

“ Tales of the Grim Sleeper ,” from British documentarian Nick Broomfield (“Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer,” “Biggie and Tupac”), probes into what, on the surface, seems like the underzealousness of police tracking a Black serial killer. The reason it only “seems” that way is that the neglect stems from the same cultural pools of racism: In the case of the Grim Sleeper, the victims were all Black women, many of them sex workers and/or addicts.

Broomfield tells us that for years the unofficial police designation for such victims was NHI — no humans involved. In this case, a dozen murders received less official attention and press coverage than the death of any single upper- or middle-class white victim.

The perp was given his nickname by L.A. Weekly, which revealed that, based on DNA evidence, the same man was likely responsible for almost a dozen killings in the mid-’80s and then, after a 13-year hiatus, more killings between 2001 and 2010. No one knows the exact number of lives he took. The evidence connects the one killer to roughly 20 murders. But Lonnie Franklin Jr., who died in 2020, had photos — often sexually explicit — of hundreds of women, many of whom have yet to be identified. ( Read more ) — Andy Klein

27. Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened

A man in a suit in front of a building that reads 500 Pearl Street

2019 | TV-MA | Documentary Netflix: Included Directed by Chris Smith

It was announced as “the cultural experience of the decade,” and it was — just not in the way anyone anticipated.

As detailed by director Chris Smith in the compulsively watchable documentary “Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened,” what started out being touted as “Coachella in the Caribbean” ended up as pure chaos that reminded participants of “a scene from a horror movie.” The wreckage of 2017’s Fyre Festival was so compelling that this documentary, which opened simultaneously in theaters and on Netflix, was released in the same week as a Hulu doc on the exact same topic.

Documentary veteran Smith, whose earlier films include “American Job” and “Jim & Andy: The Great Beyond,” does an expert job here, talking to some 50 folks, including festival employees, consultants, would-be revelers and unwitting residents of the Bahamas who got caught in the event’s momentous undertow. These interviews, along with vérité footage shot as the event was coming together and falling apart, are briskly edited by Jon Karmen and Dan Koehler into a fast-moving narrative that has the fascination of the bad traffic accident you just can’t turn away from. ( Read more ) —Kenneth Turan

26. Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children

A handcuffed man with glasses walks ahead of three law-enforcement officials.

Anthony Terrell is grateful that HBO’s “ Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered: The Lost Children ” brought a new spotlight to the terror that gripped Black residents of Atlanta in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when dozens of children and young adults were murdered or disappeared without a trace. Terrell is also thankful that the five-part documentary allowed him to discuss the pain and trauma he has suffered all his life as the survivor of one of the victims of the brutal crime wave — his 10-year-old brother, Earl, was murdered after going to a neighborhood swimming pool. But in the end, he worries it is not enough.

Although Atlanta native Wayne Williams was prosecuted for two of the crimes, the remainder of the cases were closed without being thoroughly investigated. Painful questions have lingered for many of the survivors, who maintain that the real truth behind the murders has never been uncovered. “Atlanta’s Missing and Murdered” presents strong evidence that the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists belonging to the National States’ Rights Party may have been involved in the killings and the disappearances. The series, the nonfiction “Atlanta Monster” podcast and Season 2 of Netflix’s “Mindhunter” have renewed public interest in the case in recent years. ( Read more ) — Greg Braxton

25. Surviving R. Kelly

R. Kelly wearing sunglasses and a gray suit

Lifetime’s documentary series “Surviving R. Kelly” was instrumental in taking the singer down after decades where the star appeared untouchable. Through its blockbuster debut season, sequel “The Reckoning” and a third installment, “The Final Chapter,” it used firsthand accounts, police investigations, court documents and more to chronicle the “I Believe I Can Fly” singer’s increasingly disturbing pattern of sexual, mental and physical abuse of underage girls over two decades. Women who fell under Kelly’s spell, some who were as young as 13, speak out for the first time here, illustrating the dark side of fame, the perils of celebrity worship and double standards when it comes to race in the #MeToo era. In-depth interviews with alleged victims, Kelly’s ex-wife, his brothers, former insiders, friends and journalists who’ve covered the Chicago songwriter and producer paint a picture of a predator whose behavior was consistently overlooked by the industry, his peers and the public while his spiritual hit was sung in churches and schools. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

24. Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

Four women in conservative purple dresses with their hands behind their backs, standing in a wood

2022 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Rachel Dretzin

The crimes of Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints leader Warren Jeffs are explored through the firsthand accounts of his former followers in “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey.” This four-part documentary series chronicles Jeffs’ rise in the FLDS and the crimes he inflicted on the flock who resided in his settlement on the Utah-Arizona border. Ex-members — mostly women — tell the stories of Jeffs forcing them into underage marriages, placing rigid restrictions on their lives, and vowing to destroy them if they ever dared to leave. This documentary gives his victims the chance to tell their own stories, and to explain what really happened inside the twisted world he created. Jeffs was sentenced to life in prison plus 20 years in 2011 for sexually assaulting two girls, but his reign of terror continues to haunt his former followers. — Lorraine Ali

23. Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer

A black-and-white photo of Ted Bundy in a suit

2020 | Rated 1 8 + | 1 Season | Documentary series Prime Video: Included Created by Trish Wood

There’s no shortage of productions about prolific serial killer Ted Bundy, but many of those narratives rely on the recollections of the highly articulate killer who never seemed to stop talking about himself. “Falling for a Killer” by director Trish Wood takes a different approach by reframing his story through the voices of women who knew him. His former girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall is primary to the story, as she recalls their early halcyon days and, later, signs that something was terribly broken in her handsome yet troubled partner. The story is set against the feminist movement of the 1970s. Kendall and others share their memories of the man they thought they knew in this insightful, five-part docuseries. — Lorraine Ali

22. The Imposter

2012 | Rated R | Documentary Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Rent/Buy | Peacock: Included Directed by Bart Layton

A whole lot stranger than fiction, “The Imposter” is a documentary that’s disturbing in ways only reality can manage. This is a train wreck you think you see coming, but no matter how prepared you are, the nature and extent of the damage will overwhelm you.

As directed by British documentarian Bart Layton, “The Imposter” tells the story of a dark-skinned French Algerian man, a world-class deceiver and manipulator who managed to convince members of a distraught Texas family that he was their long-lost blond and blue-eyed teenage brother and son. What makes this film so spooky and unnerving is that it shows how much of what we consider to be reality is merely a function of what we want to believe. Next to the power and desires of the human heart and mind, few things stand a chance, certainly not the puny construct we like to call the real world.

The disappeared boy is sassy 13-year-old Nicholas Barclay, who vanished from the streets of San Antonio in 1994. “It gives you nightmares, it really does,” says his still-distressed mother Beverly Dollarhide. “It didn’t make the news. It was just news to us.” Then, three years and four months later, the family gets an out-of-nowhere phone call from Linares, Spain. Nicholas has been found, and he wants to come home. Beyond shocked, Nicholas’ sister Carey Gibson remembers thinking that Linares must be a town in Texas. “You had like 100,000 questions you wanted answered immediately,” she says. “You want it to all happen now.”

The person in Spain, we find out at once, couldn’t be further from the 16-year-old Nicholas. Instead, he is 23-year-old Frédéric Bourdin, eventually known to European authorities as “La Chameleon” for his shape-shifting abilities. “As long as I remember,” he says, looking directly at the camera, bold as brass, “I wanted to be someone else. Someone who was acceptable.” ( Read more ) — Kenneth Turan

21. Who Killed Malcolm X?

A tall man wearing glasses and speaking to a crowd of reporters

2020 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Directed by Phil Bertelsen and Rachel Dretzin.

Abdur-Rahman Muhammad was obsessed with uncovering the truth about Malcolm X’s 1965 murder. The activist and researcher spent 20 years investigating the question of who really killed the civil rights hero during a speech in New York’s Audubon Ballroom, and that quest is at the center of the Netflix documentary series “Who Killed Malcolm X?”

Two men known at the time of the killing as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson spent decades in prison for the murder. But the case against them was questionable from the start, causing historians and amateur sleuths to raise doubts about the official account of what happened that fateful day. Through archival footage, declassified documents and a number of interviews with former and current Nation of Islam members and retired agents who worked the case, Abdur-Rahman presents a compelling theory that the wrong men took the rap.

He identifies a likely assassin based on his exhaustive investigative research, spurring the Manhattan prosecutor to reopen the case. Then, nearly two years after the docuseries raised its titular question and helped spur a renewed investigation into the assassination, two of the three men convicted in Malcolm X’s killing were exonerated (one of whom is still alive). The series isn’t the tightest of productions, but its impact is immeasurable. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

20. Athlete A

Gymnast Maggie Nichols captured in midair in "Athlete A" on Netflix.

2020 | Rated PG-13 | Documentary Netflix: Included Directed by Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk

Former gymnast Rachael Denhollander became the first woman to report sexual abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar, a physician for USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University. In August of 2016, she filed a Title IX complaint with MSU and told its police department that Nassar had assaulted her when she was a 15-year-old gymnast.

Her story — now at the center of the Netflix documentary “Athlete A” — would compel over 260 female athletes to come forward with their own tales about Nassar’s abuse. In 2017, he pleaded guilty to federal child pornography charges in addition to multiple charges of first-degree sexual assault and will probably spend the rest of his life in prison.

But even though Nassar is behind bars, Denhollander and others in the gymnastics world feel the sport has far more work to do to address claims of systemic emotional, physical and sexual abuse. — Amy Kaufman

19. Allen v. Farrow

Two women sitting on an enclosed porch in winter

“Allen v. Farrow,” from investigative filmmakers Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering , goes beyond the scandalous headlines and makes a compelling argument that revered filmmaker Woody Allen got away with the unthinkable. This four-part series explores allegations that Allen abused Dylan Farrow, his adopted daughter with Mia Farrow, when she was a child. The accusations were turned against Farrow in the media. When Allen later married Mia Farrow’s adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, Hollywood and the press still largely ignored the unpleasant personal life of their favorite director in lieu of celebrating his work.

Documentarians Dick and Ziering pored over years of custody trial evidence, home movies, recorded phone conversations, photo exhibits and more, piecing together a harrowing picture of Allen as an abuser and master manipulator, and Dylan Farrow as a silenced, disbelieved victim. Allen has long denied the allegations. But here Dylan, now 37, has a platform to tell her side of the story. The result is a convincing and ultimately devastating portrait of Allen. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

18. The Seven Five

2014 | Rated R |Documentary Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Included Directed by Tiller Russell

It would be hard to imagine a more entertaining corrupt-cop documentary than “The Seven Five,” a slick and fascinating portrait of disgraced New York policeman Michael Dowd. In the late ’80s and early ’90s, Dowd was an officer at Brooklyn’s 75th Precinct, situated in a particularly rough neighborhood that led the city in homicides and police shootings.

Director Tiller Russell relates an evocative tale of cocaine-fueled temptation and greed, interspersing footage from a 1993 hearing for Dowd (who was sentenced to 14 years) with new interviews with the seemingly unrepentant Dowd, his former partner and contemporaries on both sides of the law. The cocky Dowd’s systematic progression from cop on the take to drug trafficker is choreographed with the sort of verve and gusto that gave Billy Corben’s 2006 Miami-based documentary “Cocaine Cowboys” a similar rock ‘n’ roll style.

With a wildly colorful cast of characters (especially the swagger-ific drug lord Adam Diaz) and sound bites (“Forget Beverly Hills … the ghetto is one of the richest neighborhoods there is!”), there’s no missing that “The Seven Five” would make one swell Hollywood movie. — Michael Rechtshaffen

17. Wild Wild Country

Bhagwan Rajneesh steps out of a car and greets a crowd with his hands together in prayer.

2018 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Chapman and Maclain Way

“Wild Wild Country” is a dippy tale of the early 1980s in which East meets West and, out of an attempt to build a paradise, all hell breaks loose.

Directed by brothers Chapman and Maclain Way (“The Battered Bastards of Baseball”), its focus is a dimly remembered but in its time nationally newsworthy religious group — or sex cult, depending on your point of view — led by Indian mystic Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and the city they set out to build on a remote patch of Oregon.

It’s a story of enemies and neighbors, of power plays and paranoia that includes, among other things, attempted murder, arson, electioneering, bioterrorism by fast food, nude sunbathing, the separation of church and state, 10,000 cassette tapes and 93 Rolls-Royces, one of which the guru would daily drive past his admirers.

“Why do they do this?” a TV reporter standing among them wonders. “What do they believe in?”

Rajneesh (later called Osho) and his movement caught on in the 1970s, his ashram becoming a destination of choice for mostly Americans and Europeans seeking enlightenment or spiritual thrills. He promoted, among other practices, a brand of “dynamic meditation” that involved hyperventilation (“designed to arouse the serpent force, called kundalini”); primal-scream catharsis; jumping up and down and saying “Hoo!”; and, finally, silence and stillness. Then maybe some dancing. This might happen with everybody naked. ( Read more ) — Robert Lloyd

16. Sasquatch

2021 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Hulu: Included Created by the Duplas s brothers

True crime, weed wars and monster tales meet in “Sasquatch,” and Hulu’s three-part docuseries delivers on all fronts.

This hybrid whodunit/monster-hunter mashup is centered around one central unsolved mystery, and several ancillary riddles, in the Emerald Triangle, a swath of Northern California wilderness across Mendocino, Humboldt and Trinity counties. It’s a region renowned for its natural beauty, marijuana production — and Bigfoot sightings.

Leading us into the tangled woods is investigative reporter David Holthouse, who was working on a Mendocino dope farm in 1993 when a group of terrified men burst into his cabin with claims of finding three mutilated bodies at a nearby farm. The deceased were torn limb from limb, heads ripped from torsos, their parts strewn around the campsite. This wasn’t a drug heist, they said. No marijuana plants were stolen — and there were giant footprints around the scene. It had to be Bigfoot. Or did it? “Sasquatch” sets out to answer that question over three episodes. This is an eccentric offering in the world of true crime, which is part of what makes it so addictive. Monsters come in all shapes and forms, and this series grapples with them all. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

15. A Wilderness of Error

Fifty years after his wife and two young daughters were brutally murdered, and 41 after he was convicted of the crime, the case of former Army surgeon Jeffrey R. MacDonald continues to fascinate. Were the Fort Bragg, N.C., murders, as MacDonald has long contended, committed by a group of drug-crazed hippies chanting, “Acid is groovy, kill the pigs?” Or were they, as the prosecution successfully argued, actually the work of MacDonald, who murdered his family in a psychotic rage?

The case inspired Joe McGinniss’ nonfiction bestseller “Fatal Vision,” published in 1983, as well as a hugely successful 1984 TV miniseries based on the book — not to mention Janet Malcolm’s famed 1990 reconsideration “The Journalist and the Murderer.” Now it’s the subject of the FX series “A Wilderness of Error,” based on the book of the same name by Oscar-winning documentary director Errol Morris ( “The Fog of War” ), who has questioned MacDonald’s guilt and the prosecution’s handling of the case.

Morris, whose 1988 film “The Thin Blue Line” actually led to the overturning of a death sentence, wondered whether the testimony of several key people — a woman who claimed she’d been in the house during the murders, a U.S. marshal who alleged the woman confessed to him and a man who allegedly admitted to the killings — had deliberately been overlooked by the prosecution, and whether the initial investigation by the Army had essentially been a shoddy cover-up. ( Read more ) — Lewis Beale

14. Memories of a Murderer: The Nilsen Tapes

2021 | TV-MA | Documentary Netflix: Included Directed by Michael Harte

The life and crimes of Scottish serial killer and necrophile Dennis Nilsen are documented in his own words in this highly competent and deeply creepy 85-minute film, culled from 250 hours’ worth of recordings that Nilsen taped in his prison cell after he killed at least 12 young men between 1978 and 1983. Like Ted Bundy, the soft-spoken Nilsen is highly articulate and even charming, but his cover was an unassuming, mousy demeanor. He recounts the events of his life in poetic prose with flowery language, but it’s the recollections of police, survivors and his own mother that shed light on the monster at the heart of his ghoulish crime spree. Directed by Michael Harte (“Don’t F— With Cats”), this documentary is a master class in pitting a killer’s own warped recollections against the firsthand accounts of those who suffered from his actions. — Lorraine Ali

13. The Central Park Five

A black-and-white image of a young man and his lawyer in court

2012 | TV-PG | Documentary PBS: Included | Kanopy: Included | Apple TV+: Rent/Buy Directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns and David McMahon

Then-New York Mayor Ed Koch didn’t shrink from calling it “the crime of the century.” A TV newscaster talked angrily about evildoers who “blazed a nighttime trail of terror” that culminated in the horrific beating and savage rape of a Central Park jogger on the night of April 19, 1989. The event became an all-consuming national sensation, but, as it turns out, everything everyone thought they knew was wrong.

This is the devastating premise of “The Central Park Five,” a careful, thoughtful documentary that meticulously re-creates what happened on that night and details how and why everything went so terribly off-course. Co-directed by Ken Burns, David McMahon and Sarah Burns, it projects equal parts fury and despair as it reveals how a particular group of individuals was caught in the unforgiving gears of the criminal justice system.

Five black and Latino teenagers, ages 14 to 16, admitted to the rape and beating (though they almost immediately recanted) of the white jogger and served prison sentences ranging from six to 13 years. But, out of nowhere, compelling new evidence, including a startling 2002 confession by a convicted murderer and rapist whose DNA was present at the crime scene, led a judge to overturn their convictions. Yet it is one of the case’s painful ironies that to this day it is the arrest and not the ultimate exoneration that is remembered.

“The Central Park Five” serves as a cinematic primer on what has become one of the most disturbing aspects of our criminal justice system: the ability — and the unabashed willingness — of police to psychologically manipulate people into confessing to things they have not done. ( Read more ) — Kenneth Turan

12. McMillions

Michael Hoover holding an oversize check for one million dollars in "McMillions"

2020 | TV-14 | 1 Season | Documentary series HBO Max: Included Created by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte

James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte’s six-part documentary, “ McMillions ,” is a twisty, many-fingered, onion-layered story tailor-made for cliffhangers and progressive reveals. The HBO series tells the story of the McDonald’s Monopoly game fraud, in which an ex-cop nicknamed Uncle Jerry — in an operation that went undetected from 1989 to 2001 and involved an ad hoc network of “recruiters” and semi-solid citizens willing to participate in what not all fully understood was thievery — managed to scam some $24 million in cash and prizes from the home of the Happy Meal.

It was the subject of a 2018 Daily Beast story by Jeff Maysh, “How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald’s Monopoly Game and Stole Millions,” which within days became the subject of a bidding war for the film rights. (Fox won; Ben Affleck is scheduled to direct, Matt Damon to star.) ( Read more ) — Robert Lloyd

11. The Innocence Files

A map covered with pictures of suspects and a notepad

2020 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by: Roger Ross Williams, Liz Garbus and Alex Gibney

“The Innocence Files” masterfully examines how innocent people end up in prison and documents the Herculean effort it takes to overturn those wrongful convictions. Though there’s no shortage of heartbreaking television productions about poor folks who are betrayed by the system, this moving, impactful series stands apart. Expertly directed by respected documentary filmmakers Alex Gibney, Roger Ross Williams and Liz Garbus, “The Innocence Files” delivers a potent statement on class, crime and the American justice system. The nine-part series takes its source material from Innocence Project cases, following several wrongfully convicted subjects over three different story arcs. The filmmakers explore common defects in the system — from the use of bogus forensic evidence to unreliable eyewitness accounts — exploring the legal and emotional fallout for all involved. —Lorraine Ali

10. Don’t F— With Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer

A close-up image of a woman's face over her computer screen

2019 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Mark Lewis

A group of Facebook sleuths track down a deranged killer and wannabe internet star in this three-part series from Mark Lewis. Luka Magnotta was courting the idea of celebrity in 2010 when he became famous for all the wrong reasons. The then-28-year-old Canadian was posting online a series of anonymous videos showing him suffocating, drowning and feeding kittens to a snake. A community of outraged internet sleuths coalesced around the goal of outing this animal abuser.

Filmmaker Lewis embedded with several of the armchair detectives, documenting how they pieced together Magnotta’s identity clue by clue. Is that light socket in the background of his video European or American? Are there any identifying background sounds? Their digital legwork proved invaluable to law enforcement when, in 2012, the killer graduated to killing humans. He murdered a 33-year-old computer engineering student from China, Jun Lin, and released a video of the horrific crime online. The series is a wild ride through Magnotta’s sadistic ploys for attention, and the dogged efforts of amateur detectives to stop him. In the end, they were instrumental in his capture during a worldwide manhunt, even if it may have resulted in giving his depraved videos more views than they ever should have had. This doc was one of Netflix’s biggest true-crime hits outside of the problematic “Making a Murderer.” Riveting, but not for the faint of heart. —Lorraine Ali

9. The Crime of the Century

2021 | TV-14 | 1 Season | Documentary series HBO Max: Included Created by Alex Gibney

For more than 20 years, Americans have watched the human cost of the opioid crisis as if it were an epidemic without cause. But what if the crisis had been manufactured through a series of cynical misdeeds involving profit-ravenous pharmaceutical companies, bought-and-paid-for medical professionals and a toothless political and legal system?

You probably wouldn’t be shocked, given what we now know from numerous class-action lawsuits, interviews with recovering addicts and grieving parents, hard news exposés and, yes, lots of documentaries . But Alex Gibney’s gripping two-part docuseries “The Crime of the Century” sheds new light on an ongoing disaster by meticulously tracking the moves of one major kingpin: Purdue Pharma , the drug company that made billions off the addictive and often lethal pain medication OxyContin . ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

8. Long Shot

A man in a blue T-shirt and baseball cap looks out from the stands at the infield in an empty Dodger Stadium.

2017 | TV-14 | Documentary Netflix: Included Directed by Jacob LaMendola

Social etiquette crimes are the lifeblood of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” Larry David’s HBO comedy series where a self-centered guy named Larry offends everyone he meets, and his bad behavior often has a butterfly effect. But here’s one instance where Larry was a good influence, even if it was unintentional.

“Long Shot” tells the story of young father Juan Catalan, an Angeleno who was wrongly accused of the 2003 gang-related murder of a 16-year-old girl in Sun Valley. But Catalan swears he’s innocent. The accused even has an alibi: He was attending a game with his daughter at Dodger Stadium. The prosecutor isn’t buying it, even after Catalan produces proof in the form of ticket stubs. Defense attorney Todd Melnik scraped for anything else that might prove his client’s innocence. Maybe the Dodger fancam? But the fleeting images of the father and daughter aren’t clear enough.

Here’s where David comes in. The actor had been shooting “The Car Pool Lane” episode of the series, where he picks up a sex worker so he can use the carpool lane to make it to the game on time, and the crew were filming in an aisle near Catalan’s seats. Outtakes of the episode were scanned for images of Catalan, and, as David says in the documentary, “There he was. Pretty cool.” “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and subsequent cellphone data helped clear Catalan. This short and simply made documentary chronicles the incredible story of a wrongly convicted soul who was saved by the least likely of men. — Lorraine Ali

7. The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez

Two men wearing suit jackets pose, one with his hand on the other's shoulder.

2020 | TV - MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Brian Knappenberger

Netflix documentary series “ The Trials of Gabriel Fernandez ” follows the story of the torture and murder of an 8-year-old child, beaten to death in 2013 by his mother and her boyfriend, and the repeated failure of social workers and police officers to intervene. Directed by Brian Knappenberger, “Gabriel Fernandez” piggybacks on the reporting of Garrett Therolf, who covered the story for The Times as it broke, and later elsewhere, and who appears extensively throughout. (Therolf, an executive producer of the series, brought Knappenberger into the project.) A well-made and conscientious work that includes interviews with people involved in the case and experts regarding it from afar, along with footage of police interviews and courtroom testimony, it is old news and an ongoing story, since we have not reached the end of child abuse or institutional incompetence. ( Read more ) — Robert Lloyd

6. The First 48

A detective taking notes sits across a table from another person.

Three things are a given in each episode of “The First 48”: a homicide, a homicide investigation and hard questions in a bleak interrogation room. This long-running series takes viewers behind the scenes, following a squad of detectives in the first critical hours of a murder. The sense of urgency around each case is implicit in the show’s opening sequence: “The clock starts ticking the moment they are called,” says the narrator. “Their chance of solving a murder is cut in half if they don’t get a lead within the first 48 hours.”

Now in its 24th season, this addictive unscripted series still sets a high bar as it follows detectives in police precincts from Dallas, New Orleans, Birmingham, Tulsa and other U.S. cities. Each hourlong episode is shot vérité-style and set to minimal ambient music, building tension subtly as the story unfolds. The results in each case are unpredictable: Many are solved by the closing credits, while others still remain open. Law enforcement turns to a combination of factors to break their cases, from forensic evidence to witness accounts to lies and confessions in the interrogation room, and no two cases ever shake out in the same manner. In a world where bad people always seem to be getting away with doing bad things, “The First 48” is one place where the quest for accountability always drives the story. — Lorraine Ali

5. O.J.: Made in America

A wedding photograph of O.J. Simpson with bride Nicole Brown Simpson

2016 | TV-14 | 1 Season | Documentary series Apple TV+: Rent/Buy | Prime Video: Rent/Buy Created by Ezra Edelman

Comedy, they say, is tragedy plus time. The same equation can also result in revelation, as ESPN’s astonishing documentary series “O.J.: Made in America” proves. There have been many attempts to tell the O.J. Simpson story, to explain why, in 1995, what appeared to be an open-and-shut case of domestic violence taken to its fatal and too-often inevitable conclusion turned into the trial of the century and resulted in acquittal. But all pale beside Ezra Edelman’s 7 1/2-hour chronicle of Simpson’s life and times. Historically meticulous, thematically compelling and deeply human, “O.J.: Made in America” is a masterwork of scholarship, journalism and cinematic art. ( Read more ) — Mary McNamara

4. The Keepers

A black-and-white photo of a nun among sheets of paper

2017 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Ryan White

The seven-part documentary series “The Keepers” looks at one of Baltimore’s most vexing cold cases through the eyes of the women who continue to push for justice. Sister Cathy Cesnik went missing in November of 1969. Two months later, her body was found in a field not far from her apartment. Five decades later, the murder of the young nun and high school teacher remains unsolved. Policeman and priests — the very people tasked with protecting and consoling the community — are among the case’s prime suspects.

Sister Cathy’s former students at Archbishop Keough High School, such as Gemma Hoskins and Abbie Schaub, have spent the majority of their adult lives trying to solve the murder of their beloved teacher, who was 26 at the time of her death. But as “The Keepers” shows, the list of theories and suspects only grows with time. “The Keepers” is an unusually empathetic true-crime offering that places the memory of Sister Cathy above all else, yet still brings much needed heat to a tragically cold case. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

3. Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer

A man with a pentagram on his hand holds it up in a courtroom.

2021 | TV-MA | 1 Season | Documentary series Netflix: Included Created by Tiller Russell Los Angeles was terrorized by a phantom in the spring and summer of 1985. Creeping into homes at night, he tortured and murdered more than a dozen people, with the San Fernando and San Gabriel valleys the focus of his mayhem: assaulting women in their 80s; kidnapping and molesting children as young as 6; scrawling a pentagram on one of his murder victims and demanding that another pray to Satan.

Netflix’s docuseries “Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer” chronicles the pursuit of the elusive predator though the recollections of the investigators and cops who chased him. Analog detective work — years before cellphone data and DNA became useful investigative tools — and the help of the community led to the capture of demon worshipper Richard Ramirez. His crimes stand out as particularly heinous and evil, even by today’s standards, in a metropolis that’s no stranger to the darkest of crimes ( the Black Dahlia , the Manson Family , the Hillside Strangler) . The four-part series is a powerful and haunting addition to the streamer’s onslaught of true-crime fare, capturing a place and time that many Angelenos regretfully claim as part of their city’s collective history. ( Read more ) — Lorraine Ali

2. The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst

“The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst” is a seductive six-part series about a murder, maybe two murders, maybe three. Although its particulars are a matter of public record, it is helpful in watching “The Jinx” to know as little as possible about Durst — the son of a billionaire New York developer, the husband of a woman missing since 1982, just to start — in order to let its strangeness breathe and its cleverly ordered revelations have their full effect. Director Andrew Jarecki — best known for the Oscar-nominated “Capturing the Friedmans” (2003), starts the series in 2001 with the discovery of a headless, limbless torso floating in Galveston Bay and works backward and forward from there. It’s a puzzle box that gives up its secrets slowly and unpredictably. ( Read more ) —Robert Lloyd

1. The Thin Blue Line

A police officer stands and points a gun in front of a police car's headlights.

1988 | Rated 18+ | Documentary Criterion: Included | Apple TV+: Rent/Buy Directed by Errol Morris

Considered one of the most impactful documentaries ever made, Errol Morris’ “The Thin Blue Line” changed the form and saved an innocent man from death row. Fusing cinematic technique with investigative journalism and activism with art, Morris dissected the troubling case of Randall Dale Adams, a drifter who was charged with the 1976 murder of a Dallas police officer. The officer was shot to death after a routine traffic stop. The evidence pointed to repeat offender 16-year-old David Harris, and the teen bragged to his friends about killing a cop, but he was still able to convince detectives that Adams was the culprit.

Morris used the power of cinema to expose staggering irregularities in the investigation and presented his findings in an exquisite display of experimental filmmaking. His unorthodox approach included haunting reenactments, original music by Philip Glass and profound excerpts from the interviews he conducted. For example, Adams’ co-counsel said she believed that the forces of law and justice, faced with a police killing, went after Adams because, as an adult, he could be sent to the electric chair, while Harris, as a minor, could not. Her theory is just one of many that Morris uses to build an alternate narrative in his film.

The result is a wonderfully made film that confronts injustice, exonerating a wrongfully convicted man while changing the face of documentary film forever. — Lorraine Ali

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Lorraine Ali is news and culture critic of the Los Angeles Times. Previously, she was television critic for The Times covering media, breaking news and the onslaught of content across streaming, cable and network TV. Ali is an award-winning journalist and Los Angeles native who has written in publications ranging from the New York Times to Rolling Stone and GQ. She was formerly senior writer for The Times’ Calendar section where she covered entertainment, culture, and American Arab and Muslim issues. Ali started at The Times in 2011 as music editor after leaving her post as a senior writer and music critic at Newsweek Magazine.

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281 Crime Essay Topics & True Crime Research Topics

Looking for an exciting topic about crime? This article is for you! Here, you will find the most unique crime topics for your compare-and-contrast essay or problem solution paper. We’ve also included true crime research topics for you to check out!

🔝 Top 10 Crime Essay Topics for 2024

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The Impact of Unemployment on Crime Rates
South Africa: Violence and Crime
How Technology Advances Influences Crime Rates?
Biological and Psychological Theories of Crime
The Consequences of a Crime
The Impact of Crime and Violence on Tourism in Jamaica
Organized Crime: Russian Mafia vs. Italian Mafia
Concept of Juvenile Crime
Psychoanalytic and Social Learning Theories Explaining Crime
Racism: “Born a Crime” by Trevor Noah
Crime Prevention Programs and Criminal Rehabilitation This paper will analyze the various crime prevention programs and criminal rehabilitation efforts that the criminal justice system engages in.
How Social Learning Theories Impact Juvenile Delinquency and Crime The current paper focuses on the investigation of the dependence of teenagers’ drug abuse as juvenile delinquency on SLTs and theoretical means to mitigate the problem.
Relationship Between Poverty and Crime The paper makes the case and discusses inequality rather than poverty being the prime reason for people committing crimes.
Youth Crime Prevention and Needs Assessment To assess needs of youth offenders, one should employ the approach of recidivism prevention and conduct assessment at any stage of the juvenile justice system.
Situational and Social Crime Prevention Approaches This paper aims to present a distinction between situational crime and social crime prevention. Technology made it complicated how to implement crime theories.
Importance of Toxicology in Crime Investigation The research paper describes toxicology as one of the leading branches in the field of forensic science and importance aspect of criminal investigation.
“Crime and Punishment” by Dostoevsky: Analysis of the work “Crime and Punishment”, written by Dostoevsky, concentrates on moral issues and highlights society’s urgent problems in the nineteenth century.
The New York Map: A Syndicate Evaluated Crime Network in New York City This paper will largely focus on representing the New York map to show a syndicate-evaluated crime network in New York City.
Criminal Case Analysis: Criminal Act Synopsis, Crime Identification The case under analysis could fall under the definition of hate crimes – the man intentionally selected these women to conduct an assault and battery.
Theories of Crime in Forensic Psychology Forensic psychology as a discipline has become closely correlated with the broad theories of crime that aim at defining the reasons behind the offender’s decision to act.
How Does Poverty Affect Crime Rates? On the basis of this research question, the study could be organized and conducted to prove the following hypothesis – when poverty increases, crime rates increase as well.
Crime Types and Their Harm to Society This paper discusses the questions related to criminal justice issues, such as types of crimes, the concept of the Dark Figure of Crime, victimless crimes, and others.
Concept of Natural Legal Crime The concept of natural crime covers actions that are deemed wrong regardless of whether they are enforced by law.
Peru – Globalization, Environment, Crime and Disease The paper synthesizes a number of legitimate sources to focus on globalization and its effects on Peru with special relation to environmental issues, crime, and diseases.
Juvenile Crime: Punishment of Juvenile Crime The objective of this paper is to discuss why minors should not be treated as adults in court. They should not also receive life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Aspects of Crime Against Morality The paper states that crime against morality is an offense of exiting moral values, moral basis, and views shared by the majority of society.
Crime Statistics Sources: Strengths and Weaknesses In the justice system, there are some ways to discuss and evaluate crime, based on the different metrics for documenting it.
Mass Media and Its Link to Crime and the Criminal Justice System In this study, the official website America’s Most Wanted will be analyzed to get a better understanding as to why it is so successful as a TV show and as a tool to fight crime.
Identifying Strategic, Tactical and Administrative Crime Analysis This paper aims to reveal the concepts and features of strategic, tactical, and administrative analysis of crimes.
Crime Prevention Practices Overview The purpose of this paper is to discuss effective crime prevention practices and social development models to prevent crime.
Technology-Based Crime and Its Management In the modern world of science and technology, new developments and advancements have changed life and style of living tremendously.
The Role of Social Seclusion and Economic Marginalization in Crime This paper explores the role of socio-economic marginalization in crime and the effects of criminal activities on allied populations and the nation.
Aspects of Crime Scene Investigation Crime scene investigation is a real art that requires care and caution. Criminologists must be careful and persistent in their research.
Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment” Literary Analysis In “Crime and Punishment”, Dostoevsky tells readers about the tragic events in the streets of St. Petersburg when a student Rodion Raskolnikov commits double murder.
Enron Corporation’s Scandal: White-Collar Crime An accounting scandal that shook the corporate world, Enron Corporation’s white-collar crime saw the downfall of one of the world’s most illustrious companies.
Organized Crime and Corporate Crime One of the vices that are prevalent in all societies in the world is crime. This vice is generally associated with negative outcomes for individuals and society at large.
Digital Imaging and Traditional Methods of Crime Scene Technological progress allows police to use innovations in their work routine to make crime scene reconstruction, geospatial analysis, and surveillance more efficient.
Shoplifting: a Crime of Convenience The purpose of the academic-based study was to observe the specific shoplifting tendencies of a broad group of individuals for reducing the number of shoplifting occurrences.
Crime Causation Theories While psychological and sociological factors predispose an individual to delinquency, most offenses can be attributed to biological causes.
Managing Crime and Deviance at Public Events and Public Venues The purpose of this article is to consider the problem of crime and deviations at public events and in public places, as well as to propose methods to combat it.
Crime in Society: Costs and Response This paper looks at the social and economic costs of crime, how people learn to involve themselves in crime and how communities respond to the crime in society.
“Crimes Against Logic” by Jamie Whyte Crimes against Logic touches the aspect of fallacies through the description of human values and behavior following major actions performed.
Is There Such Thing as a Victimless Crime? The problem of a victimless crime has been labeled as controversial due to the different opinions surrounding this issue.
Crime Rates in Urban and Suburban Areas Currently, researchers are paying more and more attention to the consideration of predicates of increased crime rates in urban areas of large cities.
Aspects of Crime Behavior Crime is a behavior in which moral standards that are appropriate for well-being in society are defined, and set rules are violated.
Full-Service Crime Laboratory: Forensic Science Forensic scientists study and analyze evidence from crime scenes and other locations to produce objective results that can aid in the investigation and prosecution of criminals.
Crime and Factors Influencing It Many modern theories, including biosocial criminology, are beginning to consider various processes occurring inside the body as factors contributing to the commission of crimes.
Fight Against Crime and Its General Characteristics Criminology studies crime prevention as a complex dynamic system. Its functioning is connected with the solution of both general tasks of social development.
Trends Influencing Crime Rates Crime is widely considered a failure in the social system and therefore is to be addressed from the perspective of the social construct operation and the trends existing there.
Different Perspectives of Viewing Crime The paper suggests that it is prudent to consider crime as a complicated process that can be understood best by examining it from different perspectives.
Functionalism: Crime and Deviance in Society Issues of crime and deviance directly derive from the functionalist system’s components, which are responsible for ensuring continuous functionality and well-being.
Victimization Prevention is an Effective Tool Against Crime Victimization prevention solutions borrowed from the crime prevention sector should militate against the practice of consultation and dispassionate inquiry.
The Relationship Between Drugs and Addiction to Crime Systemic crime emerges from the arrangement of drug circulation. It includes conflicts over the region in rival drug traders, attacks, and executions committed in involved groups.
Whether Crime or Violence Are Justified in a Reaction to Past Trauma This paper presents a debate on whether or not crime or violence should be a justification due to past trauma.
Families, Delinquency and Crime Crime would be considered a major social problem in the United States according to opinion surveys, with the major cause being laxity and inefficiency in parenting.
Corporate Crime: Understanding and Explaining Corporate scandals have become the stories behind many company downfalls and corporate governance reforms throughout the world were triggered by the scandals.
Organized Crime: Forming of the Definition The given work seeks to investigate the process of forming the concept of ‘organized crime’ by governments and justice systems.
Juvenile Crime in Modern Society The current research will focus on examining the problem of juvenile crime from the social perspective rather than the governmental.
Deviance, Crime and Social Control The selected topic from the class text is “Deviance, Crime, and Social Control”. The term deviance “refers to the violations of established contextual, cultural, or social norms”.
Crime Commission: Legal and Social Perspectives Crime has various dimensions: legal and ethical. Crime commission helps to integrate all dimensions of the society in the administration of justice.
Criminological Theory: Crime Theories and Criminal Behavior Criminal behavior is a type of behavior of a person who commits a crime. It is interesting to know what drives people to commit crimes and how to control these intentions.
Cyber Crime : Issues and Threats Cyber crime involves the stealing or manipulation of information effectively distorting its values across global networks.
Bribery as a Crime As a rule, major bribes include payments that are higher than a certain limit which can be considered as an ordinary present.
“Goodfellas” Crime Drama Film by Martin Scorsese Goodfellas is an iconic crime drama film released in 1990. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, also written by him and Nicholas Pileggi.
Crime Causation Theories: Contrastive Analysis The purpose of this paper is to provide a contrastive analysis of the three crime causation theories in order to define the most prevalent one.
Banning Violent Video Games Is a Crime Against Artistic Expression This paper discusses the statement that banning violent video games is a crime against artistic expression, credible research, and the first amendment.
Crime against Persons With Disabilities In conclusion, it is evident that disabled populations remain extremely vulnerable to mental, physical, and sexual abuse, as well as violence.
Reporting Behavior Among Victims of Crime The reporting behavior among victims of crime remains relatively low. Satisfaction level in police operations is among the prominent predictors of crime.
Crime Scene Search and Its Importance The paper states that the inspection is the first and urgent action that the investigator performs even before the initiation of a criminal case.
Conformity, Deviance, and Crime Definitions of conformity and deviance depend on social context, and what is considered a norm in one community or society can be seen as deviant by those outside it.
Preventing Crime Victimization in International Students International students are the students who go to other countries to study and because of this, they face a lot of problems – including becoming the victim of a crime.
Mechanisms to Fight Serious Forms of Organized Crime in Italy The report analyzes safety in Italy organized crimes range from corporate crime, Neapolitan Camorra and mafia.
The Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality Theory The theory of race, crime, and urban inequality is based on the paradigm of social disorganization theory formulated by the Chicago School.
The Theory Deviance and Crime Scholars have developed a full-scale theory of deviance, which accounted for some people neglecting the already established behavioral patterns by direct law violation.
Fiction Versus Reality: Crime as a Social Phenomenon While making an analysis of various societies of the world at large, it becomes evident that no human society has ever been free from crimes, perversion and deviance at all.
Organized Business Crime Prosecution and Investigation Mr. Big is charged with operating a criminal enterprise that engages in illicit business activities. The memo proposes the investigative plan to obtain relevant evidence.
Crime and Criminals: General Characteristics For a long time, crime has been a subject of discussion among various countries across the globe, with various strategies and inventions being developed to curb the same.
The Bank Robbery Crime Investigation The primary objective of securing the crime scene is to preserve all the evidence that can help trace and identify the bank robbery suspect.
Biometrics Recognition and Crime Prevention The current business proposal suggests several recommendations on how to prevent consequent crimes and identify the perpetrators by using biometrics recognition.
Forensics Analysis of Terrorism Crime Scene Terrorism uses calculated violence to generate public fear and panic to establish a specific political agenda within the general population.
The Drug Trafficking as Organized Crime Drug trafficking is among the recently organized crimes, and it has a direct influence on the economy as it earns a lot of money.
Topology of Corporate Crime and White Collar Crime Corporate crime is pure form of white collar crime. Corporate abuse of power, corporate fraud has a fundamental link with the core concept of white collar crime.
Obsession With True Crime and the Reasons for Its Growing Popularity This paper discusses the people’s obsession with true crime and explains its current popularity by some fundamental human needs and specific current conditions.
The Profile of a Crime Victim The profile of a crime victim is generally regarded to be a matter of statistics, while the victims themselves are people of various origins, ages, and occupations.
Criminal Law – Is Graffiti a Crime or Not? Graffiti has in a key factor been associated with wrongdoings and ill-image driving purposes towards the society.
Crime in Texas: Security Strategies There is a need to implement serious self-defense and personal security strategies in Texas to protect its citizens and their loved ones from becoming victims of dreaded crimes.
Community Policing: The Alternative Solution to Youth Crime Community policing is a better alternative especially when it comes to the sensitive nature of juvenile crime.
The Psychological Underpinning of True Crime Obsession The proposed study examines the psychological underpinning of true crime obsession to demonstrate why this genre became popular. It presents an overview of the psychology.
Criminal Justice System: Drugs and Crime The main objective of the criminal justice system is ensuring delivery of justice for all. It mainly concentrates in detection of crime.
Crime Prevention Programme in Australia To prevent the wide spread of violence within relationships among young people in Australia, there are certain programmes, initiatives and resources that have been devised.
Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences. The Notion of Criminality and Crime The exploration of the notion of criminality and crime is essential for the prevention and management thereof.
Organized Crime and Drug Trafficking Offenders This paper discusses organized crime and drug trafficking, as well as the legal rights of the convicted and the relationships between the offenses.
Generali Group: Developments in Financial Crime The paper has outlined recent trends associated with financial crime from a GRC practitioner’s point of view. It has methods for protecting the financial sector institutions.
Illegal Immigrants and Its Effects on Crime This paper set out to demonstrate that there is a relationship between the rise in crime and the increase in illegal immigration to the US. It began by highlighting the immigration problem.
White-Collar and Corporate Crime White-collar crimes have increased in the modern world due to improved technology. Typically, these criminal activities are financially-motivated and are nonviolent.
White-Collar Crime: Definition and Special Features White-collar crimes are defined as deception, concealment, or breach of trust, and the difference between it and other types of crimes boils down to a question of opportunity.
World War II Atrocities: Crimes Against Humanity This paper focuses on the crimes against humanity in World War II. The crimes are not on the battlefield and are unconnected with specific military activities.
Overcoming Juvenile Crime: Community Programs Juvenile crime is a complex issue that a single program cannot resolve. There are specialized community programs that work with juvenile criminals and prevent their future crimes.
Fear of Crime and Crime Rates As a social phenomenon, the fear of crime can sometimes be more dangerous than the crime itself, leading to distortion in the social order.
Impact of Immigration on the Economy Looking back on the United States’ history on the issue of immigration, the first immigrants came into the country starting in 1820.
The First Responding Officer in Crime Scene Investigation: Primary Duties Ascertaining the situation and providing the support needed to the people affected is the earliest objective of the first officer attending (FOA).
Comparison of Primary Crime Data Sources Used In the United States The uniform crime report and the national crime victimization survey are the two primary sources of crime data in America.
Murder Cases: Technology for Crime Monitoring and Control A new invention in the field of crime monitoring has greatly contributed to a decline in the number of crimes being committed.
Successful Ways of Preventing Crime by Blundell Successful ways of preventing crime should be based on a variety of methods. Also, crime is considered to be a social issue can say about effective programs are to be developed.
We Are Living in a Risk Society Governed Through Crime Society and the world at large are under siege of crime; all sorts of crime from pickpocketing to capital crimes and even treason.
The Role of Forensics in the War on Drugs This essay looks at chemicals that are used by forensic experts and the role forensics play in the war on drugs.
The Link Between Relative Deprivation and Crime In the paper, the author notes that radical theory has the potential to promote noble ideals as far as social equality and justice is concerned.
Is Prostitution a Victimless Crime or Not? Because victimless crimes involve two contentious issues of morality and liberty, the legalization of this category of crime is always disputed on many grounds.
Aetiology of Violent Crime Violent crime has become a major part of the crime world. Sexual crimes, terrorism, and hooliganism are just some of the violent crimes.
The England Crime Statistics by Region: Liverpool and Manchester The paper will consider such crime types as violence against personality, sexual offense, robbery, an offense against vehicles, theft, fraud, and forgery, criminal damage, etc.
The Crime Control Model: Due Process Values The Crime Control Model has been founded on the premise that the most important role of the criminal justice process is the repression of any form of criminal conduct.
Confidential Informants and Crime The use of confidential informants allows destroying organized crime syndicates or terrorist gangs, which otherwise would not be adequately addressed through the corresponding legislation.
Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut This article explains the purpose and duties of conscience as depicted in the Mark Twain story, The Facts Concerning the Recent Carnival of Crime in Connecticut.
Juvenile and Crime: The Reasons and Today’s Situation Reserch reveals that crime activities can include violence and that the whole incidence of gang activity in schools has become quite frequent in the recent years.
White-Collar Crime and Negligence White-collar crime is a category of non-violent criminal activities that are motivated by financial gain. The aim of this paper is to analyze two case studies on white-collar crime and negligence.
Crime Scene Investigation in Media and Real Life The process of identifying and matching a piece of evidence to a particular person is a long process which requires exact sciences and methods.
Criminality Development in the Documentary A Life of Crime The paper introduces the conception of getting involved in criminal activities as well as criminology development in America. The analysis refers to the documentary A Life of Crime.
Smash-And-Grab Crime: Criminal Investigation The smash-and-grab crime under investigation is a multi-million-dollar burglary that occurred in March 2022 at a Beverly Hills jewelry store.
Capital Punishment Does Not End the Crime Capital punishment needs to be abolished due to the belief that it is equivalent to the crime committed, which is unjust and a form of retribution.
Three Items Linked to Policing That Explain Japan’s Low Crime Rate One of the most significant trends observed in Japan over the past years is the low crime rate. The positive trend has promoted peace and socioeconomic progress in the nation.
Dante’s View on Crime and Punishment Dante believed that the crimes most worthy of penalty were those of abuse of trust, for reasons rooted in sociopolitical factors as well as the philosophy and law of his day.
Budget Narrative for Markia Crime Stopper Program The following is the budget narrative to enable the Markia crime-stopper program initiative to effectively protect, respond to, and report criminal acts in the community.
Examination of a Mock Crime Scene The crime occurred around 9:00 PM on March 11th, 2021, and was discovered and examined approximately at 9:30 PM on the same day.
Network Security and Cyber Crime, Super-Highway Metaphor Some of the major practices that can be done in ensuring maximum data security and integrity is through making all the servers only accessible by the administrators of networks.
The Crime of Homicide: History and Laws The project describes homicide, which is the illegal killing of a human being by another. There exist state laws that define the services offered to the victims of homicide.
Counterfeit Products and Sociological Theories of Crime The paper will attempt to employ sociological theories such as strain theory, social learning theory, and control theory to analyze various aspects of counterfeiting.
Organized Crime: The Canadian Mafia The Canadian based criminal gang organization engaged in drug trafficking, smuggling, gambling and political corruption.
The Definition of White-Collar Crime by Sutherland Sutherland had an approach to the definition of white-collar crime that was purely rooted in a sociological approach.
Corporate Occupational and Avocational Crime Corporate crime is classified on the basis of activities, agents, laws broken or products under consideration; however, the most common criterion use is that of activity.
Crime Situation in Bankstown-Australia The paper provides the level of crime, overview of types of offences in Bankstown – Australia. It discusses general reasons of malicious damage to property commitment.
Biological, Biosocial and Classical Theories of Crime The association of biology and criminality based on modifications of the brain also stands as a strong influence on the behavior of an individual.
Internationalism: The Issue of Transitional Crime Transnational crimes affect the democracy of a nation, the economic growth and the trade of that country by draining the available assets of that country.
Assessing Role of Technology in Police Crime Mapping The role of technology in police operations has become pivotal because it aids our law enforcement agencies to do their tasks easier and less time-consuming.
How Local Television News Viewing Relates to Fear of Crime? The hypothesis was that “people watching more television would perceive their world in ways that reflect the recurrent messages from the media”.
Crime Scene Investigation Effect in Justice System Movies have been known to influence popular culture in different parts of the world. Analysts believe that the “CSI effect” is one of the fruits of popular culture.
Implicit Bias and the Crime Net in the Criminal Justice System An unequal distribution of cases against members of different ethnic groups characterizes the use of force by police officers against citizens in Canada.
Problem-Focused Policing Reducing Crime Problem-oriented policing entails the identification of factors that raise crime risk, diagnosing them, and establishing solutions to them.
Post-Crime Investigation Analysis Post-crime investigations are an essential process. One of the most important factors is the scene of the crime and the testimony of the victim and witnesses.
National Crime Prevention Council’s Media Campaign National Crime Prevention Council is among the American educational nonprofit institutions that enable the creation of safe communities by addressing issues such as drugs.
Crime in Falkner’s “Barn Burning” and Poe’s “Cask of Amontillado” William Faulkner’s Barn Burning and Edgar Allan Poe’s Cask of Amontillado raise the topic of crimes that go unpunished.
Hip-Hop and Violence: Does This Music Genre Promote Crime? It is hard to disagree that various types and directions of art are extremely powerful and can have a severe impact on the world and society.
Technologies to Reduce Crime and Acts of Terrorism Terrorism can be met with a nonviolent, credible, and justifiable reaction if counterterrorism actions are anchored in an accountable and productive criminal justice system.
Racial Discrimination Cases: Federal Hate Crime Charges in Black Jogger’s Racial discrimination happens when a person is considered unacceptable or is denied the same possibilities as others in a similar position because of their ethnicity, or birth country.
Asian Hate Crime: Social Limitations and Economic Impact This review focuses on Asian hate and marginalization roots, the current social limitations and economic impacts.
Crime and Juvenile Delinquency Impact on Justice The contemporary issue of crime and juvenile delinquency has a negative impact on the field of criminal justice since it contributes to disorganization and anomie.
Official Crime Data for Policy Development Using official crime data is very important, as it allows the development of policies that target the actual circumstances and avoid biases.
Online and Offline Museums in Correlation with Crime People may now visit the world’s best museums using standard technologies. In this paper, these three museums will be illustrated from criminology and their correlation with crime.
Procedures Within Crime Scene Investigation A crime scene investigation is a complex and multistage research process in which a criminology specialist uses various scientific techniques and methodologies.
A Legal or Ethical Obligation of Facebook to Assist a Crime Victim Platforms like Facebook should have a moral obligation to assist crime victims as soon as possible after gathering information from its members.
A Victim as a Dark Figure of a Crime A victim is any person who has suffered moral, physical, or property damage from a wrongful act, regardless of whether he is duly recognized as a victim of this crime or not.
Domestic Violence: “Crime in Alabama” by Hudnall et al. The consequences of domestic violence can be associated with deterioration in the population’s quality of life, psychological problems, or even the victim’s death.
The Markia Security Crime Stoppers Program The initiative program named Markia Security Crime Stoppers has the objective to reduce the rate of burglaries through a series of preventive measures.
Rising Crime and Ethnic Inequality in the United States The article raises the up-to-date topic of the sharp increase in the crime rate in the United States. The numbers are exceptionally high among African Americans and Latinos.
Autistic Disorder and Crime in the United States Prevalence and incidence rates of autistic disorders are not high in the United States. According to Schug and Fradella, the prevalence rates are 5 cases per 10,000 people.
Civil War Veterans and Crime in America Podcast by Handley-Cousins and Earls explores how American society and its disabled soldiers coped with the perceptions of service, disability, and government responsibility.
Discourse of Fear in Local Crime News Fear is used as one of the formats of the crime news discourse, and it is popular today among many newspapers and advertising companies.
The Influence of Police Bias on Disparity in Juvenile Crime: Methodology The issue of racial disparity in the criminal justice system remains a topical one. 64% of the charged youth are people of color.
Ethics and Federal Laws as to Computer Crime With today’s rapid technological advancements, we must be conscious of the potential for cybercrime to create calamity.
Crime Causes Among Adolescents Aged 12 to 17 Years Project proposal on the paper intended to explore the major reasons for the crime commitment among adolescents of this age group, ways to reduce crime among juveniles.
Investigating Crime with Age and Mental Illnesses Factors This paper describes a criminal case that implies the elements of both age and mental illness presented by the young female homicide.
White-Collar Crime and the Whistleblower Protection Program The paper discusses white crimes and how the whistleblower protection program can help and protect the affected employees.
Oklahoma City Bomber Timothy McVeigh’s Crime Army soldiers performed the deadliest terrorist attack on the territory of the United States, which remained in this status until September 11, 2001.
Theories of Crime and Juvenile Rights The article discusses rights of minors and adults should differ due to the peculiarities of the psychological characteristics of development.
Hate Crime: History and Prevalence in the US The American Psychological Association defines a hate crime as a legal offense against an individual or property instigated in whole or part by the bias of the offender.
Violent Crime, Its Forms and Patterns Even though the legal reform associated with the introduction of rape shield laws work, their effectiveness is limited by inconsistent implementation across states.
Computer Crime Prevention Measures The following paper describes the various prevention tools and procedures that are being followed in relation to computer crime
Do Increases in Hate Crime Suggest That We Have Become Less Civilized and More Violent? This paper aims to discuss the history of the hate crime concept, as well as the connections between hate crimes, public awareness, and sensitisation to violence.
The Natural Crime Concept in the Legal System The concept of natural crime covers actions that are deemed wrong regardless of whether they are enforced by law, these crimes have an inherent sense of wrong and harm.
Social Change and Crime Rate Trends According to Cohen and Felson, structural changes in daily routine activities have a direct influence on the frequency of crime occurrence.
What Impact Has Feminism Had in the Study of Women and Crime? The most notable impact of feminism on women could be illustrated through the emerging interest of researchers to females in vulnerable communities.
Psychological Disorders and How They Promote Crime and Conduct Problems Psychological disorders are one of the factors that have a significant influence on crime rates. This paper analyzes psychological disorders and how they promote crime.
Crime Level Investigation in the United States Two mechanisms that the USA uses to trace the rate of crime in the country are the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS).
The Relationship Between Race and Crime in the United States The US media often mentions Latinos in the news when discussing drug trafficking and crimes related to crossing US borders.
Crime Trends in London and Manchester: 2005 to 2009 The latest annual recap by the Home Office suggests that burglaries and violence around the nation may have at least held steady against the prior 2007/08 financial year.
Seventh Day Adventists Fight Crime in Jamaica In this article, the author examines the problem of crime in Jamaica and also expresses an opinion on the influence Seventh Day Adventists can have on solving the problem.
White-Collar Crime Description White-collar crime is among the subtlest, most non-evident, and most impactful types of crime, which affects the population on a scale of millions.
Drugs and Crime Committed Under the Influence It would be prudent to differentiate between two types of drug-related crimes. There are instances of drug-related crimes and psychopharmacological crimes.
DNA Analysis: A Crime-Fighting Tool or Invasion of Privacy? The paper argues that DNA analysis is an important crime-fighting tool and bring great benefit despite the likelihood of an invasion of privacy.
The Sex Crime: Influence of Childhood Experiences Offenders may engage in sex crimes under an influence of having experienced sexual abuse themselves or other traumatic events in their childhood.
Crime Explanation Using Biology and Psychology A comprehensive theory of Cesare Lombroso has been discussed indicating that criminals could be picked out and determined by their physique, attributes, and appearance.
Status Crime: White Collar Crime in Organizations White-collar crime is characterized by inflating the asset values, overstating the reported income and cash flow, and failure to disclose the liabilities in the financial records.
Crime Trends: Drug Abuse in Adults and Juveniles One notes a mixed trend in the different crimes over the years. Drug abuse, for example, increased steadily from the 1970s in both the adult and juvenile populations.
Impact of Crime on Civil Liability and Risk: FTCA FTCA of 1946 waived the doctrine of sovereign immunity of the United States government. All federal workers lack defense of their employment and become liable for their wrongdoing.
White-Collar Crime: Securities and Pension Fraud The PERAC has in the recent past tried to conduct its activities in the best possible way in a bid to eradicate all forms of pension fraud.
Crime Rate Series. Main Cases Reporting Criminology is a complex study and care has to be taken. The reporting of the level of felony in an area can be used by a myriad of people in society to plan other activities.
Arms Smuggling as a Form of Transitional Organized Crime
Are Marxist Criminologists Right to See Crime Control as Class Control?
Crime, Childhood Trauma, and Health
Crime Intermidiate Houses and Communities
Predatory Crime Causation and Substance Abuse Problems
Drugs and Crime Description: Federal Drug Statutes
Hate Crime Laws are a Bad Idea
Violent Crime in the USA
Children as Perpetrators and Victims of Crime
Uniform Crime Reporting: Indicator of Crime in the US
Crime and Criminal Behavior: Assault Concept Study
Uniform Crime Report: Term Definition
Syndicated and Organized Crime and Governmental Crime
Russian Organized Crime: History & Personalities
Crime in American Society: Causes, Types, Costs, Etc.
Fear of Victims to Report Crime
Crime Rate: the Recidivism Rate
Racism, Crime and Justice and Growing-Up Bad
Various Issues Related to White-Collar Crime
Crime Rates: Hawaii
White Collar Crime – Madoff Affair
The Effects of Hate Crime Law on Democracy
Crime Theory Regarding Rape Laws
Crime and Class Relations Analysis
Property Crime Rates in Fayetteville, North Carolina
Uniform Crime Reports: Crime Trends and Repeat Victimization
Crime and Causation: Robbery
Crime Statistics Comparison Between Two Universities
Current Corrections in the Criminal Justice System and Crime Control
The Case of Shooting at Planned Parenthood: Understanding the Causes of the Crime
Media and Crime: Shaping of Public Opinion
The Profiling of Crime Victims
White Collar Crime, Corporate Crime and Substance Abuse
Deterring Juvenile Crime. Bullying and Delinquency
Crime Rates in the US and Its Link to the Juvenile Justice System
Property Crime and Sociological Typologies: Law Study
Terrorism as a Transnational Organized Crime
Crime Among the Juveniles: Causes
Homeland Security, Race and Crime in the US
Drugs and Society Violent Crime: Public Drunkenness
Should We Rely on Eye-Witness Testimonies to Identify Crime-Suspects?
Drug Abuse and Crime Correlation
Presidential Powers: Official Pardon for Crime Granting
Crime and Justice by Curie
Feasibility of Modifying Crime Map
Criminal Justice and Crime Control in the US
“White-Collar Crime” Definition and Qualification
Juvenile Crime Concepts Review
Crime Rates in the United States over 20 Years
Crime Theories. “Can’t Catch a Break” by Sered & Norton-Hawk
Sex Trafficking by Organized Crime Groups
The Crime of Challenging Moral Settings
Recidivism of Juvenile Crime
Capital Punishment for Crime Deterrence
Childhood Crime at School in the State of Texas
Organized and Transnational Crime in Southeast Asia
Crime Scene Safety and Security in the United States
Crime and Delinquency Theories
Sociological Diversity and Its Impact on Crime Rate
Capital Punishment as Ineffective Crime Deterrence
Race and Crime Among Minorities in the US
Repression and Crime Control
The Teens, Crime, and Community Project in the US
“Crime in Post-Katrina Houston” Study by Settles and Lindsay
Nortel Networks Company’s Corporate Crime
Nurse Robaczynski’s Case: Crime or Mercy Killing?
Flagami Community’s Crime and Health Situation
US Gun Control Measures and Crime Rates Reduction
Psychological Help as the Prevent From Possible Crime
The Racilisation of Crime and Cultural Panics
How Can Criminology Theories Help in Preventing or Solving Crimes?
Should Children Who Commit Crime Be Tried as Adults?
Are Crime Control and Social Welfare Becoming More Punitive?
How Can Social Science Theory Help Reduce Crime?
Can Criminological Theories Help Manage Crime in the Workplace?
Should Government Implement Laws for Cyber Crime?
Does Imprisoning Drug Offenders Reduce Crime Rates?
How Does the Holocaust Explodes the Concept of Mass Crime?
Are Hate Crime Laws Effective?
What Is the Link Between Drugs and Crime and What Can Be Done Towards Drug-Related Crimes?
How Does Criminology Help Our Understanding of Crime and Criminals?
Does Social Deprivation Relate to Crime?
What Impact Does the Changing Nature of Crime Have on Criminology?
Are Homeless People More Likely to Become Involved or Be Victims of Crime?
How Can Technology Help Police and Government Officials Solve Crime?
Should Crime Victims Have Rights During Criminal Investigations?
Can Public Works Programs Reduce Youth Crime?
How Were Crime and Punishment Handled in the Roman Era?
Are Non-custodial Sentences Soft on Crime?
How Do Crime Scene Investigations Aid in Prosecution?
Can Death Penalty Prevent the Rise in Crime Rate?
Does Longer Incarceration Deter or Incapacitate Crime?
How Does Corporate Crime Challenge Conventional Definitions of Crime?
Can Punitive Measures Curtail Crime?
How Does the Media Use an Ideal Victim in Portrayals of Crime?

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StudyCorgi. (2021, September 9). 281 Crime Essay Topics & True Crime Research Topics. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/crime-essay-topics/

"281 Crime Essay Topics & True Crime Research Topics." StudyCorgi , 9 Sept. 2021, studycorgi.com/ideas/crime-essay-topics/.

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StudyCorgi . "281 Crime Essay Topics & True Crime Research Topics." September 9, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/crime-essay-topics/.

StudyCorgi . 2021. "281 Crime Essay Topics & True Crime Research Topics." September 9, 2021. https://studycorgi.com/ideas/crime-essay-topics/.

These essay examples and topics on Crime were carefully selected by the StudyCorgi editorial team. They meet our highest standards in terms of grammar, punctuation, style, and fact accuracy. Please ensure you properly reference the materials if you’re using them to write your assignment.

This essay topic collection was updated on January 5, 2024 .

108 Serial Killer Essay Topics & Examples

🔝 top-10 serial killer research paper topics, 🏆 best serial killer topics & essay examples, 🎓 good serial killer research topics, ⭐ argumentative essay topics about serial killers, ❓ research questions about serial killers.

What is the nature of serial killers?
Criminal profiling of John Wayne Gacy.
Popular culture: true crime documentaries.
The mind of H.H. Holmes.
Psychological research of serial killers.
Nature vs. nurture: are serial killers born or made?
Cold cases: The Zodiac Killer.
The story of Ted Bundy.
Serial killers and forensic science.
Psychology and sociology of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Frankston Serial Killer: Background, Crimes, and Motives At the time, the police noted that Denyer was with his girlfriend. The letter claimed that Denyer knows his whereabouts, and that he was planning to break out of prison to kill him.
The Psychology of Serial Killers These are just a fraction of questions that require answers in order to have a complete understanding of the psychology of serial killers.
Richard Angelo: A Serial Killer and His Ethical Dilemma The convicted claimed he made the injections to cause crises to be able to revive patients and become a hero in front of his colleagues.
Jeffrey Dahmer: Serial Killer At the center of the legal debate was the interpretation of insanity, and how it could be utilized to absolve a criminal. George Palermo, a psychiatrist, made the conclusion that Dahmer was not insane.Dr.
Arthur Shawcross and His Serial Killer’s Behavior Although most of his victims were killed in the late 1980s, his case still evokes a lot of debate since he is considered to be one of the most demonstrative examples of prisoners who were […]
Serial Killers: Tommy Lynn Sells It is believed that in October of the same year he killed a 13-year-old girl in Missouri and moved to Texas.
Serial Killers and Their Social Construction Social construction of serial killers has become the subject of various studies, and it is recognized today that the social position, social interactions, and perceived social image may play a significant role in the process […]
Criminal Profiling of Serial Killers Ted Bundy was one of the most famous serial killers of the 20th century. These are the types of serial killers that will target gays, minorities, and prostitutes.
Edmund Kemper: The Serial Killer Kemper committed most of the murders in one year and confessed to his crimes only after he killed his mother. However, in a short time, Kemper decides to stop and report on his crimes to […]
Serial Killer Psychology: Eileen Wuornos Eileen was a woman without remorse as she was not bothered by the death of her victims. It is said that her intention was to capture the attention of the man she was dating.
Ted Bundy, an American Serial Killer He was part of the team that worked in the campaign of the Republican governor of Washington, who later rewarded him with a recommendation letter.
Ted Bundy, a Serial Killer and Psychopath The same was said about Ted Bundy, one of the most notorious serial killers in the criminal history of the United States.
J. Dahmer as a Sexually-Motivated Serial Killer The paper at hand is devoted to the investigation of the life, personality, and criminal behavior of one of the most notorious American serial killers of 1980s-1990s, Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer.
Aileen Wuornos: The Serial Killer After four years since the birth of Aileen, her mother abandoned the family, leaving the girl and her brother with their maternal grandparents, whom the girl considered her birth parents.
American Serial Killer Joseph Paul Franklin’s Crimes The reason for changing his name as because he wanted to join the Rhodesian Army and due to his criminal background, he was forced to change the name. The couple were killed and Franklin confessed […]
Aileen Wuornos: Anatomy of a Female Serial Killer Moreover, feminist scholarship has recently begun to examine serial murder as “sexual terrorism” or as a perpetuation of gynocide, the systematic crippling, raping and/or killing of women by men.
Serial Killers: Law Enforcement Response to Serial Killing The law enforcement agencies such as the FBI maintain that there are several serial killers in the United States and they are expected to increase and hit an epidemic proportion with many people losing their […]
Charles Manson: Serial Killer Profile One of the first crimes that he committed was connected to a stolen car that Manson took to have some fun and visit his relatives.
Albert Fish – the Serial Killer Fish’s mother, forced to look for another source of livelihood due to her inability to take care of her son following the death of his father, took him to Saint John’s orphanage in Washington.
The Crimes of Charles Manson, Serial Killer Even though his people did it himself, he was not involved in this, and the organization of a particular group of people is not in itself an immoral act but is prohibited in some places.
Serial Killer Profiling Dimensions In order to better understand their practices and attempt to put a stop to their actions prematurely, there was a need for proper classification and consequent analysis.
Serial Killers in Modern American Society Based on the above-stated arguments, this paper forms research for evidence from some of the serial killers in modern American society and various tactics utilized by the investigative departments to determine and differentiate between serial […]
Principles of Justice: Serial Killers and Rapers On the same note, Ernest van de Haag mentions the use of principals relating to the utilitarian perspective where the law would be lenient and work for the greater good of people as a whole […]
Serial Killer Imagery: “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” by Joyce Carol Oates The present paper argues that whereas Arnold Friend is portrayed by Oates as a “superhuman” copy of Carl Schmid, the murderer, and the situation with Connie is partially sketched from the case of Alleen Rowe, […]
Serial Killers, Their Crimes, and Stereotypes The other serial killers presented in the killers list also conform to the stereotypes presented in Fox’s and Levin’s article. Most of the killers also rape, mutilate, and degrade their victims in order to feel […]
A Study on Serial Killers: “Encounter and death: The Spatial Behavior of U.S. Serial Killers” From an analysis, of the article, it is evident that the research focuses on the geographical locations that surround the killings; the location of the first meeting between the serial killers and their victims, the […]
Serial Killers: Women and Men Comparison Most of the time, crimes of men serial killers are heard regularly as they are more horrible than that of women serial killers. The physical counting of the men serial killers victims is very high […]
Serial Killer “Theodore Robert “Ted” Bundy” As much as the psychiatrists related his problems to mental disturbances, this was not a major issue that determined the outcome of the cases.
A Serial Killer: Typology and Abnormal Psychological Gratification
Luis Garavito: The World’s Worst Serial Killer
Existentialism: Serial Killer and Right Things
Charles Cullen: Healthcare Serial Killer
Israel Keyes: The Reluctant Serial Killer
Countess Elizabeth Bathory: Serial Killer
Arousal Theory and the Serial Killer Jeffery Dahmer
The Dangerous Mind of a Serial Killer
Clifford Olson: Canadian Serial Killer
The Development of Serial Killers: A Grounded
Exploring the Life and Possible Motives of Serial Killer
How Edward Theodore Gain Became a Serial Killer
Blood Loss, the Decline of the Serial Killer
Sociological Theories: Rationalization and Motivation of the Serial Killer
Serial Killer Era: So Many Murders in 1970 – 2000
Famous Serial Killer: Jack the Ripper
Defining the Factors That Contribute to Serial Killer’s Identity
Deadly Motives: The Hedonistic Drive of Serial Murder
Details of a Typical Female Serial Killer
Profiling Art and Australian Serial Killer Ivan Milat
Brilliant Serial Killer Jack the Ripper
America’s First Serial Killer
Serial Killer and Racism: African-Americans and Serial Killing in the Media
Life and Death of a Serial Killer: Are Serial Killer Born or Created?
Serial Killer: Erikson’s Theory-Based Analysis of the Behavior of Robert William Pickton
Differential Association Theory and Serial Killer
Aileen Wuornos America’s First Female Serial Killer
Mary Bell Was Britain’s Youngest Serial Killer
Criminal Shadows: Inside the Mind of a Serial Killer
America’s Sweetest Serial Killer – Sugar
Unique Characteristics of a Serial Killer
American Serial Killer: Albert Fish
Serial Killer: The Mechanism From Imagination to the Murder
Critical Theories: Crime Ted Bundy Serial Killer
The Uncatchable Serial Killer: No Motive, No Victim Profile
Serial Killers: Death and Life in America’s Wound Culture
The Life of a Serial Killer: Edmund Emil Kemper Lii
Criminal Justice: The Criminology Behind Serial Killers
Canadian Serial Killer: Robert Pickton
What Are Serial Killers?
Are Serial Killers Born Psychopaths or Pushed to That Limit?
What Causes Serial Killers to Kill?
How Do Serial Killers Get Attention?
What Makes Serial Killers Kill?
Why Are the People Interested in Serial Killers?
What Is the Nature of Serial Killers?
How Do Juveniles Become Serial Killers?
What Is in the Mind of Serial Killer?
How to Cure a Serial Killer?
What Steps Are Taken by the Country to Control Serial Killers?
Where Did the Term “Serial Killer” Come From?
What Are the Main Objectives of a Serial Killer?
Is It Possible to Diagnose a Would-Be Serial Killer?
What Are the Common Types of Serial Killers?
How Does a Serial Killer Differ From a Maniac?
What Lies Behind a Serial Killer’s Signature?
Are There Naturally Born Serial Killers?
What Makes a Serial Killer Tick?
Are There Death Penalty Alternatives for Serial Killers?
What Makes a Serial Killer Do What They Do?
Are Humans Naturally Good or Evil?
What Is the Difference Between a Mass Murderer and a Serial Killer in Modern Culture?
Is There a Tendency to Increase or Decrease in Serial Killings in the Us in the XXI Century?
Can Modern Therapies Available for Sociopathic and Psychopathic Disorder Set Serial Killers to Rights?
What Are the Effects of Childhood Abuse on Serial Killing Behavior?
How Are the Serial Killers Portrayed in Hollywood Compare to Real-Life Serial Killers?
What Are Some of the Trademarks of Female Serial Killers?
Do Serial Killer Partners Always Have a Dominant Personality and a Submissive Personality?
How Has Modern Technology and Criminology Made It More Difficult for Serial Killers to Remain at Large?
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The 25 Best True-Crime Documentaries to Binge Right Now

By Matthew Jacobs

The 25 Best TrueCrime Documentaries to Binge Right Now

Everywhere you look, there’s more of it. True crime has taken over Hollywood, with networks and streaming services pumping out nonfiction accounts of scandalous misdeeds, wrongful convictions, and sordid scams at a rate that even the genre's diehards struggle to keep up with. (See, for instance, this year’s massively gripping Netflix doc American Nightmare , or HBO’s highly anticipated continuation of The Jinx, coming soon.)

The best true-crime documentaries bring principled reportage to the intrigue they chronicle, giving equal or greater weight to the victims as to the perpetrators whose psychology seizes our collective imagination. This list attempts to encapsulate the format’s varying modes, from serious digests to seedy diversions; although one person’s true-crime trash is another’s treasure, these recommendations steer clear of the genre’s tawdriest impulses. All of our picks are available to stream or rent somewhere, and when you’re done, you can find dozens more at the ready.

The Central Park Five (2012)

One of the most devastating wrongful convictions of the 20th century put five innocent Black and Latino teenagers behind bars. Police coerced confessions out of them after a white woman was attacked and raped in Central Park in 1989, but the DNA evidence that exonerated the group more than a decade later has made the case an exemplar of racist law tactics. Ken Burns ’ vital documentary lays out how it happened, and the grave effect it had on all five men's lives.

Crazy Love (2007)

A somewhat forgotten highlight from an era when true crime wasn’t yet ubiquitous, Dan Klores and Fisher Stevens ’ thrill ride is a buffet of shocking details. The eponymous romance revolves around successful New York City attorney Burt Pugach, who had an extramarital affair with a younger woman and hired goons to attack her when she ended things. If you think that sounds wild, it’s only the start of the story. The New York Times once called the ordeal “one of the most celebrated crimes of passion in New York history.”

The Crime of the Century (2021)

Some crimes happen gradually, in boardrooms and backstage briberies. That’s the story of the United States’ ongoing opioid epidemic, which Alex Gibney chronicles in HBO’s blistering two-part exposé. The first installment tracks OxyContin, the addictive painkiller that spread largely because of bad faith deals made by certain greedy members of the Sackler family . The second delves into fentanyl, a widely manufactured drug that pharmaceutical executives enticed doctors to overprescribe. Gibney’s sources lay the blame on medical giants and lawmakers who have ignored the crisis. Given the gravity of the subject and its continued relevance, the documentary earns its resolute title.

The Keepers (2017)

This seven-part Netflix series’ tagline alone is compelling: “Who Killed Sister Cathy?” That would be Catherine Cesnik, a nun who disappeared at age 26 after students at a Catholic all-girls school confided in her about a priest who had sexually abused them. Her body was discovered two months later. The case remains unsolved, but director Ryan White ( The Case Against 8, Good Night Oppy ) sketches a thorough, damning connection between Cesnik’s death and the assault that occurred before she could speak up about it.

Cropsey (2009)

Want a documentary that’s also one of the most spine-chilling horror movies you’ve ever seen? Cropsey starts with an urban legend involving child abductions that gripped Staten Island throughout the 1970s. Locals spoke of a boogeyman with ties to an infamously abusive mental institution that was shuttered in 1987. Codirectors Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio trace the crimes, and their effects on a community haunted by the nightmarish kidnappings, to a Rikers Island inmate found guilty of similar terrors. Along the way, they encounter underground tunnels, purported Satan worship, serial killers, and a web of myth-building that raises all sorts of unsettling questions.

Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)

Wrenching and combative, Dear Zachary arraigns the Canadian justice system for its soft approach to a case involving director Kurt Kuenne 's childhood best friend, Andrew Bagby, a med school resident shot to death by his unstable ex-girlfriend. She later gave birth to his child, and Kuenne’s film follows Bagby’s parents as they seek custody in hopes of protecting their grandson. It’s also a tear-jerking ode to a life lost too soon, functioning as a record of a man whose absence has left his loved ones bereft.

I'll Be Gone in the Dark (2020)

Michelle McNamara was an obsessive true-crime blogger (and the wife of comedian Patton Oswalt ) who wrote a bestselling book of the same name about a prolific criminal she named the Golden State Killer. The HBO docuseries based on her work centers on McNamara’s investigation, focusing on the victims instead of their killer. It’s also a tender profile of McNamara herself, who died of a mixture of prescription drugs she’d ingested before she got to see the arrest that resulted from her tireless journalism.

The Imposter (2012)

Bart Layton 's juicy retelling of a French defrauder who convinced a Texas family that he was their long-lost relative invigorated the true-crime genre when it became an acclaimed hit in 2012. The Imposter isn’t only about a trickster—it’s also fixated on the chilling circumstances that led the family to fall for the ruse. Follow the film with David Grann ’s riveting New Yorker story about the same saga.

The Jinx (2015)

A cultural sensation when it debuted on HBO, The Jinx came about in the strangest possible way. Director Andrew Jerecki ( Capturing the Friedmans ) made a little-seen fiction movie inspired by the three murders that New York real estate heir Robert Durst was accused of committing, and Durst liked it enough to ask Jerecki if he’d care to make a documentary about him. (Being portrayed by Ryan Gosling would be a glow-up for anyone.) In the process, Durst became a public spectacle and further incriminated himself. The six-part series is a fascinating study of criminality, wealthy family resentments, and warped self-mythology. Apparently, there’s more to the story too: HBO recently announced a second season.

Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York (2023)

The name of the murderer in HBO’s four-part Last Call isn’t revealed until the end of the third episode. The series’ focus is not the psychology of the perpetrator—it’s the lives of his victims, gay and bisexual men in the Northeast. These deaths, occurring shortly before and during the AIDS crisis, happened at a time when law enforcement and the government weren’t inclined to lend queer people a helping hand in the first place. In adapting Elon Green 's book from 2021, director Anthony Caronna ( Susanne Bartsch: On Top ) plots an exhaustive portrait of a demographic haunted by a body politic that didn’t want much to do with them.

Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God (2023)

Like most industries, cult management is dominated by men. The saga of Amy “Mother God” Carlson , a self-appointed messiah whose followers live streamed their conspiratorial New Age spiritualism on YouTube for all to see, offers a refreshing gender swap. Carlson convinced her disciples to abandon the so-called 3D world for a Colorado commune where they fed her the supposed panacea that eventually helped to kill her. Director Hannah Olson ( The Last Cruise ) had access to scores of footage revealing the group’s vexing dynamics, which makes Love Has Won one of the most vivid and ridiculous cult snapshots yet.

Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art (2020)

Art theft and forgery have become their own documentary subgenre (see also: This Is a Robbery, The Painter and the Thief, Art and Craft ). Any of those titles are worthwhile, but Made You Look has a particularly intriguing setup: the most successful high-end forgery scam ever pulled off in the art world. It started with a Mark Rothko painting that sold for $5.5 million at auction, and then ballooned to include more than 60 dupes credited to the likes of Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol. The perpetrator had enough talent to convince a gallery director and art experts that the pieces were authentic, which makes the film somewhat existential: In an industry so committed to legitimacy, how can counterfeits slip by?

Making a Murderer (2015–2018)

A lightning rod for discourse about police misconduct, wrongful convictions, and the ethics of true crime, Making a Murderer arrived like a dispatch from a near future in which the genre took over the world. That’s essentially what happened after Netflix released its first season, a watercooler fixture focused on a Wisconsin exoneree charged with murder while pursuing a lawsuit concerning his earlier sentencing. Enthusiasm for unseemly transgressions was nothing new, but the copycats that Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos ’ Emmy-winning series inspired are still inescapable. (Also check out American Vandal , a pitch-perfect parody.)

McMillions (2020)

When we think of true crime, we tend to think of three things: murder, cults, and corporate subterfuge. McMillions is a shining example of the latter. In six episodes, the series unpacks a 12-year, $24 million fraud scheme in which a former cop nicknamed “Uncle Jerry” gamed his way through the Monopoly stickers that won lucky McDonald’s customers money. Jerry was the head of security at the marketing company running the fast-food chain’s promotions, which allowed him to rig the competition with the help of a criminal cabal that included alleged mafia connections. His scam gets the tantalizing treatment it deserves thanks to this HBO romp.

Mommy Dead and Dearest (2017)

Even if you already know the particulars, the mother-daughter psychodrama at the center of this HBO doc is stunning. Erin Lee Carr, who also made Thought Crimes: The Case of the Cannibal Cop and I Love You, Now Die: The Commonwealth V. Michelle Carter, peels back the curtain on a Munchausen-syndrome-by-proxy calamity that gripped the internet in the mid-2010s and inspired Hulu's The Act . In a nutshell, Dee Dee Blanchard, a seemingly cheerful Mississippi woman, was killed by her daughter, whose myriad illnesses she had induced or outright invented. Mommy Dead and Dearest recounts one of this century’s most twisted true-crime sensations.

O.J.: Made in America (2016)

During the brief period when movies released both theatrically and on television could receive Oscar and Emmy nominations, O.J.: Made in America won both. It also garnered a Peabody Award and a handful of other prizes, proving what a magnum opus it was for sports documentarian Ezra Edelmen. Clocking in at nearly eight hours (split into five episodes for TV), Made in America is worth every minute. It's sort of an anti-true-crime doc, foregoing sensationalism to assess the infamous athlete’s scandals through the thorny lenses of race, athletics, and celebrity culture.

Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)

Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky ’s sprawling film won raves for its insider access to a notorious court case involving teenage boys, known as the West Memphis Three, convicted under dubious circumstances for the murder of three kids during a supposed Satanic ritual. To this day, Paradise Lost contains some of the most thorough footage seen in a true-crime film, including video from inside the courtroom and in the judge’s chambers. The movie spawned two sequels depicting the men’s quest to prove their innocence .

Prophet’s Prey (2015)

Several of Oscar-nominated director Amy Berg ’s documentaries could qualify for this list. There’s Deliver Us From Evil, about a Catholic priest who molested 25 children; West of Memphis, about the West Memphis Three; and The Case Against Adnan Syed, which reexamines the proceedings that inspired the hit podcast Serial. In Prophet’s Prey , Berg turns her attention to Warren Jeffs, the president of a fundamentalist Mormon sect that is really a polygamist cult. Convicted on two counts of child sexual abuse, Jeffs is currently serving a life sentence. The film charts his rise and fall as a leader who used religion to mask villainy.

The Staircase (2004)

French director Jean-Xavier de Lestrade followed his Oscar-winning wrongful-conviction doc Murder on a Sunday Morning with this knotty miniseries about the trial of war novelist Michael Peterson, who was convicted of killing his wife in 2001. Peterson has maintained his innocence, and theories about what happened that night abound. What started as an eight-episode chronicle has since ballooned to 13, with follow-ups covering new revelations in the case. The details still spark intrigue, as evidenced by Max's popular scripted series from 2022 starring Colin Firth and Toni Collette.

Strong Island (2017)

In April 1992, Yance Ford ’s brother, an unarmed 24-year-old teacher on Long Island, was shot and killed when he confronted a white man about a repair at an auto body shop. A grand jury opted not to indict the suspect, sending Ford’s already stunned relatives into an existential tailspin. The filmmaker, known for his work with PBS and on the queer-history docuseries Pride, became the first openly transgender director nominated for an Oscar when Strong Island made the Best Documentary Feature roster. The movie revisits the inciting incident and explores how it reshaped his family.

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

No true-crime list would be complete without the genre’s urtext. Errol Morris ’s influential film examines the case of a Dallas man convicted for the murder of a police officer, in turn revealing his innocence and identifying the actual killer. At the time, the techniques employed in The Thin Blue Line were radical. Morris treats his subjects like characters in a fiction story, and his stylized music and aesthetics flout the vérité objectivity that was more or less seen as essential to documentary filmmaking at the time. Even his reenactments—once considered sacrilege in nonfiction—were controversial enough to keep the movie from Oscar consideration. Today, the entire form owes some debt to Morris and The Thin Blue Line .

Time: The Kalief Browder Story (2017)

This searing six-part series isn’t about hair-raising murder or corporate chicanery. Instead, Time ’s subject matter is all too human. Kalief Browder was 16 when Bronx police booked him for allegedly stealing a backpack, a nightmare that resulted in a three-year Rikers Island incarceration—two of which were spent in solitary confinement—without a trial or formal conviction. Director Jenner Furst, who has since made glossier true-crime hits like LuLaRich and The Pharmacist, launches from Browder’s story into an indictment of the prison system and the racist laws that prompted this injustice.

Tower (2016)

The first mass school shooting in the United States occurred in 1966 when a sniper killed 16 people and wounded three dozen others from atop a University of Texas building in Austin. Adapting a Texas Monthly article , director Keith Maitland combines archival footage and rotoscope animation to recount what transpired that fateful day. It’s not an easy watch, but Tower memorializes a harrowing turning point in American history.

Voyeur (2017)

Ostensibly, Voyeur is about a Colorado motel owner who installed a platform from which he could spy on guests having sex. But it’s as much about journalistic malpractice as it is invasion of privacy. Gay Talese published a book about the eponymous father of two in 2016, revealing that the man allegedly witnessed a murder and did nothing to stop it. Fact-checkers called some of Talese’s reportage into question, after which Talese temporarily disavowed the book. Voyeur directors Josh Koury and Myles Kane blend these interconnected sagas—the owner’s predation, Talese’s secondhand fabulism—into a multipronged ethical audit.

Wild Wild Country (2018)

Many cult documentaries, like Holy Hell and The Vow, start by surveying makeshift utopias. What would it be like to join a like-minded cohort in an enclave unburdened by everyday reality? Then, without fail, things darken. Wild Wild Country , arguably the most gripping cult doc to date, follows Rajneeshpuram, a spiritual-sexual ashram that began in India and moved to rural Oregon under the guardianship of a demigod whose top deputy was convicted for attempted murder and assault. Along the way, the maroon-clad group allegedly committed bioterrorism, arson, and immigration crimes. Emmy-winning directors Chapman Way and Maclain Way combine fascinating footage of the commune with present-day interviews and news archives to paint a detailed portrait of life inside Rajneeshpuram.

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The 24 best true crime books about everything from notorious serial killers to horrifying cults

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From podcasts to documentaries, true crime stories are everywhere.
True crime books are highly researched accounts of great tragedies.
Our recommendations include notorious killers and cold case murders.

From murder podcasts to crime documentaries, many of us love the stories behind real crimes. True crime books are highly researched nonfiction reads that detail the people and events surrounding serial murders, kidnappings, and other terrible crimes. Some true crime reads are even memoirs, written by those closest to the tragedies.

Whether you're fascinated by the true crime genre or are interested in a specific story, these true crime reads take us into the center of it all. These recommendations are bestsellers on Amazon and Bookshop, highly rated favorites from Goodreads reviewers, and page-turners about some of the most notorious crimes in history.

The 24 best true crime books in 2022:

A memoir from a notorious cold case investigator.

"Unmasked: My Life Solving America's Cold Cases" by Paul Holes, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $17.62

Paul Holes was a cold case investigator known for his work on cases like the Zodiac Killer, Laci Peterson, Jaycee Dugard, and, most notably, the Golden State Killer. This true crime memoir looks back on his rewarding and draining career of tracking down killers and sacrificing relationships to bring closure to others.

A true crime investigation into the Golden State Killer

"I'll Be Gone in the Dark" by Michelle McNamara, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $13.27

The Golden State Killer terrorized California for more than 10 years, committing more than 50 sexual assaults and 10 violent murders before disappearing. Though the police were unable to identify or locate the man, Michelle McNamara was an investigative journalist who was determined to bring him to justice. This book is the fast-paced account of her efforts, and a compelling accumulation of years of dedicated work. Michelle McNamara passed away suddenly during her investigation, but her lead researcher and her husband, Patton Oswalt, collaborated to finish this story, a compelling accumulation of years of dedicated work.

A narrative nonfiction story of survival

"Walking the Bowl: A True Story of Murder and Survival Among the Street Children of Lusaka" by Chris Lockhart & Daniel Mulilo Chama, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $20.68

This true story of survival and endurance centers around the murder investigation of a 10-year-old boy whose body was found in a Lusaka landfill. It follows four children — Moonga, Timo, Lusabilo, and Kapula — in a narrative nonfiction story of their daily lives and those of other "street kids."

A literary true crime classic

"In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $10.29

"In Cold Blood" is a true crime classic, one that reconstructs a senseless murder of four family members in 1959 Kansas, each killed by a shotgun blast inches from their faces. Truman Capote's writing reads like a thriller as he breeds suspense through journalistic research of the crime, the investigation, and the ultimate execution of the killers. This is an in-depth look at the criminals who left almost no clues for the investigators, a book that was once required reading in many schools and now a favorite amongst true crime readers for the depth of characterization and Truman's unique and alluring use of language.

"The Road to Jonestown: Jim Jones and Peoples Temple" by Jeff Guinn, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $14.59

"The Road to Jonestown" is a comprehensive true crime tale of Jim Jones, who was ultimately responsible for the largest murder-suicide in American history. This narrative read follows Jones from his time as a young minister, through affairs and drug use, to the events that lead to the Jonestown Massacre.

The true story and effects of the Highway of Tears

"Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls" by Jessica McDiarmid, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $14.89

This true crime read is a history of the Indigenous women who have gone missing or been found murdered along the isolated Highway 16 in British Columbia. Through a series of interviews with those closest to the victims, this nonfiction book examines the effects of these tragedies, the cultural tensions, and the system that has continuously failed Ingedinous people.

A true crime read that unravels a bestselling diary

"Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World's Most Notorious Diaries" by Rick Emerson, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $22.57

In 1971, a diary called "Go Ask Alice," which outlined a teenager's destructive descent, was anonymously published and has since sold five million copies. "Unmask Alice" unravels the literary deception of this book and "Jay's Journal," both of which captivated readers with their startling content.

A detailed dive into decades of Hollywood abuse

"Catch and Kill: Lies, Spies, and a Conspiracy to Protect Predators" by Ronan Farrow, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $14.90

The investigative story of the abuses and cover-ups surrounding Harvey Weinstein, this true crime book reads like a thriller. Ronan Farrow is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist who fought against an elaborate web of lies to expose the outrageous truths of predatory sexual and harassment in Hollywood, not only from Weinstein but from an industry of offenders who abused their power and silenced their victims. While many readers are likely familiar with this story due to its high publicity, Farrow's elaborate takedown of powerful abusers is worth reading about in detail.

An inside look into an elaborate con

"Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup" by John Carreyrou, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $11.45

Elizabeth Holmes was the CEO of Theranos, a company that revolutionized the medical industry with a machine that would make blood tests faster and easier. Seen as the female Steve Jobs and hailed as a genius across the media, Elizabeth's net worth quickly rocketed to $4.7 billion and her company to $9 billion — until it was discovered that her product didn't work. The book outlines how one woman managed to defraud medical facilities, FDA researchers, and her own employees, a story of unparalleled corporate fraud and unchecked greed.

A deep-rooted true crime conspiracy resulting in a string of murders

"Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI" by David Grann, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.16

When oil was discovered beneath the land of the native Osage in Oklahoma in the 1920s, they became some of the richest people in the world. But, slowly, the Osage were being killed or dying under mysterious circumstances. As the death toll reached 24, the newly established FBI began to investigate. Famously corrupt at the time, the FBI failed to solve the case until the director teamed up with one of the only Indigenous agents to uncover the mystery around one of the most sinister conspiracies in American history. This shocking historical injustice is an important piece of purposefully buried history that needs to be told.

A spotlight on a bloody guerilla campaign and its civilian victims

"Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland" by Patrick Radden Keefe, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $10.99

"The Troubles" was a 30-year conflict in Northern Ireland that began as an effort to end discrimination of the Catholic, nationalist minority. It was a guerilla campaign, with more than half of the people killed being civilians, the Irish Republican Army (IRA) responsible for most of the deaths. "Say Nothing" is the story of the brutal murders committed in the name of this campaign, including that of Jean McConville in 1972, a mother of 10 who was abducted from her home and whose body wasn't discovered until 2003. This is an intricate narrative that used over 100 interviews to construct a portrait of the lasting repercussions of this conflict.

A shocking true crime memoir of survival and forgiveness

"The Pale-Faced Lie" by David Crow, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $13.39

This is a memoir of true crime, the story of David Crow's unlikely survival and success despite a chaotic and traumatic upbringing. David grew up on the Navajo Reservation with his ex-convict father who viciously manipulated him into criminal demands. After managing to escape his father's remorseless grasp, David reaches a climax with his father where he must outsmart him to survive. This is a simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming story of the lifelong process of forgiveness despite years of abuse, an insightful and inspirational memoir of resilience.

A true story of survival in the face of maternal evil

"If You Tell: A True Story of Murder, Family Secrets, and the Unbreakable Bond of Sisterhood" by Gregg Olson, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $11.99

"If You Tell" is a disturbing read about torture, abuse, and murder from a pscyophathic mother and the bond the sisters used to survive. This book brings to light, in detail, the horrors of torture and neglect that Nikki, Sami, and Tori Knotek endured and held secret through childhood. The story is intense, using the narratives from the daughters, husband, neighbors, and friends to paint the picture of a woman who subjected her children to unspeakable trauma. It is a heartbreaking story of survival, one of three women's exceptional bravery in the face of evil.

A unique perspective on the Ted Bundy story

"The Stranger Beside Me: The Shocking Inside Story of Serial Killer Ted Bundy" by Ann Rule, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $15.99

When Ann Rule, a true crime writer, signed on to write a book about a brutal serial killer of young women, she didn't know it would be about a man with whom she had a lasting friendship — Ted Bundy. Ann struggled to understand how her intelligent and charismatic coworker at the crisis center in Seattle could be accused of such horrific crimes. Refusing to be embarrassed by being fooled by Ted, this book is biographical and autobiographical, telling the story of the notorious and charming serial killer while also narrating Ann's difficulty to accept such a heavy reality.

The story of a hate crime that fueled the Civil Rights movement

"The Blood of Emmett Till" by Timothy B. Tyson, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $14.49

In 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till was killed after being accused of offending a white woman in a grocery store. This hate crime, in combination with his mother's actions afterwards, spurred a wave of activism in the Civil Rights movement including sit-ins, Rosa Parks' famous "no," and a Supreme Court decision making segregation unconstitutional. This book tells Emmett's story, with new evidence including an admission of innocence from the woman he was accused of offending.

The investigative journalism that brought justice to unsolved crimes

"Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era" by Jerry Mitchell, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.49

Jerry Mitchell's work around this true crime book helped reopen decades-old cases left unsolved due to bigoted corruption. In 1964, more than 20 Klansmen killed three Civil Rights activists in what would be known as the Mississippi Burning — a hate crime that took more than 40 years to see convictions. Mitchell profiles the assassination of Medgar Evers, the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombings, the firebombing of Vernon Dahomey, and the Mississippi Burning in his book. His commitment to justice resulted in prison sentences for four Klansmen.

The true story of a gruesome murder

"The Evil Within: The Heartbreaking Story of Becky Watts by her Father" by Darren Galsworthy, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.15

This is the shocking story of Becky Watts, murdered and dismembered by her stepbrother in February 2015. Her father, the author, investigates the darkness around his stepson, who he raised as his own, and the strange relationship between him and Becky. It also recounts the nightmarish trial, a story that refuses to shy away from the truth despite the constant pain surrounding every aspect of the account. Used as a tool to help conquer the grief, Becky's father writes a heartbreaking story of a parent's experience beyond devastation and the heartwarming growth of community around Becky's murder.

A true crime account of an infamous series of cult murders

"Helter Skelter: The True Story of the Manson Murders" by Vincent Bugliosi and Curt Gentry, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $12.20

The Manson Family was a 50-person commune and cult led by Charles Manson , responsible for at least nine murders in the 1960s and 1970s. Written by the prosecuting attorney in the Manson trial, this true crime book offers a detailed, first-hand account of the proceedings of the Tate-LaBianca murders from 1969. Carried out by Manson and four of his followers, the murders appeared senseless and random, his cult intriguing and instilling fear worldwide. This is a shocking narrative, gripping and filled with more details than ever before of the murders, the trial, and the societal fascination surrounding the crimes.

The powerful truth behind a horrible massacre

"Columbine" by Dave Cullen, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $15.49

Hailed as a definitive account of the school shooting in 1999, Dave Cullen spent more than 10 years meticulously reporting and investigating the teenage killers responsible for a high school massacre. This is a harrowing chronicle of the shooting and attempted bombing as well as a year-by-year story of the survivors, the victims' families, and the narrative that shifted as time passed. Cullen analyzes the violence with survivor accounts, evidence from the investigation, and words from the shooters to create a vivid report of a grave tragedy.

The shocking story of an Australian arsonist

"The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire" by Chloe Hooper, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $16.94

This story is about Black Saturday — a series of fires lit in 2009 that became one of the most devastating bushfire disasters in Australia, killing 173 people and destroying approximately 1.1 million acres and 2,000 homes. Hooper uses brilliant storytelling and narrative nonfiction to follow the hunt for a man who lit two fires, analyzing the psyche of the arsonist in combination with the survivors, detectives, and defense lawyers to create an unsettling read of the painful journey to justice.

A historical restoration of humanity to forgotten victims

"The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed" by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $10.49

In 1888, five women — Polly, Annie, Elizabeth, Catherine, and Mary-Jane — had little in common despite their murders by an unidentified man dubbed "Jack the Ripper." As the personality coined to fill the gap grew, the stories of these women were buried beneath a narrative of a serial killer who targeted "prostitutes" — a false narrative that resulted in the dismissal of the victims by a society that devalued sex workers. More than a century later, Hallie Rubenhold profiles the difficult lives of these Victorian women that history chose to forget, restoring the humanity of the victims diminished by the legend of "Jack the Ripper."

The real investigation that led to justice

"Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three" by Mara Leveritt, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $13.33

"Devil's Knot" is a highly researched account of three men released after 18 years in prison, despite two life sentences and one death sentence. In 1933, three teenagers, alleged members of a satanic cult, were charged with the murders of three 8-year-old boys. This book outlines the investigation and conviction as well as how their unprecentented release from prison was a miscarriage of justice set right. It is a terrifying case, one that incites anger from readers over a narrow-minded town and the "witch hunt" style trial driven by fear that put three teenagers in prison.

The true story of assaults on one college campus

"Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town" by Jon Krakauer, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $15.31

This is the horrifying story of how law enforcement failed the rape victims at the University of Montana, where the Department of Justice investigated over 350 sexual assaults between 2008 and 2012. Jon Krakauer used interviews and discarded evidence to show how police and the school chose to believe the accused even when there was surmounting evidence from the victims. The horrible experiences of several women in Missoula demonstrate the importance of taking sexual assault allegations on campus seriously.

A true crime story that reads like fiction

"The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America" by Erik Larson, available on Amazon and Bookshop , from $9.50

This book uses alternating narratives to tell the story of two men during the construction of the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. Daniel Burnham, an architect, was tasked to construct the "White City" that would save Chicago's reputation, despite nearly insurmountable personal and professional odds. Meanwhile, H.H. Holmes used his charm and newly constructed hotel to lure women into gruesome horrors that would lead to their untimely deaths. This true crime nonfiction book is so elaborately researched and written, it reads like a historical fiction thriller.

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The Best True Crime Books of 2019

A look at the year's best crime nonfiction..

If anyone came into 2019 thinking true crime had had its day, well, hopefully you didn’t put too much money down on that wager. The phenomenon continues, and why shouldn’t it? The kinds of true crime stories authors, podcasters, and documentary makers are telling seem to get more sophisticated, nuanced, and emotionally powerful with each passing year. The crime stories the culture is consuming with such a voracious appetite aren’t the lurid, semi-exploitative tales of yesteryear, but rather ambitious and empathetic portraits of crime and its effects. 2019 saw an increasing shift toward the perspective and stories of victims and of the historically voiceless. It saw, also, some of the hardest-hitting, most urgent investigative journalism of the day. In short, everything good nonfiction literature should be can be found right here in the true crime space.

It’s been a rewarding, illuminating year for true crime readers, and there’s every sign of more to come. For now, we’re looking back at the very best and most accomplished crime nonfiction books of the year, with a host of notable selections below.

Patrick Radden Keefe, Say Nothing (Doubleday)

In Say Nothing , Patrick Radden Keefe takes us into the murky history of the Irish Troubles’ Disappeared—a flashpoint both during the conflict and in the ability to process its legacy. Keefe traces the history of the Troubles through the murder of a mother of eight, kidnapped for her supposed support for the British. Keefe uses this single incident as a jumping off point to explore every aspect of the conflict, and in particular, the memorialization of conflict through oral history projects (when Boston College embarked on an effort to record the stories of the conflict, the IRA had fractured over the Good Friday Agreement and some were willing to talk; their stories ended up leading to a surprising reckoning both in Ireland and abroad). A thrilling tale all the more harrowing because it is entirely true, Keefe’s magnum opus takes us through the personal and political for a story as human as it is honest. Beautifully and forcefully written, well-researched, and not to be missed.

Peter Houlahan, Norco ‘80 (Counterpoint)

Southern California in the 1970s was a bank robbery hot zone, but there was one robbery in particular that caught public attention, shifted law enforcement tactics and attitudes, and seemed to incorporate strands of nearly all the day’s cultural movements, from the self-help gurus sweeping the state to the militarization of grassroots ideological collectives. Peter Houlahan tells the story of a small outfit of bank robbers who started out small-time and followed their apocalyptic leader onto the national stage as a job turns violent. Like American Heiress in the summer of 2016, this looks like the true crime book that will launch a hundred conversations.

Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Scribner)

Rachel Monroe’s essay collection Savage Appetites is a revelation. There’s been a host of articles over the past decade (and further) asking why women love true crime (as if this should even be a question, given how long feminine ghoulishness has been an established fact). While most like to embrace a simplistic answer that has women interested in true crime as a mode of self-protection, Rachel Monroe knows that the answer is far more complicated. Through examining four archetypes of true crime obsession, illustrated by the cases of four distinct women, Monroe is able to present a layered portrait of women with a host of motivations, not all flattering, but all equally valid. Savage Appetites is one of several books to come out interrogating our societal interest in true crime, and our need to second-guess the interests of women.

Jessica McDiarmid, Highway of Tears (Atria)

Jessica McDiarmid’s Highway of Tears is, quite possibly, the most depressing book ever read; partly because it depicts an ongoing crisis, but also because this crisis, despite massive public outcry, has failed to be addressed. For decades, Indigenous women and girls have been disappearing along the notorious “Highway of Tears” in British Columbia, where young women with few transportation options are often forced to hitchhike as the only way to get where they need to be, and where cell phone service and police call buttons are virtually nonexistent. National outcry spurred by Indigenous activism led to a plan by the Canadian government to increase safety measures along the highway, but with little budget and an increasingly conservative political stance, the government has failed to implement any of these safety measures. McDiarmid concludes the book not with the capture of a killer (or killers, as is suspected), but with the announcement that protections for Indigenous women and girls in Northern British Columbia are so poor, and removal of children from parents so frequent, as to constitute a modern-day genocide.

Cara Robertson, The Trial of Lizzie Borden (Simon & Schuster)

We’ll never stop being curious about Lizzie Borden, or the legal machinations that helped her get away scot-free, and The Trial of Lizzie Borden satisfies on both fronts. This meticulously researched true crime account of Lizzie Borden’s dramatic trial brings in newly unearthed materials for a novel take on a case that continues to fascinate and horrify in equal measure. Of particular note is Robertson’s choice to not speculate about Borden’s likely guilt or innocence, but instead to focus on what interest in the case revealed about the stifling lives of upper-class women of the era.

Anita Anand, The Patient Assassin (Scribner)

In 1919, the dusty gathering place of Jallianwallah Bagh in the Northeastern Indian city of Amritsar became the site of a shocking bloodbath when British efforts to suppress perceived local unrest turned violent, and British soldiers opened fire into the crowd. A young man named Udham Singh swore vengeance against the British commanders responsible for the massacre, and spent the next 20 years engaged in a quest for vengeance that would take him all over the story. Anita Anand uses Singh’s life to tell not only a thrilling story of adventure and vengeance, but also to explore the harsh methods used to keep colonial hierarchies in place.

Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Stories of the Victim of Jack the Ripper (Scribner) [OR]

The premise of Hallie Rubenhold’s fastidious and respectful book is so intuitive and obvious it’s horrifying that no one has presented its argument to such a thorough extent before: it profiles the five women who were killed by Jack the Ripper during the famous Whitechapel murder spree in 1888. In 131 years of cultural fascination with Jack the Ripper, the emphasis has largely been on the anonymous serial killer, and not on the five women whose lives not only completely ended at his hand, but were also absorbed into his legacy: Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes and Mary Jane Kelly. The book honors them; it is about their entire lives before their tragic ends, illuminating what it meant to live as a woman in Victorian society rather than die as one.

James Polchin, Indecent Advances (Counterpoint)

Polchin’s harrowing account of the history of violence against queer men hits shelves on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. It’s perfect timing for a book that dives deep into these never-before-told true crimes, and looks at the power mainstream messaging had on both the violence and the mounting resistance. Resurrecting a forgotten era of queer history, Polchin masterfully weaves brutal true crime research with critical analysis of the social history, exploring the way the media and nascent psychological theories were weaponizing prejudice and perpetuating a deviant stereotype of gay men.

Evan Ratliff, The Mastermind (Random House)

Ratliff has been opening eyes with his penetrating journalism from far-flung corners of the tech and criminal underworld for years, putting him in a perfect position to tell the shocking story of Paul LeRoux, a crime kingpin for the new century. LeRoux began as a programmer who saw a gap in the internet’s black market and began to fill it—with drugs, guns, and eventually all manner of contraband and illicit activity, building one of the world’s most formidable and deft criminal networks. Ratliff’s investigative chops and tech savvy are second-to-none, and in The Mastermind he’s able to tell both a gripping true crime story and a larger tale about the evolution of organized crime in the internet era.

Mark Bowden, The Last Stone (Atlantic Monthly)

In 1975, two girls were kidnapped from a mall outside Washington D.C. The kidnappers left few viable clues and while the region was glued to the story, authorities were stymied. Almost forty years later, a detective’s revelation sparked a new investigation into the case and a suspect imprisoned on other charges who, along with his reclusive family, seems hellbent on keeping his secrets. Bowden, now an acclaimed author of epic crime and war histories, knows the case inside and out—he was a young reporter just starting out in Baltimore when he was tasked with covering the story. In The Last Stone, he dives back into the case alongside the detectives and tells with enormous skill and empathy the story of those missing girls and the effort to bring their assailants to justice.

___________________________________

Notable Selections

Randall Sullivan, Dead Wrong: The Continuing Story of City of Lies, Corruption and Cover-Up In the Notorious BIG murder Investigation (Atlantic Monthly Press) · Maureen Callahan, American Predator (Viking) · Claire Harman, Murder by the Book: The Crime That Shocked Dickens’s London (Knopf) · JoeAnn Hart, Stamford ‘76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race and Feminism in the 1970s (UOI Press) · Matthew McGough, The Lazarus Files: A Cold Case Investigation (Henry Holt) · Dan Bilefsky, The Last Job: The “Bad Grandpas” and the Hatton Garden Heist (W.W. Norton) · Carson Vaughan, Zoo, Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream (Little A) · Josh Levin, The Queen (Little, Brown) · Casey Cep, Furious Hours (Knopf) · Kate Fazzini, Kingdom of Lies (St. Martin’s) · Ryan Jacobs, The Truffle Underground (Clarkson Potter) · Karen Abbott, The Ghosts of Eden Park (Crown) · Fred Vermoral, Dead Fashion Girl (Strange Attractor Press) · Sady Doyle, Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers (HMH) ·

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50+ True Crime Stories That Will Shock You To Your Core

These true crime stories are so horrific, it’s difficult to believe they actually happened, or that human beings could be capable of committing such atrocities. And yet, these stories are indeed all true. Sometimes, real life is a lot grimmer than fiction. Sometimes, real life involves murder, abduction, betrayal, torture, and death…

12 True Creepy Crimes That Will Make You Lock Your Doors Tonight

1. angela hammond.

“She was talking on the payphone with her fiance and saying how there is this suspicious truck that keeps driving around the block. Then, that truck parks near her where the payphone is, he gets out and starts looking around with his flashlight as if he lost something, then he confronts Angela and abducts her. Her fiance heard all of this on the other line and immediately got in his car to drive where Angela was. When doing so, he drove past the guy in the truck and Angela was apparently screaming his name for help, so he turns around and tries following the truck and his transmission fucks up and the guy got away. Angela has never been heard from again. And, she was pregnant.”

2. Annie Borjesson

“I find the case of Annie Borjesson really weird. She was a Swedish student studying in Edinburgh. She then went to Prestwick airport (literally the other side of the country, then down a bit), caught on CCTV at the airport for ten seconds, then left. She tried to take out money multiple times from different ATMs, but didn’t have the funds so was denied. She was seen wandering about Prestwick, and then was found dead on the beach. Her long hair had been cut off, and the post mortem (as far as I have read) concluded death by drowning.

She may have been victim to foul play, or it was suicide. I also found that her parents’ e-mails were allegedly hacked later on. It may be a case of self-inflicted violence/mental health issues, but I find Annie’s case just so bizarre and sad.”

3. The Hinterkaifeck Murders

“The Hinterkaifeck murders . A family saw footprints in the snow leading to their farm, but no footprints out of the farm. A few days later, they were killed in their own home. There was evidence that the perpetrators were staying in their house or the farm before the killings.

It’s creepy because your house is supposed to be the safest place. It’s hard to feel secure when you think about the possibility that your killer may be living with you without you noticing.”

4. Dorothy Scott

“I was just reading about Dorothy Scott recently. Her story is the saddest, and the creepiest was the bones of the dead dog the killer left on top of her remains to throw scavenger dogs off of his trail. Also, how her watch was stopped to the exact moment she died. I just can’t believe that he called her family so often and they could never trace the calls…I know it was the times though. But the whole thing is so horrifying.”

5. Brandon Swanson

“For those who are not familiar with his story, Brandon was a 19 year old who lived in Marshall, MN. He was returning home from a party recently celebrating his graduation from a community college up in a town north of Marshall called Canby and was on his way home.

Along the way home he crashed in a ditch. For some reason he was taking gravel roads even though the highway between the two towns was a straight shot North to South. I am guessing he took this route as a joy ride type of thing since he loved his car and driving in general or maybe he had a little too much to drink at the party and didn’t want to deal with any state troopers on patrol. He called his dad for a ride and eventually got tired of waiting inside his crashed car and started to walk towards Marshall. He claimed to his dad to see ‘lights’ of something nearby then abruptly exclaimed “Oh shit!” to his dad while still on the phone and his call ended. To this day no one knows what happened to him. No body found, none of his belongings found, nothing. There’s more to the story but that’s my summary. If you want to learn more just dig around.

My guess on what happened to Brandon is either he slipped and fell in a river due to not being able to see in the darkness, got shot and buried somewhere by a belligerent farmer who hated people trespassing on his property and would rather shoot then ask questions or was abducted by aliens (which would explain the lights). This case just creeps me out because I too live in Southern MN and I’m semi familiar with the Marshall area. It’s mostly flat farmlands around here so I really do not understand how someone can just disappear into thin air in the middle of nowhere without a body or any remains being found.”

6. The Bennington Triangle Disappearances

“Beginning in November 1945 through October 1950, five people — ages 8- to 74-years-old — went missing in the area. One was an experienced hunting guide and another was a 53-year-old woman described as an experienced camper and hiker who knew the area like the back of her hand. I’ve hiked Vermont’s Long Trail myself and there are places where you get a feeling of being watched by someone or some “thing.” In 2008, an instructor at Bennington College and experienced hiker got lost on the mountain, later recounted his strange experiences and swore he would never again hike the trail alone.”

7. The Setagaya Family

“The killer stayed in the house for hours, eating their [the Setagaya family’s ] food, logging into the family computer and sleeping on their couch. It’s so creepy because rarely does a killer stick around for hours after they commit their crime making themselves at home.”

8. Brandon Lawson

“Ran out of gas in Middle of Nowhere, TX in 2013. Called the cops, much of it is inaudible but he implies he’s being chased into the woods, and says he needs the cops. When police arrived, they find his truck but nothing else. Not a trace of him since.”

9. Katarzyna Zowada (The “Skin case”)

“A young Polish student disappears in Krakow city.

Few months later a ship on the Vistula river stops because ‘something’ stuck into a propeller. What they have found surprised everyone.

They have gotten out a… skin of missing Katarzyna Zowada . To be more precise: A suit made of human skin. Someone had cut all the limbs and head then created a ‘body suit’ from remaining part which was probably worn by the murderer for some time.

Despite media attention and increased police interest every few years a perpetrator never had been found.”

10. Cassie Jo Stoddart

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZNFpZfMnew

“She [ Cassie Jo Stoddart ] was house-sitting for her aunt. She invited her boyfriend over and his two friends came over as well. His friends left and said they were going to the movies. They didn’t.

At some point before “leaving”, they unlocked a basement door, unbeknownst to her. They shut the power off to scare her. They sat there (hiding) until her boyfriend left and she was alone and proceeded to put masks on, come in the house and stab her. If that isn’t bad enough, a video was found where they planned to murder her ahead of time. There was footage of them right after they killed her as well.”

11. Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon

“Another creepy mystery that resonates with me is the disappearance of Kris Kremers and Lisanne Froon . Long story short, two Dutch girls visiting Panama decide to go on a hike a day before they were scheduled to meet a guide for a tour and they go missing the same night. 10 weeks later their remains and possessions are found down stream from where the girls were hiking.

What creeps me out the most about this disappearance is the pictures that were found on Lisanne’s camera that turned up in the remains. The pictures go from the usual nice pictures of landscapes and of the girls posing with landmarks to cryptic pictures of the darkness as what many assume were attempts to use the flash of the camera to act as a signal for rescuers. Also there was a photo of back of Kris’s head with what possibly looks like blood by her temple. Just the fact that no one knows what happened to these two during their time in the jungle is what is most unsettling about this mystery.”

12. Daniel LaPlante’s Murders

“ Daniel LaPlante is a triple murderer . He killed a nursery school teacher & her 2 kids in 1987. After a massive man-hunt they still could not find him. The ultra creepy thing is what happened. He was eventually discovered-after being on the run-in the closet of a girl he’d dated. She opened her door one night to see him standing there, in her mother’s clothes, face smeared with makeup, holding a machete. He tied her & her family up , but the youngest narrowly escaped. As if this isn’t bad enough, they AGAIN could not find him, till 2 weeks later. The family, who’d moved out, came back home and SAW LAPLANTE IN THE WINDOW. The police were called and later found out why he’d been so hard to find. Daniel had been living in the walls of his former girlfriend’s house the entire time.”

7 Of The Most Brutal Murders Ever Committed In The History Of The Human Race (NSFL)

1. the toolbox killer.

The transcript of what happened to Shirley Ledford at the hands of Toolbox Killers Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris is the most disturbing thing you will ever come across.

An excerpt from the transcript:

“At this point, after Bittaker had forced Shirley to fellate him, repeated sounds of an administered beating, interspersed with loud screams can be heard as Bittaker savagely beat Shirley about the breasts and, to a lesser degree, head. Bittaker then extracted his pliers from the tool box. Shirley then emits several high-pitched, prolonged screams and cries of agony as Bittaker alternately squeezes and twists her labia, clitoris, nipples and breasts with the pliers. Bittaker then returns the pliers to the tool box. Banging sounds can also be heard throughout, which are believed to have been made as Shirley came into contact with the walls and inner contents of the van as she writhed and flailed.”

Ledford: My God! Please stop it! (Screams) Bittaker: Is the recorder going? Norris: Yeah! Bittaker: Scream baby ! Scream some, baby.

2. Kelly Anne Bates

Bates was horrifically tortured for days before her tormentor finally killed her. Below are a few examples of what she went through.

According to Wikipedia , Kelly Anne Bates (18 May 1978 – 16 April 1996) was a British teenager murdered on 16 April 1996 at age 17 in Manchester after being tortured for four long weeks. Kelly’s eyes were gouged from their sockets up to three weeks before she actually died from drowning in a bathtub. These horrific crimes were committed by her partner, James Patterson Smith .

Below is a list from Wikipedia of the specific injuries Kelly Anne Bates endured through torture:

Scalding to her buttocks and left leg
Burns on her thigh caused by the application of a hot iron
A fractured arm
Multiple stab wounds caused by knives, forks and scissors
Stab wounds inside her mouth
Crush injuries to both hands
Mutilation of her ears, nose, eyebrows, mouth, lips and genitalia
Wounds caused by a spade and pruning shears
Both eyes gouged out
Later stab wounds to the empty eye sockets
Partial scalping

3. Junko Furuta

Furuta was a 17-year-old Japanese girl whose case became known as the “concrete-encased high school girl murder case.” Furuta was kidnapped by four teenage boys and, aside from the brutality of the assaults against her, the most disturbing thing is that she was held at one of the kidnapper’s houses and his parents were present the entire time, knew what was going on, and did nothing to stop it.

Also extremely disturbing is that Furuta turned 17 while she was in captivity and enduring these horrors. There’s something tremendously upsetting about that.

According to Wikipedia :

To avoid concern over her abduction, the perpetrators forced Furuta to call her parents and tell them that she would be staying at a friend’s house for a while. Over the course of her confinement, Furuta was repeatedly raped, beaten, and tortured by her four captors until they killed her. The parents of Kamisaku were present in the home for at least a part of the time that Furuta was held captive, and though she pleaded with them for help, they did not intervene, later claiming that they feared their son too much to do so.

The killers hid her corpse in a 208-litre oil drum filled with concrete. They disposed of the drum in a tract of reclaimed land in Kōtō, Tokyo.

4. The Hi-Fi Murders

In 1974, two men robbing a Hi-Fi store in Odgen, Utah held captive and tormented five individuals. Only two of the captives would survive. Among the sadism levied on the captives were the following, according to Wikipedia :

Violence included a pen being kicked into an ear and the brutal rape of a teenage girl who was later shot in the head. Corrosive drain cleaner was also forcefully given to the hostages causing horrific burns to their mouths and throats.

Not only were they forced to drink drain cleaner but their mouths were then taped shut so they couldn’t spit it out or vomit it up.

One of the victims, Orren Walker, was shot several times, strangled and had a pen kicked into his ear but still survived.

5. The McStay Family

In 2010, in Fallbrook, California, the McStay family (including Joseph McStay, his wife Summer, and their two children), was brutally murdered. The four were then moved by the killer and buried in a shallow grave in the desert but their remains weren’t found until 2013. For three years they’d simply believed to have disappeared.

Forensic evidence showed that all had been beaten to death with a sledgehammer which was found near the family’s remains. Joseph McStay suffered four blows to the head and the family’s youngest child, only four years old, suffered seven. Investigators also believe the family was tortured prior to being killed.

Charles Merritt, McStay’s former business partner has been charged with the family’s murder.

6. James Bulger

In 1993, in England, two-year-old James Bulger was abducted by two ten-year-olds at the mall while his mother was distracted.

After taking him from the mall, the two boys took Bulger on a two and a half mile walk. At one point they picked Bulger up and dropped him on his head which caused him to have a bump on his head and, according to bystanders, cry.

The two then took him up an embankment and onto a set of railroad tracks where they began torturing him.

More details of the murder according to Wikipedia :

At the trial it was established that at this location, one of the boys threw blue Humbrol modelling paint, which they had shoplifted earlier, into Bulger’s left eye. They kicked and stomped on him, and threw bricks and stones at him. Batteries were placed in Bulger’s mouth. Police believed some batteries may have been inserted into his anus, although none were found there. Finally, a 22-pound (10.0 kg) iron bar, described in court as a railway fishplate, was dropped on him. Bulger suffered ten skull fractures as a result of the iron bar striking his head. Dr. Alan Williams, the case’s pathologist, stated that Bulger suffered so many injuries—42 in total—that none could be isolated as the fatal blow.

Police suspected that there was a sexual element to the crime, since Bulger’s shoes, socks, trousers and underpants had been removed. The pathologist’s report read out in court stated that Bulger’s foreskin had been forcibly retracted.

Before they left him, the boys laid Bulger across the railway tracks and weighted his head down with rubble, in the hope that a train would hit him and make his death appear to be an accident.

After Bulger’s killers left the scene, his body was cut in half by a train. Bulger’s severed body was discovered two days later on 14 February.

7. Amora Bain Carson

Amora Bain Carson, the 13-month-old baby who was tortured to death by her mother’s boyfriend during an “exorcism.” I’ll tell the story by copying some things from each of their appeals. Jesseca Carson was the baby’s mother, and the boyfriend was Blaine Milam. Jessica Carson was sentenced to life, while Blaien Milam was sentenced to death.

WARNING: Graphic Content

“Carson concluded that the child was like ‘Chucky’ or ‘Pet Sematary’ (horror movies) when the “boy dies and comes back to life all evil and stuff” because the child was “biting Blaine to where it was drawing blood on his hands.” After Milam returned to the child, he took a picture of her and gave it to Carson. One of the child’s eyes was stretched and ‘like warped down.’ Carson heard horrible cries from the child as Milam was attempting the exorcism.”

“During the hours involved, Milam had taken the child to a back bedroom in their small dwelling and wedged the door shut. The evidence would allow a jury to conclude that Carson was necessarily aware of what was happening to the child, because she admitted hearing the screams that accompanied such torture and because she saw the child’s deformed head after some time had passed and heard the sounds caused by the blows.”

“They found blood-spatter stains, consistent with blunt force trauma, near the south bedroom. Among the items collected from the south bedroom were: blood-stained bedding and baby clothes; blood-stained baby diapers and wipes; a tube of Astroglide lubricant; and a pair of jeans with blood stains on the lap. DNA testing later showed that Amora’s blood was on these items.”

“As a result of the ‘exorcism’ conducted by Milam, Amora suffered innumerable injuries that led to her death. Forensic evidence showed the child was beaten so severely that the multitude of fractures to her skull connected with each other like a jigsaw puzzle, and her brain was torn and severely damaged. An arm and leg had spiral fractures indicating they were twisted in two, her torso was either struck by a blunt object or squeezed until the ribs and sternum broke, and her body (neck, chest, abdomen, buttocks, both elbows, both forearms, both feet, right arm, left shoulder, left upper arm, left hand, right thigh, and left knee) was riddled with no less than twenty-four distinct bite marks. Her head and face were so scraped and bruised that all the discrete injuries combined into “one giant injury.” Her liver was torn, and her vaginal and anal orifices were so torn that the vagina and rectum were actually connected, an injury the forensic examiner had never seen before. The underside of her tongue was lacerated from blunt force trauma. She was also strangled. Because of all the injuries she sustained, it was not possible to determine which one was the final injury, and no specific, singular cause of death was determinable. Forensic testimony reflected that several of the injuries standing alone would have each been fatal. Police were called several hours later; when they arrived, the child was entirely stiff and in rigor.”

“On December 13th, appellant’s sister, Teresa, went to see appellant in jail. That night, she told her aunt that she ‘was needing to find a way to get back out to the trailer in Tatum’ because “Blaine had told her that she needed to go out there to the trailer to get some evidence out from underneath of it.” The aunt called Sgt. Rogers and told her that “she needed to get out to the trailer immediately, that Teresa was wanting to go out there to get some evidence out from underneath the trailer.”

“Sgt. Rogers immediately obtained a search warrant, crawled under the trailer, and discovered a pipe wrench inside a clear plastic bag. The pipe wrench had been shoved down ‘a hole in the floor of the master bathroom.’ Forensic analysis revealed components of Astroglide on the pipe wrench, the diaper Amora had been wearing, and the diaper and wipes collected from the south bedroom.”

Werner Herzog did an episode of On Death Row about Blaine Milam and the full episode is on YouTube . It has security footage from the pawn shop where they were supposedly pawning a chainsaw to get money for an exorcism (after Amora was already dead) and a gas station, the 911 call, crime scenes photos (not of Amora’s body, of course, just the trailer) and interviews with pretty much everyone involved (except Jesseca Carson). It doesn’t make it any easier… but this case raises a lot of questions and searching online for these kinds of cases can take you horrible places that use Amora for shock value or misrepresent autopsy photos of other unfortunate victims as her (no post-mortem photos of Amora have been released and her autopsy was sealed). Especially since Amora’s case hasn’t been in the MSM very much due to the graphic nature of her death. With Herzog you’re getting quality information on the case coming straight from those involved.

Bonus: 36 Locals Share The Most Horrific True Crimes That Happened In Their Home Towns

1. “ Stacey Castor poisoned her husband and then poisoned her daughter on the daughter’s first day of college. She wrote a fake suicide note for her daughter saying that she had killed her father and was committing suicide because of the guilt. The daughter almost died but recovered from the poison and testified against her mother. They also found out she had poisoned her first husband.”

2. “When I was in 3rd grade I saw a kid get into a police car while I was in chess club. Turns out his father murdered his younger twin sisters by stabbing them to death. Apparently he told them to play hide and seek and murdered them when he found them. When he finally returned to school he got bullied by the shitbag kids at our school, making fun of his dead sisters. He was placed in the custody of his aunt who later committed suicide and he was left in the care of the state after that. That boy’s life was horrible .”

3. “Around 3 years ago, my friend’s father went berserk and killed my friend, his younger brother and his mother, and then proceeded to hang himself. I remember talking to him the week before about a project we had in lit class. His extended family took the project because it was the last thing he worked on before the incident. I had grief counselors talk to me for every class I had with him (Which was almost all of them). Our school still has a Tree and a memorial dedicated to him.”

4. “Probably David Meirhofer’s murders. Among other things he snatched a seven year old girl out of her tent while her family was camping, molested her, then strangled her to death. They caught him because he called her mother to taunt her a year later.”

5. “Neighbors that lived across the road from me were having domestic issues. The wife brings over a box of stuff for us to stash because she is afraid he will steal/burn it. We stash it for her no problem. A week later she is missing, the following week they found her dead, stuffed in a box in his storage unit. He got life. We gave the box of stuff to her daughter.”

6. “Guy beat his pregnant girlfriend to death in front of her kids, then beat her 8 and 6 year old to death. Couldn’t bring himself to beat the 2 year old to death so he threw him in the dryer and turned it on.”

7. “When I was a kid one of my neighbors and his sister murdered their mom by bashing her head in with a real heavy frying pan and then strangled her with the phone cord. (Back when phones had cords) because the mother told the son that he couldn’t take his underage sister out with him to a party. So they killed her and left her body in the closet and then went to the party like nothing happened.”

8. “I live in a (relatively) rural county in England, so we normally don’t have many crimes that you could consider too bad.

About three years ago a 17 year girl I’d met once or twice went missing, she was popular and the community really pulled together in trying to find her. She was also the daughter of a detective who works in our town.

Turns out she was murdered by another lad I’d also met a few times. He was a bit older (22 I think) He seemed okay when I met him, a little cocky but nothing too unusual. He was a photographer who once staged a picture with one of my friends where she was hanging by the neck with a bag on her head. Pretty strange stuff, but I assumed it was all in the name of art.

He’d been rejected by this girl so he lured her to his house on the pretense of taking modelling photos. He strangled her to death when she got there and dumped her body miles away.

Apparently the cops found essays he’d been writing obsessively about her. He’d also taken pictures labelled “before-during-after” of her murder, so it was obviously pre-meditated.

He was given a whole-life sentence (which are very rare in the UK) so chances are he’ll never get to see the light of day again.”

9. “My neighbor that became our family’s friend had a nice step dad. He used to give me rides sometimes. We lived in a bad part of Miami (think inner city, not South Beach) and my nickname there was “smart girl” because I’m the only one in “the hood” that went to college.

Anyway, I moved away and apparently one day my friend’s mom told his step dad she wanted to leave him. He went insane. He grabbed his gun and told her she’s going to die before she leaves or something like that. My friend’s little sister was there too and was crying the whole time (she was like 16). My friend stepped between his step dad and his mom. His step dad told him if he didn’t move he’d kill him too.

He didn’t move. He killed my friend, then the mom. He turned to the little girl and said he couldn’t kill her and that he was so sorry. Then he killed himself.”

10. “The murder of Maddie Clifton. An 8 year old girl went missing in Jacksonville, FL and it became a huge national story in 1998. There was a massive hunt to find her by law enforcement and local residents. Everyone was looking. It’s all anyone talked about. A week into the search, a mother went into her son’s room while he was at school to clean it after the stench coming from it became overwhelming. His waterbed seemed to be leaking. When she looked more closely, she discovered Maddie’s body stuffed inside the pedestal of the bed.

The woman’s son was only 14 years old. He said him and Maddie were playing baseball, and when he hit the ball, it hit Maddie in the eye causing her to bleed. He says he panicked when she wouldn’t stop screaming, and said his father was abusive and was afraid what would happen to him if he she told on him. So, he dragged Maddie inside, stabbed her 11 times and beat her to death with the baseball bat.

Horrible, tragic story.”

11. “A woman murdered an expectant mother and cut the baby out, drove off, then called 911 in an attempt to pass the baby off as her own. I was just off work around that time that night and definitely drove by that exact spot before they found the body. It’s right off the highway. Creepy shit …”

12. “Our neighbor on our street was having an affair and decided it was a good idea to kill her husband then burn the house down so she could be with her pilot boyfriend.

Stupid thing was her boyfriend used to come into one local bar, said he was never that serious about her and that she was clingy, even went so far as to try and get him to be her alibi. All this happened while we were on vacation, weirdest trip home ever.”

13. “If you guys aren’t aware what’s going on in the Philippines. Most drug users/dealers are now being killed by unknown assailants. Just last week we have 2 people dumped near where I live with their heads fully wrapped with tape and hands as well with a cardboard sign saying “I’m a drug dealer. Don’t be like me” (translated from our native language).”

14. “Grew up in a small town north of the bay area, while watching a documentary about Jim Jones my teacher started crying. Found out for several years Jones’s church was in our town (2miles from my house) and after everyone committed ‘suicide’ in Guyana they ran a list of names on the local news. A large number of previous students and their parents were on the list. The shit didn’t go down in my town but a whole generation where I grew up lost friends and family to that guy and the church (with a guard tower) still stands to this day but with a different denomination.”

15. “When I was a baby there was this nice couple that lived down the street from me. No kids, middle aged, average couple. The wife and my mom would talk sometimes – casual pleasant neighborly chatter. Apparently this lady was a total sweetheart and was loved around town.

So one day my mom is driving home, and the couple’s house is surrounded by police cruisers. Turns out the wife commit suicide by shotgun. The problem was – she shot herself twice.

For months they were investigating the husband…they were so close to having the evidence that they needed to nail him for the murder.

One day, my mom and grandma were going to the store. When they left, he was sitting in his driveway in his car. He waved at them as they left. When they get home, there are police and an ambulance outside his house – he was slumped over dead in his car – suicide by carbon monoxide.

They literally saw him as he was killing himself after he killed his wife. Yikes.”

16. “ Andrea Yates drowning her five kids. Happened five minutes away and our family still sees her ex husband and his new family on occasion. They’re very nice.”

17. “Let’s see… Where to start? This list doesn’t even include the stuff related to the meth epidemic.

(1990’s) A guy cut another dude into pieces with a carving knife and stashed the body in the deep freezer in his apartment. The police only found them a week later.

(2000’s) A guy got into an argument with their cousin at the club, drove to their house and chucked a firebomb inside. The fire killed all five of their kids, who were home at the time.

(2000’s again) Another guy heard that his estranged parents had a huge life insurance policy in their name. One night, he left home, drove to his parents’ place in Iowa, and killed almost everyone (6 people) with a shotgun, then drove home to eat dinner, while awaiting the news. He was only caught because his 7 year old niece hid in the closet the whole time and she was able to tell who did it.

(2015-now) Several fatal shootings and beatings that have killed a few people. Heroin epidemic.

Oh also, Michael Swango AKA “Dr. Death”, a serial killer known for poisoning victims (4-60; true number unknown), worked as an EMT around the area here in the 80’s.

So, yeah, Central Illinois is just low-key slang for ‘Trevor Philips country’.”

18. “Just happened this month, a mother of a one month old punched her baby to death because she was tired of feeding it. She then blamed the father. Fucked up.”

19. “Whitey here. I live in a small south east town. Back in the 80’s the town was still pretty segregated school wise. Where the railroad tracks once ran through town, was the diving line. South side of the railroad was probably 99.9% black. My backyard fence was part of that dividing line. When I was 10, my parents fostered a black boy my age. He lived in my neighborhood, played on my baseball team. His dad went to prison up in NY and the boy lived with us for 4 years. He moved back when his dad got out. But 30 years later, we still tell people we are brothers.

‘D’ taught me a lot about black community. Especially about times when crimes are committed and the whole black community knows who did it. But don’t tell because “fuck the police” or retaliation from the criminal.

we lived 2 blocks from the closest convenience store/arcade. People walking to the store from the south side of the tracks, walked by my house. It wasn’t the wild west or anything. We may not have gone to the same school sometimes, but we only had 1 recreation department so we played sports together. So we always saw people we knew at the store.

But there was this one guy. For the late 80’s this dude was pretty out and flamboyant when it came to being gay. Remember those 70’s and 80’s short shorts with the stripe. If you hung em just right, your balls were exposed.

Anyway, dude used to walk up and down the street, short short, flip flops, tank top t shirt, medium size afro, and usually sucking on a sucker. He was very friendly. He would stop and talk. He acted like he was a girl. He was alright. My sister and her friend were nice to him. He stopped and talked to them if they were ever about.

Fast Forward. So the dude is found in the bathroom at the ballfield. He had been murdered. Just fucked up big time. Beat to hell and back. And the story every one has head as an urban legend before. They had cut his dick off and put it in his mouth. His balls were in his hand and a broom stick had been shoved in his ass.

No suspects.

Year later, out in the county, a white sherriff’s deputy off duty from another county happens to be in our jurisdiction, checking on his parents’ house. Happens to catch 2 black guys robbing the house. He shoots and kills both after a scuffle.

Oddly enough, under routine drug test, because of the shooting, cocaine shows up on his system. This story is really fishy. Investigation goes on for a long time. The cops finally drop the case, declare it self defense or what have.

This is where my foster brother ‘D’ comes into play. Years later. We’re in our 20’s, shooting the shit and somehow bring up the murder of the gay dude. I was like, ‘I can’t believe they never solved that case.’

D was like what you talking about? Everybody knew who did it. What? He asked, ‘remember the 2 black dudes the off duty cop killed breaking into his parents house?’

Yea I remember that.

Well those were the dudes that did it. Everybody in the “hood” knew it was them. They were always terrorizing everybody. And the house they were breaking into and got caught? Drug deal. Those 2 dudes were dealing drugs, and that white guy, off duty sheriff deputy from another county. Shot em in the middle of the deal.

So two drug dealers/murderers are murdered by a crooked cop, but in the end, I don’t really consider that justice for our friendly neighborhood gay boy that probably never hurt a flea in his 20 years of life.

You may not have any love for ‘the man’ or ‘the police’ but how can a community be silent when innocent people are hurt?”

20. “Second week in my new apartment and my neighbor gets robbed and stabbed. I heard the whole encounter and was the one that called the cops.”

21. “I was emancipated really young. I just moved into emergency housing commission and had to sleep in the lounge room because it had the only light bulb and I’m scared of the dark.

For anyone not in Australia Housing Commission is cheap units or houses owned by the government and rented to disadvantaged people. Mostly junkies and welfare bludgers.

Anyway I was sleeping in the lounge room which had the front door attached when I hear the most blood curling screams.

One junkie had poured boiling water over another chick, stabbed her repeatedly and cut off one of her tits.

I was laying maybe 10 meters away.”

22. “A child was raped and murdered. Guy was arrested and he was killed within 24 hours of being arrested and in a community cell of like 6 inmates instead of segregation he died and no one in the cell seen it.”

23. “I only remember some of the details as I was on holidays at the time and only heard second hand what happened. So a guy who lived around the corner had an argument with his wife over something, got pissed off and then shot her. People heard the gunshot and called the police, which prompted him to run away in his car down the main road about 2km to his parents house where he got into their gun locker, killed his parents and then had a standoff with the police that lasted a couple of hours and ending in him shooting himself.”

24. “We had a group of people who would pretend to be the cops, dressed in all black and wore ski masks and stuff, knock on your door, say they had a warrant, and if you opened it up, they would force their way in and rob you.

This went on for months, like, month after month after month. They decided they were above the law, so their crimes kept getting worse and worse, one of their later houses they beat an old man until he had jaw, facial, and skull fractures so bad he had to have a life flight to a major trauma center where he had emergency surgery. The next old couple they killed.

They were sure the local police couldn’t do anything, the newspaper even said the police had nothing to go on, and it just kept getting worse. One of their last home invasions, they just killed the homeowner as he opened the door for absolutely no reason.

I realized that if someone had defended themselves earlier in the chain of criminality, things never would have reached this point. I ended up getting a Ring Video Doorbell and a Strikemaster II door reinforcements for each external door. I keep firearms in electronic safes ready to use at any moment. Nothing like that is going to happen to my family.”

25. “There was a family in the area I used to live in and I played soccer with the middle daughter. It was three girls — two were adults and one was still in high school — and the parents. The parents were very religious, the mother especially, and they had a lot of beliefs that I (and many people) found…strange.

The eldest daughter (whose name I don’t recall) had a serious mental illness that she managed perfectly well when she lived out of home. She had a job, had a decent life and all was well. The relationship she was in fell apart and she had to move back home for financial reasons. One of the rules her parents had was that she wasn’t to take her meds anymore because they weren’t what they considered ‘godly.’

Things deteriorated over time and the parents continued to withhold her medications. Now, I have a chronic mental illness myself and without my meds things descend into chaos quite quickly so I can’t imagine what it would’ve been like for her with her illness being more serious than mine. Her parents were told by their church to pray over her and everything would be ok.

As I’m sure you can imagine things were not ok. She lost her tenuous grip on reality and became unstable. She attacked her family while doing battle with a series of hallucinations that were telling her awful things about her parents and sisters. She took a sharp kitchen knife and went after her youngest sister (the middle one that I knew wasn’t home at the time) and stabbed her to death in the kitchen. Her father kept trying to defend his youngest child while trying to settle the eldest and he sustained serious injuries. The eldest followed him when he ran from the house to get help and she caught him from behind and stabbed him multiple times in the neck. He died on the front lawn. The mother was injured as well but appeared not to be the target of the eldest daughter’s hallucinations and she managed to survive.

The girl was taken down by tasers when the police arrived — they were called by neighbours who heard the commotion — and she was sent to a high security facility where she still is now. She was very obviously not in control of herself at the time so she avoided criminal charges and the mother moved away from the area.

I feel for the mother most; she essentially lost her whole family. The youngest and her husband had been killed and the middle child moved away eventually too, changing her surname when she got married and chose to disconnect from her mother. I know she blames her mum for what happened because she was the one who withheld the medication. I can imagine that the mum blames herself too.

When that happened it helped my mum to put my illness into perspective — if I’m treated properly, everything will be alright. It was a “there, but for the grace of God, go we” moment.

That was the worst crime that happened in our area for quite a while. Years before that there was a massacre (the Milperra Masacre, if you want to google it) between rival biker gangs who had, and continue to have, a presence in that particular suburb. Since then there was a child drowned during an exorcism after parents were told by a priest (or something) that the kid had a demon inside him and trying to force it out was the only way to save him…he was going through puberty, that’s all.”

26. “The kidnapping of Michael Dunahee. He is still just considered missing but its been 20+ years. You’d have to be pretty optimistic to believe he didn’t meet a horrible fate. He was just a small boy when taken and the incident absolutely ROCKED My small crime free city. It changed everything…parents kept a much more careful eye on us kids..many of our freedoms were taken away…I still feel sick when i think about what horrible things must’ve happened to that poor boy.”

27. “Growing up two brothers murdered their parents and put them in bags in the Attic. They did this because their parents would not let them go to a party nor own a cell phone, this was when cell phone were just becoming affordable for the upper middle class.”

28. “DEA bust next door, serial killers dumping ground five minutes from my house, and Sandy hook is within a 30 minutes drive.”

29. “We sold our house when I was 9 and moved a few miles away. The couple we sold the house to was nice enough, but a little odd. I don’t even know what it was, but even I noticed they were weird, and I was a little kid.

Fast forward about 12 years. I’m in college and these people have a son themselves. One day the man cornered his wife in the dining room and blew her head off with a shotgun. They had been having marital trouble prior to that but I’m not sure what exactly set him off. Kind of creepy to know that happened in my old house.”

30. “The girl who got stabbed by the two slenderman girls? My second cousin. My younger siblings actually played with her 2 weeks prior at a family gathering. Crazy.”

31. “Some kid beat another to kid to death with a bat over an argument that had to do with something related to weed. Mind you the population in my town is like 8,000. This was crazy.”

32. “Well, we’ve got a serial killer running around now – he’s killed seven people so far. (Referring to the current serial killer loose in Phoenix, Arizona ).”

33. “I live in Downtown Dallas. I was packing for an international trip the night of the police shooting. I took note of the crowds after work and just made a mental note to “stay inside for awhile” after I got home. It wasn’t until I walked downstairs to get some tacos at around 10pm and a couple cops with sniper rifles were posted up in our lobby and told me to “get the fuck back upstairs, we are on lockdown!” that I realized some shit went down. What I witnessed that night and the following day really changed my perspective on a lot. They didn’t show the majority of it on the news. I have always been very supportive and stood behind a lot of social movements…but there is zero excuse for a 14 year old to spit on a cop, tell me I was a “Mexican bitch” that he “ought to rape,” loot a 7-11, or do any of the insane things that I saw.”

34. The Snowtown, Australia Murders

“In my city some guys went around torturing people to death and then dissolved their bodies in vats of acid. But they used the wrong type of acid (Not strong enough) and people complained of a foul smell, so the police investigated and found semi-liquified remains in barrels.”

35. “Two people ordered a pizza and killed the teenage driver because they wanted to know what it was like to kill a man.”

36. “The 10 mile radius around my childhood home is like catnip to serial killers and evil. BTK dumped one of his victims in a ditch a mile away from my house (before I was born,) the Carr Brothers murdered a group of 5 people in the soccer field 4-5 miles from my home (6th one survived because she wore a metal hair clip that caused the bullet to ricochet away from her head,) A man molested small children on the same street, the old lady that hated us kids ended up murdered by her own son (my mom was the one to find her since she started to smell the decomposing body and a family member asked her if she was willing to go in for her.)

Tons of crimes that never were recorded, gunshots going off in the dead of night, a scream that suddenly got cut short, we were just told to lay on the floor while my father paced the house with a shotgun until he felt it was safe.”

January Nelson

January Nelson is a writer, editor, and dreamer. She writes about astrology, games, love, relationships, and entertainment. January graduated with an English and Literature degree from Columbia University.

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1. Last Update on the Left

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2. Crime Junkie

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4. The Deck

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6. Dark Downeast

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101 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

Inside This Article

Crime is a prevalent issue in society and has been a topic of interest for many researchers, scholars, and students alike. Writing an essay on crime can be a thought-provoking and engaging task, allowing you to explore various aspects of criminal behavior, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system. To help you get started, here are 101 crime essay topic ideas and examples:

The impact of social media on crime rates.
Exploring the rise of cybercrime in the digital age.
The relationship between poverty and crime.
Analyzing the effectiveness of rehabilitation programs in reducing recidivism.
The role of mental illness in criminal behavior.
Examining the influence of media on public perception of crime.
The effectiveness of community policing in crime prevention.
The reasons behind the gender disparity in crime rates.
The role of genetics in criminal behavior.
The impact of drugs and substance abuse on crime rates.
Exploring the connection between domestic violence and crime.
The effectiveness of the death penalty in deterring crime.
Analyzing the impact of racial profiling on crime rates.
The psychological factors that contribute to criminal behavior.
The relationship between unemployment and crime rates.
The effectiveness of gun control policies in reducing crime.
The role of technology in solving and preventing crimes.
Analyzing the impact of organized crime on society.
The reasons behind juvenile delinquency and how to address it.
The relationship between education and crime rates.
The impact of hate crimes on marginalized communities.
Exploring the concept of white-collar crime and its consequences.
The role of criminal profiling in solving crimes.
The impact of the war on drugs on crime rates.
Analyzing the connection between poverty and drug-related crimes.
The role of restorative justice in the criminal justice system.
The reasons behind the high incarceration rates in the United States.
Examining the concept of vigilantism and its ethical implications.
The impact of crime on tourism and local economies.
The role of the media in shaping public perception of crime.
Analyzing the causes and consequences of hate crimes.
The relationship between mental health and criminal behavior.
The effectiveness of community-based corrections programs.
Exploring the impact of DNA evidence on solving crimes.
The reasons behind the phenomenon of serial killers.
The role of socioeconomic factors in shaping criminal behavior.
The impact of criminal records on employment opportunities.
Analyzing the causes of gang violence and potential solutions.
The relationship between poverty and property crime rates.
The effectiveness of surveillance technologies in preventing crime.
The reasons behind the high rates of recidivism among ex-convicts.
The impact of mandatory minimum sentences on the criminal justice system.
The role of forensic science in solving crimes.
Analyzing the causes and consequences of police brutality.
The relationship between substance abuse and violent crimes.
The effectiveness of community-based crime prevention programs.
Exploring the concept of restorative justice and its application.
The reasons behind the high rates of drug-related crimes in urban areas.
The impact of human trafficking on global crime rates.
The role of criminal justice policies in reducing crime rates.
Analyzing the connection between poverty and juvenile delinquency.
The effectiveness of rehabilitation versus punishment in the criminal justice system.
The reasons behind the rise of terrorism in the modern world.
The impact of drug legalization on crime rates.
The role of forensic psychology in solving crimes.
Exploring the causes and consequences of hate speech crimes.
The relationship between addiction and criminal behavior.
The effectiveness of drug treatment programs in reducing crime rates.
The reasons behind the high rates of domestic violence.
The impact of police discretion on the criminal justice system.
Analyzing the connection between child abuse and future criminal behavior.
The role of the media in perpetuating stereotypes about crime.
The reasons behind the high rates of sexual assault on college campuses.
The effectiveness of community outreach programs in preventing crime.
The impact of race and ethnicity on sentencing disparities.
The relationship between poverty and violent crime rates.
The role of forensic anthropology in solving crimes.
Exploring the causes and consequences of human rights violations.
The reasons behind the high rates of identity theft in the digital era.
The impact of mandatory drug testing on reducing workplace crime.
The effectiveness of drug courts in addressing drug-related crimes.
The role of environmental factors in shaping criminal behavior.
Analyzing the connection between child neglect and future criminal behavior.
The reasons behind the high rates of gun violence in the United States.
The impact of community surveillance programs on crime prevention.
The relationship between mental health treatment and recidivism rates.
The role of forensic entomology in solving crimes.
Exploring the causes and consequences of human smuggling.
The reasons behind the high rates of cyberbullying and online harassment.
The impact of restorative justice practices on reducing prison overcrowding.
The effectiveness of drug education programs in preventing substance abuse.
The role of social inequality in contributing to criminal behavior.
Analyzing the connection between child exploitation and future criminal behavior.
The reasons behind the high rates of hate crimes against LGBTQ+ individuals.
The impact of community-oriented policing on crime rates.
The relationship between mental health stigma and access to treatment for offenders.
The role of forensic odontology in solving crimes.
Exploring the causes and consequences of human organ trafficking.
The reasons behind the high rates of cyberstalking and online harassment.
The impact of restorative justice on the reintegration of ex-convicts into society.
The effectiveness of education in preventing drug-related crimes.
The role of social disorganization theory in understanding crime rates.
Analyzing the connection between child maltreatment and future criminal behavior.
The reasons behind the high rates of hate crimes against religious minorities.
The impact of community-based rehabilitation programs on reducing recidivism.
The relationship between mental health treatment and diversion programs.
The role of forensic toxicology in solving crimes.
Exploring the causes and consequences of human trafficking for labor exploitation.
The reasons behind the high rates of online fraud and identity theft.
The impact of alternative sentencing programs on reducing prison populations.
The effectiveness of harm reduction strategies in addressing drug-related crimes.

These crime essay topic ideas provide a broad range of subjects to explore and analyze. Choose a topic that aligns with your interests and research the subject thoroughly to develop a well-informed and compelling essay. Remember to support your arguments with evidence, statistics, and relevant examples to strengthen your essay and provide a comprehensive understanding of the chosen crime topic.

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Guest Essay

Truth Is Drifting Away From True Crime

By Sarah Weinman

Ms. Weinman is an author and the editor of the forthcoming anthology “Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning.”

During the end credits of the recent film “ Boston Strangler ,” which dramatized the real-life efforts to crack that criminal case, there’s a notation that addresses the fate of a convicted murderer named George Nassar who, the movie states, is “still in prison in Massachusetts.” I’ve long been fascinated with the Strangler case and Mr. Nassar’s connection to it, so this detail caught my attention — since I was pretty sure I recalled an interview from a few years back in which he announced that he had terminal prostate cancer. As it turns out, Mr. Nassar, who told authorities that his cellmate had confessed to being the Strangler, died in 2018 at a prison hospital in Jamaica Plain.

As a writer and editor of true crime, I might be more sensitive to these sorts of factual errors than most people. But they are part of a troubling trend. Errors like the one in “Boston Strangler” threaten the integrity of true crime, which as a genre has grappled with whether the stories it tells about crimes are, in fact, true.

True crime has always had a volatile relationship with facts. A century ago, tabloid newspapers routinely hyped up the most lurid aspects of a crime, even if there were few verifiable facts to be had. One reason the Hall-Mills murders of 1922 remain unsolved is that the press trampled all over the crime scene, literally and metaphorically.

Truman Capote, who is credited with inventing the modern true crime genre with “In Cold Blood,” radically expanded its creative possibilities — even as he resorted to making things up for effect. The book’s final scene in the cemetery, in which the detective visits the Clutter family’s graves with the daughter’s best friend? Invented out of whole cloth. Capote even landed in jail after he refused to take the stand because, according to a death-row prisoner, Capote would have had to reveal that he’d lied about their interview. The crime journalist Jack Olsen once said of Capote’s book that it “made true crime an interesting, successful, commercial genre, but it also began the process of tearing it down.”

Accuracy is not the only challenge that true crime practitioners face. Janet Malcolm’s “The Journalist and the Murderer” famously explores the inherent ethical dilemmas in earning a subject’s trust — especially if it’s a story of violence, trauma and tragedy. Malcolm wrote that “the writer-subject relationship seems to depend for its life on a kind of fuzziness and murkiness, if not utter covertness, of purpose.”

Given this fraught history, you’d think that modern true crime practitioners would proceed with utmost care and caution. In reality, the opposite is true, plunging true crime into a credibility crisis — thanks to the pressures of a voracious market for documentaries, docuseries, podcasts and movies purporting to be based on real events.

The variety of lapses are as plentiful as the examples are. HBO’s blockbuster 2015 documentary series “The Jinx,” about the murderer Robert Durst, was lauded for its shocking twist ending — which was later revealed to be the product of editing that manipulated the timeline for maximum impact. “Making a Murderer,” a Netflix series which debuted the same year, stirred public outrage over an apparently unjust conviction — and then it came out that the show had omitted evidence that supported the prosecutor’s case.

Beyond factual lapses and questionable techniques, the rush to feed the true crime beast has led to all sorts of slippery practices. The limited series “Dahmer” on Netflix retold a well-documented story with a new, exploitative gloss — over the objections of family members of Dahmer’s victims, who protested that the series was “retraumatizing over and over again.” As the market becomes more competitive, true crime filmmakers have raced to lock down exclusive access to sources, preventing other journalists from reporting out a story, as happened in the case of a film about the women R. Kelly assaulted.

The proliferation of true crime podcasts has led to some honorable examples of investigative journalism, such as “In the Dark,” which won two Peabody awards for its re-examination of mishandled murder cases. But for every podcast like that, there are 10 (or more) in which so-called experts speculate on infamous mysteries with far more eagerness than authority.

These slipshod approaches have real-world consequences. Richard Walter, an expert criminal profiler whose testimony led to many convictions, was recently revealed to be a fraud . That’s particularly disturbing not only for those wrongfully imprisoned thanks, in part, to his faked credentials but for the way his fakery hid in plain sight for decades. Walter had become a hero to some in the true crime community, lionized in books that were more interested in chronicling his dramatic exploits than in the authenticity of his expertise.

Given a figure as egregious as Walter, it may seem ungenerous to call out an error in a film like “Boston Strangler” — after all, we tolerate, and even expect, a certain level of embellishment in our entertainment, even in those works based on real events. But this misstep illustrates how, increasingly, stories of tragedy (and, ironically, stories of dogged journalistic reporting) have become simply another form of intellectual property to be put through a churn of repackaging and reselling.

It’s become a familiar cycle: A criminal case becomes a book, becomes a podcast, becomes a documentary, becomes a scripted series or a film, becomes another, more sensational film. There are now even true crime cookbooks . But somewhere at the start of it all an actual crime took place, leaving behind not just facts but victims and survivors. Where does a true crime cookbook leave them?

At its best, true crime grapples with what can and cannot be uncovered and verified about the past, and even incorporates those challenges into the story. I’m thinking of two recent books, Alex Mar’s “Seventy Times Seven,” a compassionate account of mercy for a teenage girl on death row, and Roxanna Asgarian’s “We Were Once a Family,” on the heartbreaking failures of child foster systems to prevent senseless deaths. Both demonstrate the impact that great true crime can have. They give a full accounting not just of the details of the crimes but of the lives of those affected by violence, exploring whether the legal system can truly provide justice.

But if the facts aren’t there, or they’re flatly wrong, or they’re twisted beyond recognition, then true crime transforms into something closer to lurid fiction — and the entities cashing in on it are making a cynical, shortsighted bet. If creators want to benefit from the frisson of a “true” story, they must honor the truth — it’s that simple. If true crime practitioners give up on doing better and succumb to the temptation of exploitation, that would be a crime in and of itself.

Sarah Weinman is the crime and mystery columnist for the Book Review; the author, most recently, of “Scoundrel”; and the editor of the forthcoming anthology “Evidence of Things Seen: True Crime in an Era of Reckoning.”

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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'Based on a True Story' Review: An Acidic Deconstruction of America’s True Crime Obsession

Tom Bateman steals the spotlight in a delicious TV show about the weirdness of true crime fandom.

Editor’s Note: The below contains light spoilers for Based on a True Story. What happens when a suburban couple facing bankruptcy and stressing over marital issues finds out they know a serial killer? Created by Craig Rosenberg , Peacock’s Based on a True Story tries to answer this question with a thriller-comedy that deconstructs the American dream and people’s irrational obsession with serial killers. The result is a brilliant take on true crime in which Tom Bateman ’s lovable criminal shows how there’s an unnerving connection between celebrity culture and serial killers. Add the always-reliable Kaley Cuoco and Chris Messina to the mix, and we get an unexpected TV show that’s utterly delicious to watch.

RELATED: True Crime Fans Go Too Far in First Trailer for Dark Comedy Series 'Based on a True Story'

'Based on a True Story' Slashes the American Dream

It’s hard to dispute that the United States suffers from a strange addiction to true crime. The average US citizen can name multiple serial killers by memory, and Hollywood never stops regurgitating new movies and TV shows about the country’s deadliest killers. And since, more often than not, these productions are tremendously successful , it makes sense for studios to keep tapping into this profitable source. The weirdest aspect of this phenomenon is that people are not only attracted to serial killers due to morbid curiosity, but there seems to be an actual celebration of these twisted people’s actions . After all, while every country has troubles with serial killers, nowhere besides America do murderers become celebrities, gathering legions of fans who celebrate the wickedness of their acts.

Based on a True Story ’s Ava Bartlett (Cuoco) is one of these true crime fanatics. Seven months pregnant and stuck in a passionless marriage, Ava searches for the excitement she’s missing in her life in blood-soaked podcasts filled with mystery and danger. So, when opportunity knocks at her door, and she discovers the true identity of a vicious serial killer, she wants to create her own podcast by interviewing the Westside Ripper in the flesh. Ava’s husband, Nathan (Messina), doesn’t take too long to board the program. While Nathan is not a true crime aficionado, the podcast represents the opportunity to make serious money, which he thinks he needs to keep supporting his family. As a former tennis player who had to retire after an injury, he can no longer achieve his goal of having a mansion in the suburbs and impressing his wealthy friends. And, for some reason, downgrading his life makes Nathan feel less of a man.

Together, Ava and Nathan represent the failure of the American Dream, the delusional belief that hard work ensures success and that playing house with your loved one and a child can fulfill any emotional need. Cuoco and Messina do a fantastic job showing their characters' frustrations and repressed rage, constantly thwarted by fate and incapable of “winning at life” – a preposterous idea that sets unobtainable goals. Based on a True Story 's writing also does a beautiful job of exploring the hurt Ava and Nathan carry inside, which draws them dangerously closer to Matt. That’s where the series shines the most as it shows how serial killers' most distressing traits are exaggerations of things we find in people pursuing the American dream.

Tom Bateman Goes for the Jugular in ‘Based on a True Story’

Unfortunately for the Bartletts, their plan goes a little too well since Matt (Bateman) aka the Westside Ripper, dives into the podcast project with the same energy he slays innocent women. For Matt, the podcast is the opportunity to feed his ego and prove he can evade authorities even while confessing his crimes to an audience of millions. Through the podcast, he also develops his brand by explaining the spine-chilling details of his methods and reasonings. While there’s something in every serial killer’s brain pushing them to murder other people, the whole true crime culture also leads these sick individuals to commit their crimes publicly, challenging law enforcers to prove their intellectual superiority. So, making a podcast helps Matt get the fame he desires.

While the writing of Based on a True Story doesn’t shy from discussing how the American dream is disturbingly intertwined with serial killer culture, the series wouldn’t be as effective without Bateman. With sharp eyes and an inviting smile on his face, Bateman plays a serial killer who’s simultaneously charming and threatening, capable of instilling fear while he draws the attention of anyone in the room. It’s an enthralling performance that gives Matt the layers the character needs to act both as a villain and a hero in the story. Because while Matt’s killings are repulsive to the Bartletts, his ambition also motivates them to pursue their dream of buying the happiness they lost so long ago.

Based on a True Story can get bloody when it needs to, perfectly emulating slasher tropes to show how deadly Matt really is. Still, the series is primarily focused on the complicated relationship between the killer and the Bartletts, poking fun at how similar a serial killer can be to a desperate couple who refuses to abandon the American dream, even if it means bending the law so much they become more and more like the monster they hoped to use to feed their greed. And while the Bartletts’ surreal situation can be hilarious to watch, Bateman’s sharp performance always reminds the audience the stakes are real in Based on a True Story , and there’s no way the Bartletts will get the happy ending they think they are entitled of.

Not Everything Has to Have a Twist in 'Based on a True Story'

For most of its eight-episode run, Based on a True Story graciously explore the turmoil in the Bartletts' lives while they get irredeemably entangled with Matt and the podcast. Since Based on a True Story is about unfulfilled desires, though, showrunner Rosenberg includes unexpected scenes that lead the story to surprising paths, only for the audience to eventually realize they are nothing but a fantasy.

Sometimes, these detours add to the series' themes, as they give us a glimpse at each of the Bartletts' sexual frustrations and fears. This deep dive sheds some light in the darkest corners of their minds to reveal how the constraints of monogamy and mediocrity make them angry and resentful. These small fantasies also allow us to understand that the line separating the Bartletts from Matt is that the serial killer refuses to contain his urge. By doing this, Based on a True Story forces the audience to question what they yearn for and how society's expectations stop us from getting everything we want.

Nevertheless, some small fantasies are introduced to pretend the series has twisted in a surprising direction, without adding much to character development. When this happens, it’s like Based on a True Story is trying to give viewers a dose of mystery Rosenberg thinks they need to remain engaged in a thriller series. What's more, these fake twists can actually be distracting since what matters the most in Based on a True Story is the internal conflict of each character, not how crazy the story can get. With true crime being as widespread as it is, however, Based on a True Story offers a fun deconstruction of the genre that also forces the audience to question their own attraction to serial killers.

All episodes of Based on a True Story are now available to stream on Peacock.

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15 best cases american crime story season 4 could cover.

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10 Fascinating True Crime Shows About Lesser-Known Cases

10 best true crime documentaries that aren’t about murder, 10 true crime film adaptations, ranked by accuracy.

This article contains discussions of murder, sexual assault, racism, bombings, and child death.

American Crime Story season 4 had plans to focus on Studio 54 creators but changed the subject.
Potential subjects for season 4 include the West Memphis Three, the Central Park Five, and the Unabomber cases.
The series has covered the infamous O.J. Simpson trial, Gianni Versace's assassination, and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair.

American Crime Story season 4 has many notorious true crime cases to choose from after losing its previous subject. The FX show is one of the best true crime TV series of all time, taking an anthological approach to storytelling. Each season tells a different story that became well-known across the United States. So far, American Crime Story has covered the trial of O.J. Simpson, the assassination of Gianni Versace, and the Clinton-Lewinsky affair .

American Crime Story was renewed for season 4 with plans to focus on Steve Rubell and Ian Schrage, the creators of Studio 54, who were eventually convicted of tax fraud. In January 2023, FX’s chairperson confirmed to Variety that the season is still in the works but won’t focus on Studio 54 anymore . With American Crime Story season 4 losing its subject, there are many other infamous crimes that the producers could pick for the upcoming addition to the anthology.

Best True Crime Shows On Netflix Right Now

From seasoned favorites to new hits and hidden gems, here’s a rundown of the best Netflix true crime shows fans of the genre can stream.

15 The Oklahoma City Bombing

Timothy mcveigh and terry nichols committed the worst act of domestic terrorism in us history.

A pivotal and horrific event that shook the entire United States was the Oklahoma City Bombing. On April 19, 1995, two extremists named Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols used a truck bomb to blow up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. According to the FBI , the explosion killed 168 people, including 19 children. The Oklahoma City Bombing is still considered the worst incident of domestic terrorism in US History, giving it enough publicity to appear in American Crime Story .

Additionally, the investigation followed 43,000 leads and included over 7000 pounds of evidence The event resulted in trials for Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, as well as co-conspirator Michael Fortier. This gives the show plenty of material to pull from when creating the narrative.

14 The Murder Of Jonelle Matthews

Steven pankey put himself at the center of his victim's investigation.

The disappearance and murder of 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews occurred in Greeley, Colorado on December 20, 1984 (via People ). Her body wasn't found until July 2019 . Despite this, a neighbor named Steven Pankey – now known as Jonelle's kidnapper and murderer – inserted himself into the criminal investigation and continually asserted he had knowledge of what happened.

As Pankey gained attention, running for Idaho governor, so too did the Janelle Matthews case. Due to the unusual circumstances surrounding the case, Jonelle Matthews' kidnapping and murder would be a great choice for American Crime Story season 4. Additionally, it would give the series a chance to cover a case with slightly less national attention.

13 The Watts Family Murders

Chris watts became a family annihilator.

One of the worst incidents of family annihilation in recent years is the murder of 34-year-old Shanann Watts and her daughters, 4-year-old Bella and 3-year-old Celeste, at the hands of their husband/father, Christopher Watts (via People ). This murder was especially heinous due to the murder of the two young girls and the unexpected nature of the crime.

Shanann had a social media presence that made them seem like the perfect family. She was even pregnant with their next child, which Chris seemed excited about. Add in him having a mistress and there are plenty of angles with which the writers of American Crime Story can work. Additionally, since the crime occurred on August 13, 2018, it's fresh in the minds of viewers, pulling in more possible viewers.

12 The Murder Of JonBenet Ramsey

Jonbenet ramsey's murder is unsolved.

One of the best-known examples of child murder in the US is the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. A season of American Crime Story centered on the tragic crime would certainly pull in viewers. There are various angles to the crime that they could take. Multiple suspects exist, all falling into one of two categories – the crime was allegedly either committed by a family member or an intruder (via CNN ).

However, there are two slight downfalls to American Crime Story season 4 covering this crime. Firstly, there wouldn't be a satisfying conclusion since nobody was ever found guilty. Secondly, the Ramseys have a history of being litigious. Still, the producers would be remiss to not at least consider the option.

There are tons of popular documentary series about famous killers and crooks, but these true-crime shows on lesser-known cases are also worth viewing.

11 The Tuskegee Experiment

The us government experimented on black american men.

If American Crime Story season 4 wanted to cover a behemoth of a case, they could take on the Tuskegee Experiment, better known as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. In this study, conducted between 1932 and 1979, the US Public Health Services and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recruited 600 Black men with the promise of free health care, but the 399 men with syphilis only received placebos . Researchers coerced physicians not to treat the men (via History ).

Ultimately, 128 participants died of Syphilis or Syphilis-related causes. Because there are so many victims, the Tuskegee Experiment would be difficult to cover. This scandalous experiment was made public when a PHS investigator named Peter Buxton leaked the story to reporter Jean Heller, resulting in a massive congressional hearing. The fallout could be the touchpoint for the season's narrative.

10 The Jodi Arias Case

Jodi arias murdered her ex-boyfriend travis alexander.

On June 4, 2008, Jodi Arias killed her ex-boyfriend Travis Alexander . Alexander's friends immediately pointed the police to Arias, feeling certain she was responsible (via Crime Museum ). This spurred one of the most bizarre and salacious murder investigations and trials, broadcast all across the country. The story was complete with fictional ninja intruders and a major make-under.

Because this story is just as well known as the O.J. Simpson trial, it would be a prime option for American Crime Story season 4. Plus, both the prosecutor – Juan Martinez – and Jodi Arias’ defense lawyer – Kirk Nurmi – wrote tell-all books that could serve as insight into the trial.

9 The Murder Of Emmett Till

Emmett till's lynching propelled forward the civil rights movement.

A darker part of US history that American Crime Story season 4 could follow is the horrendous lynching of the 14-year-old Black kid named Emmett Till after he supposedly flirted with a white woman on August 28, 1955 (via History ). While not as recent as the other cases in the seasons of American Crime Story, the brutal murder is just as prolific and resonant as the other cases featured. The murder and trial helped propel the Civil Rights Movement forward. This case would allow the show to address race in a better way than The People V. O.J. Simpson .

8 The Casey Anthony Case

Casey anthony is widely considered a miscarriage of justice.

Casey Anthony being found not guilty for the alleged murder of her 2-year-old daughter Caylee Anthony is widely considered a massive miscarriage of justice , much like the O. J. Simpson case. As such, it could be a great option for American Crime Story season 4. Even if she was absolved of guilt, according to Biography ’s timeline, she still went 30 days without reporting her daughter missing and repeatedly lied about her daughter's whereabouts.

The young woman made up a nanny and pretended to have a job at Universal Studios. She also got a tattoo that says “Bella Vita” which means “beautiful life” after Caylee's death, which she has since covered up (via People ). The trial was also filled with twists and turns. As such, there is plenty for the show to explore.

7 The Manson Family

The manson family famously committed the tate-labianca murders.

Charles Manson is one of the best-known cult leaders of all time due to the book Helter Skelter. At the direction of Manson, his" Family" committed at least seven different murders , with estimates reaching as high as 35 people (via Biography ). The most famous are the Tate-LaBianca killings. This story has been told repeatedly, so there are many chilling TV shows and movies about Charles Manson and his Family . With the track record of American Crime Story , this show could be one of the best versions yet by incorporating the character-driven narrative approach and strong writing seen in previous seasons.

Watching true-crime documentaries has become hugely popular thanks to streaming services and here are the best that don't include murder.

6 The Clutter Family Murder

In cold blood could be told in american crime story season 4.

The Clutter family murders were a quadruple homicide committed by Perry Smith and possibly Richard Hickock . It's strongly believed that the murders were all done by Smith alone, even though Hickock helped with the plan and was present. The incident is recorded in one of the best true crime books of all time , In Cold Blood by Truman Capote. While this book was adapted into a 1967 movie and a 1996 miniseries, In Cold Blood could be used with the court records in order to create a season of American Crime Story that views the crime from a modern lens.

5 The Iran Contra Scandal

The iran-contra scandal revealed a government secret.

If American Crime Story season 4 wanted to follow in the footsteps of Impeachment, the writers could focus on the Iran-Contra scandal. This was another instance where the government did something wrong but another person was scapegoated. The political scandal under the Reagan administration involved the CIA training and financing the Contras in Nicaragua and making a secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran , providing them with weaponry (via PBS ).

The scandal, fallout, and the conviction of Robert McFarlane would be a great focus. The stories of the two seasons would diverge slightly because Robert McFarlane received jail time for committing crimes under the instruction of government officials, whereas an immunity agreement meant Monica Lewinsky didn’t serve the jail time she faced.

4 The West Memphis Three

The west memphis three were wrongfully convicted of murder.

While the first season of American Crime Story focused on one type of miscarriage of justice, O.J. Simpson being found not guilty, season 4 could focus on a different kind of miscarriage of justice, the West Memphis Three's wrongful conviction . Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Miss Kelley were arrested and found guilty of murdering three 8-year-old boys named Steve Branch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers (via The Innocence Project ).

However, there was no evidence and a coerced confession. In 2007, DNA testing excluded the three convicted killers. Then, all three were released in 2011 on Alford pleas. American Crime Story season 4 could follow their fight for justice up to the point of their release. In addition to telling an influential US crime story, it would also help push forward their battle for exoneration.

3 The Central Park Five

The central park five were wrongfully convicted of sexual assault.

A really well-known US crime case that American Crime Story season 4 could focus on is the Central Park Five case. In this story, five Black and Latinx teen boys were found guilty of sexually assaulting a jogger (via History ). The teenagers spent years in jail only for DNA evidence and a confession from the real culprit, Matias Reyes, to exonerate them.

This compelling story has a strong angle because it looks at both wrongful convictions and racism. Additionally, it would be considered timely due to Donald Trump’s role in the case. The only downfall to selecting the Central Park Five for American Crime Story season 4 is the fact that the story was already told phenomenally in Netflix’s miniseries When They See Us .

For the past decade, true crime adaptations have been popping up in every digital avenue. How many liberties were taken and what is the truth?

2 Tonya Harding And Nancy Kerrigan

Nancy kerrigan's assault went down in sports crime history.

A less heavy but still compelling crime that American Crime Story season 4 could cover is the assault of Nancy Kerrigan, also called the “whack heard around the world.” These two figure skaters were direct competitors trying to get on the US Olympic team. After practice, on January 6, 1994, a hitman named Shane Stant broke Nancy Kerrigan’s leg with a collapsable baton (via Biography ).

He was hired by Tonya Harding’s ex-husband and bodyguard, Jeff Gillooly and Shawn Eckhardt, respectively. Because this event led up to the Olympics, it became known worldwide, making it something that would fit right in with the other seasons of American Crime Story. Moreover, because of the success of I, Tonya , many people too young to remember the incident now know about the crime, giving it wider appeal.

1 The Unabomber

Ted kaczynski bombed universities and airlines.

If American Crime Story writers want to go into season 4 with a bang, they could cover the story of the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski. The Harvard-educated mathematical genius went on a 17-year bombing rampage while living in a cabin in the woods and writing a manifesto against technology (via Britannica ). The show could jump back and forth between the victims, investigators, and Kaczynski – offering an interesting narrative perspective that is different from previous seasons of American Crime Story . Additionally, the fact that the bomber's own brother turned him in would provide an interesting twist for viewers unfamiliar with the true story.

Sources: Variety , FBI , People , People , CNN , History , Crime Museum , History , Biography , People , Biography , In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, PBS , The Innocence Project , History , Biography , and Britannica

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10 Best True Crime Docu-Series on Netflix That Are Chilling to Watch

Posted: May 14, 2024 | Last updated: May 14, 2024

<p><span>This gripping docu-series tells the story of John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker accused of being a notorious Nazi guard. The trial, marked by questionable justice and fervent spectators, explores themes of delayed justice and the dark side of retribution. It’s a disturbing look at one man’s alleged past and the far-reaching impact of his actions.</span></p>

The Devil Next Door

This gripping docu-series tells the story of John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker accused of being a notorious Nazi guard. The trial, marked by questionable justice and fervent spectators, explores themes of delayed justice and the dark side of retribution. It’s a disturbing look at one man’s alleged past and the far-reaching impact of his actions.

I Just Killed My Dad

“I Just Killed My Dad” starts with a shocking confession from 17-year-old Anthony Templet, who admits to killing his father. As the series unfolds, it becomes evident that the case is far more complex, involving years of abuse and neglect. This three-part series not only delves into the crime but also questions the justice system’s role in addressing such intricate cases of familial violence.

Worst Roommate Ever

This series will make you reconsider living with strangers. “Worst Roommate Ever” covers various cases, from a sweet-looking grandmother who buries her tenants in her garden to a charming con artist who turns homicidal. The two-part finale focusing on Jamison "Jammy" Bachman, a man who terrorized his roommates, is particularly harrowing.

<p><span>The 1985 murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom led to a convoluted legal battle involving their daughter, Elizabeth, and her boyfriend, Jens Soering. This series meticulously retraces their confessions and the twisted love letters that reveal a dark and obsessive relationship. It's a haunting look at how love can turn lethal.</span></p>

Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom

The 1985 murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom led to a convoluted legal battle involving their daughter, Elizabeth, and her boyfriend, Jens Soering. This series meticulously retraces their confessions and the twisted love letters that reveal a dark and obsessive relationship. It's a haunting look at how love can turn lethal.

Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey

“Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey” dives into the horrifying world of the FLDS church under Warren Jeffs. This four-part series exposes the systematic abuse and exploitation within this polygamist cult. The final episode is particularly chilling, highlighting Jeffs’ rise from an awkward youth to a manipulative leader.

<p><span>This series offers a deep dive into the mind of one of America's most infamous serial killers, Ted Bundy. Using over 100 hours of interviews, it provides an unsettling look at Bundy's charm and brutality. The footage of public reactions to his execution adds another layer, exploring society’s fascination with true crime.</span></p>

Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes

This series offers a deep dive into the mind of one of America's most infamous serial killers, Ted Bundy. Using over 100 hours of interviews, it provides an unsettling look at Bundy's charm and brutality. The footage of public reactions to his execution adds another layer, exploring society’s fascination with true crime.

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer

“Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer” isn’t just about a sadistic murderer but also paints a vivid picture of Times Square’s seedy past. The series covers the gruesome crimes of the “torso killer” while providing social commentary on the decriminalization of sex work and the area's transformation post-AIDS crisis.

<p><span>This series explores the dramatic downfall of the powerful Murdaugh family in South Carolina. Beginning with the tragic death of Mallory Beach, it unravels a web of corruption, privilege, and multiple deaths linked to the family. The storytelling is gripping, making it a must-watch for fans of real-life intrigue and scandal.</span></p>

Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal

This series explores the dramatic downfall of the powerful Murdaugh family in South Carolina. Beginning with the tragic death of Mallory Beach, it unravels a web of corruption, privilege, and multiple deaths linked to the family. The storytelling is gripping, making it a must-watch for fans of real-life intrigue and scandal.

American Nightmare

“American Nightmare” recounts the bizarre abduction of a young woman from her boyfriend's home. Initially, the boyfriend is the prime suspect, but the case takes unexpected turns. This series highlights the flaws in law enforcement and the perseverance of a dedicated officer who ultimately cracks the case.

<p><span>This chilling series follows Lori Vallow, a mother whose extreme religious beliefs led to the deaths of her children. Influenced by her partner, Chad Daybell, Vallow’s descent into fanaticism and murder is both terrifying and tragic. The series is narrated through the eyes of her surviving son, adding a deeply personal perspective to the horrifying events.</span></p> <p><span>These ten true crime docu-series on Netflix offer not just a glimpse into some of the darkest corners of human behavior but also a critique of societal and systemic flaws. They provide compelling narratives that are as informative as they are chilling, making them perfect for those who enjoy delving into the complexities of real-life mysteries and crimes. So, prepare yourself for sleepless nights and a new perspective on the phrase “truth is stranger than fiction.”</span></p> <p>The post <a href="https://nytech.media/10-best-true-crime-docu-series-on-netflix-that-are-chilling-to-watch/">10 Best True Crime Docu-Series on Netflix That Are Chilling to Watch</a> appeared first on <a href="https://nytech.media">New York Tech Media</a>.</p>

Sins of Our Mother

This chilling series follows Lori Vallow, a mother whose extreme religious beliefs led to the deaths of her children. Influenced by her partner, Chad Daybell, Vallow’s descent into fanaticism and murder is both terrifying and tragic. The series is narrated through the eyes of her surviving son, adding a deeply personal perspective to the horrifying events.

These ten true crime docu-series on Netflix offer not just a glimpse into some of the darkest corners of human behavior but also a critique of societal and systemic flaws. They provide compelling narratives that are as informative as they are chilling, making them perfect for those who enjoy delving into the complexities of real-life mysteries and crimes. So, prepare yourself for sleepless nights and a new perspective on the phrase “truth is stranger than fiction.”

The post 10 Best True Crime Docu-Series on Netflix That Are Chilling to Watch appeared first on New York Tech Media .

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COMMENTS

35 Great True Crime Stories: True Crime Articles to Read Online
Great articles and essays by the world's best journalists and writers. ... 35 Great True Crime Stories: True Crime Articles to Read Online The best long reads about real murder cases, true crime mysteries, robberies, cybercrime and more - all free to read online Murder Stories
Our Long-standing Obsession with True Crime
Harold Schechter. Contributor. Harold Schechter is a professor of American literature at Queens College, the City University of New York. Among his more than 30 published books are a series of historical true crime narratives about America's most infamous serial killers, a quartet of mystery novels featuring Edgar Allan Poe and an anthology of American true crime writing published by the ...
Is Our True-Crime Obsession Doing More Harm Than Good?
In a recent Gawker essay, Berquist argued that the genre makes women — who research suggests account for the bulk of true crime's audience — inappropriately paranoid, comparing the way true ...
15 Best True Crime Authors Who Are Must-Reads For Genre Fans
Ann Rule. The Stranger Beside Me, Rule's best-known book by far, is a classic of the true crime genre. It's follows the Ted Bundy case while delving into her personal relationship with the notorious killer. The two met working at a crisis clinic in Seattle. But don't discount her other work; she's one of the most prolific true crime ...
The Best Crime and Mystery Criticism of 2020 ‹ CrimeReads
Here are our choices for the year's best crime fiction criticism. Susanna Lee, Detective in the Shadows: A Hard-Boiled History. (Johns Hopkins Press) Literary and cultural critic Susanna Lee offers a fascinating study of an evolving figure central to American literature: the private detective. Looking at some of the most iconic figures in ...
15 True Crime Longreads and the Questions We Should Ask Ourselves When
On April 12, 1987, Michael Morton sat down to write a letter. "Your Honor," he began, "I'm sure you remember me. I was convicted of murder, in your court, in February of this year.". He wrote each word carefully, sitting cross-legged on the top bunk in his cell at the Wynne prison unit, in Huntsville.
How to Write Great True Crime
Writing in World Literature Today, mystery novelist J. Madison Davis tackles the subject of what separates the wheat from the chaff in the craft of crime writing. It's far more than a grisly backstory, he explains; the market is flooded with blood-soaked paperbacks. " Judging the Edgar Allan Poe award for 'best fact crime' in 1992 was ...
607 Crime Essay Topics & Samples
607 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. Updated: Mar 2nd, 2024. 31 min. When writing a research paper about criminology or law, you have to consider your topic carefully. Our team came up with 465 titles, along with some crime essay examples to assist you in your assignment. We will write.
True Crime as Inspiration for Fiction: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
True crime accounts can be exploitative, or they can be crafted with care and respect. The same goes for fiction inspired by true crime. The difference is that fiction gives the writer the freedom to explore the questions raised by a story as it takes on its own life in the popular imagination. Dreiser, for instance, used the story of a murder ...
The 50 Best True-Crime Docuseries
Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness: Season 1 (2020)84%. #25. Critics Consensus: A bizarre true crime story you have to see to believe, Tiger King is a messy and captivating portrait of obsession gone terribly wrong. Starring: Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, Howard Baskin, John Finlay.
The Best True Crime Books of 2022
8. Sakshi Jain. By Tina Jordan. Dec. 7, 2022. True-crime books are a tricky thing. When they're done badly, they're blatantly exploitative, usually at the expense of the victims (almost always ...
The 50 best true-crime documentaries you can stream right now
TV critic and true-crime buff Lorraine Ali selects the 50 best true-crime documentaries you can stream on Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu, Prime Video and more. ... I could write lengthy essays on my ...
The Best True Crime Books of 2021 ‹ CrimeReads
Elon Green, Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Queer New York. (Celadon) Elon Green's Last Call is the most recent addition to a new wave of true crime exposing horrific violence committed against the GLBTQ community, the institutional indifference that allowed these crimes to continue, and the community activists who made sure these ...
6 Essential Tips For Writing True Crime
1. Do your research. Nonfiction will always be more about the research than the writing. The more accurate and complete your research is, the more powerful your storytelling will be. Interview experts or people involved with the crime. Attend trials if they're ongoing. Get your information from reliable sources and always double-check your facts.
True Crime Favorites From New York Times Critics and Staff
It seems like there is a new look at the Ted Bundy story every six months. And dozens of podcasts, with names like "Serial," "Crime Junkie" and "True Crime Garage" pepper the top-rated ...
281 Crime Essay Topics & True Crime Research Topics
Biological and Psychological Theories of Crime. The Impact of Crime and Violence on Tourism in Jamaica. The Consequences of a Crime. Organized Crime: Russian Mafia vs. Italian Mafia. Racism: "Born a Crime" by Trevor Noah. Crime Prevention Programs and Criminal Rehabilitation. Concept of Juvenile Crime. We will write a custom essay on your ...
108 Questions about Serial Killers and Essay Topics
Popular culture: true crime documentaries. The mind of H.H. Holmes. Psychological research of serial killers. Nature vs. nurture: are serial killers born or made? Cold cases: The Zodiac Killer. The story of Ted Bundy. Serial killers and forensic science. Psychology and sociology of Jeffrey Dahmer. 🏆 Best Serial Killer Topics & Essay Examples
The 25 Best True-Crime Documentaries to Binge Right Now
Strong Island (2017) In April 1992, Yance Ford 's brother, an unarmed 24-year-old teacher on Long Island, was shot and killed when he confronted a white man about a repair at an auto body shop ...
24 Best Nonfiction True Crime Books to Read in 2022
A literary true crime classic. Amazon. "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote, available on Amazon and Bookshop, from $10.29. "In Cold Blood" is a true crime classic, one that reconstructs a senseless ...
The Best True Crime Books of 2019 ‹ CrimeReads
Rachel Monroe, Savage Appetites: Four True Stories of Women, Crime, and Obsession (Scribner) Rachel Monroe's essay collection Savage Appetites is a revelation. There's been a host of articles over the past decade (and further) asking why women love true crime (as if this should even be a question, given how long feminine ghoulishness has ...
50+ True Crime Stories That Will Shock You To Your Core
7. The Setagaya Family. "The killer stayed in the house for hours, eating their [the Setagaya family's] food, logging into the family computer and sleeping on their couch. It's so creepy because rarely does a killer stick around for hours after they commit their crime making themselves at home.". 8.
Crack history's most fascinating cases with these true crime listens
Get this title. The gruesome 1947 slaying of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, often referred to as the "Black Dahlia," is perhaps the best-known unsolved murder in American history. Even now, seven decades later, the killing continues to intrigue those fascinated with true crime.
'Burning Body
Netflix's Best True Crime Shows Of 2023 For the armchair investigator, a selection of the most fascinating true crime cases covered on Netflix in 2023.
Crime · Longform
Crime articles curated by Longform. Longfor m. Menu. Podcast; Best Of. 2021; 2020; 2019; 2018; 2017; 2016; 2015; 2014; 2013; 2012; ... Best Article Crime. Outside the Manson Pinkberry On Manson bloggers, murder fandom and being a sad, dark teen. ... Now I knew that wasn't true. James Dolan D Magazine Oct 2021 20 min Permalink. Crime.
16 of the Best True-Crime Podcasts to Stream Now
If you want a slightly lighter approach to the macabre, check out "Morbid.". 10. Dateline NBC. A podcast version of its popular TV show namesake, "Dateline NBC" provides detailed and compelling accounts of true-crime investigations, as well as additional deep dives into the twists and turns of each featured story.
101 Crime Essay Topic Ideas & Examples
Writing an essay on crime can be a thought-provoking and engaging task, allowing you to explore various aspects of criminal behavior, law enforcement, and the criminal justice system. To help you get started, here are 101 crime essay topic ideas and examples: The impact of social media on crime rates. Exploring the rise of cybercrime in the ...
Truth Is Drifting Away From True Crime
True crime has always had a volatile relationship with facts. A century ago, tabloid newspapers routinely hyped up the most lurid aspects of a crime, even if there were few verifiable facts to be ...
'Based on a True Story' Review: A Deconstruction of True Crime
With true crime being as widespread as it is, however, Based on a True Story offers a fun deconstruction of the genre that also forces the audience to question their own attraction to serial ...
15 Best Cases American Crime Story Season 4 Could Cover
American Crime Story season 4 has many notorious true crime cases to choose from after losing its previous subject. The FX show is one of the best true crime TV series of all time, taking an anthological approach to storytelling. Each season tells a different story that became well-known across the United States. So far, American Crime Story has covered the trial of O.J. Simpson, the ...
10 Best True Crime Docu-Series on Netflix That Are Chilling to Watch
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey. "Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey" dives into the horrifying world of the FLDS church under Warren Jeffs. This four-part series exposes the systematic abuse and ...