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Crime has always been a subject of fascination. In colonial New England, pamphlets on murders were handed out, featuring recaps of crimes and trials, plus any last words criminals uttered before they were killed. Executions used to be public spectacles, with spectators drinking and eating as if they were at a street fair.
Truman Capote’s book In Cold Blood launched true crime as a modern genre. Errol Morris’s 1988 film The Thin Blue Line, which led to an overturned conviction, established true crime as a subject for documentaries. When channels like Court TV allowed Americans to watch jury trials from their homes in 1991, more true crime TV shows followed. And as audiences for cable, podcast, and streaming sites have grown, so have the number of true crime documentary films and docu-series programs.
TIME asked about a dozen criminologists and scholars who write about true crime which documentaries and docu-series programs best define the genre and we compiled their picks below. The list includes examples that changed the outcome of a case (The Jinx) or the law (Dear Zachary) and some of the most-watched true crime documentary programs of all time (Tiger King).
As David Wilson, a criminologist and emeritus professor at U.K.’s Birmingham City University, argues that true crime documentaries and limited series programs are popular because of the public’s desire to see justice prevailing. Viewers want to see “good triumph over evil, the guilty prosecuted, the police getting their man or woman.”
For those worried this list could keep them up at night fretting about becoming a serial killer’s next victim, Katherine Polzer, a Texas Christian University criminologist, points out, “we need to remember these horrible crimes are still very rare.”
The Thin Blue Line (1988)
The film examines the case of Randall Adams, who was convicted and sentenced to death for the shooting of a Dallas police officer in 1976. In the documentary, another man, David Harris, confesses to actually killing the Dallas police officer, and Adams was released from prison a year after the movie came out. The film pioneered reenactments and demonstrated the use of true crime documentaries to point out and correct issues in the criminal justice system.
Where to watch: Netflix
Brother’s Keeper (1992)
The documentary film focuses on the 1991 trial of Delbert Ward, a farmer accused of suffocating his brother in Munnsville, N.Y. His two other brothers were thrust into the spotlight and the national media descended on the small rural town. The film examines how the town’s residents viewed the case compared to how it was portrayed in the news. At his trial, Delbert was ultimately acquitted after it was discovered the New York State Police coerced a confession, but passed away in 1998. (His brothers Roscoe and Lyman died in 2007.)
Where to watch: Amazon Prime, Apple TV+
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)
The film series is about the 1993 murders of three boys and the trials of the so-called “West Memphis Three,” teens convicted of the crime, even though there was no physical evidence or motive linking them to the deaths. They were released in 2011 after DNA testing exonerated them, and Amanda Keeler, an associate professor at Marquette University who studies true crime, says the film was important in raising awareness of the case. “All three of those young men who were imprisoned are free, but they wouldn’t be free if that film didn’t exist,” she said. “They wouldn’t be free if very famous people like Johnny Depp hadn’t stepped in and offered money and help.”
Where to watch: Max
Bowling for Columbine (2002)
Winner of the 2003 Academy Award for best documentary, the film explores the uniquely American gun culture through the 1999 mass shooting at Colorado’s Columbine High School, which left 15 dead and 24 injured. As filmmaker Michael Moore seeks to explain how the massacre could occur, and why gun deaths are so much higher in the U.S. than in other countries, he’s not afraid to confront high-profile figures. In the film, he grills a staffer at a Lockheed Martin plant near Columbine and goes to the home of National Rifle Association president (and former movie star) Charlton Heston to request an interview—which is granted.
Where to watch: Amazon Prime, Pluto TV, Tubi
The Staircase (2004)
In 2001, Kathleen Peterson was found dead at the bottom of the staircase in her home in Durham, North Carolina, and her husband, crime novelist Michael Peterson, was charged with her murder. Convicted in 2003, he was released from prison in 2017. (Colin Firth and Toni Collette star in a 2022 HBO Max dramatization of the incident.) David Schmid, author of Natural Born Celebrities: Serial Killers in American Culture, says the docu-series epitomizes a popular sub-genre of true crime: “shows about people who you would not expect to be criminals, but that’s precisely what makes them appealing.
Where to watch: Netflix
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
The film focuses on retired school teacher Arnold Friedman who taught computer classes for kids in his basement with his 18-year-old son Jesse. Arnold and Jesse were arrested in 1987 and charged with child molestation. Home videos, obtained from a camcorder that belonged to Arnold’s eldest son David, make this film stand out. “This family took hours of home movies with themselves, just sitting around, talking—even talking after the initial arrest, before the trial,” says Adam Golub, a professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, who teaches about true crime and pop culture. “It gives us some insight into the private lives of this family.”
Where to watch: Max
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (2008)
Director Kurt Kuenne made a movie about his close friend, a doctor named Andrew Bagby, who was found dead after breaking up with his girlfriend from medical school. The girlfriend, Shirley Turner, became a prime suspect, and she fled to Canada. After learning that Bagby’s previous girlfriend was pregnant with Bagby’s son, Kuenne sets out to make a film about the father for the boy to watch when he’s older. The film includes a shocking plot twist that will tear viewers’ hearts out. Two years after Dear Zachary came out, a law was passed in Canada so courts could refuse bail to people like Turner who are accused of committing serious crimes and are considered a danger to children under 18. The documentary “actually did change the law,” says George S. Larke-Walsh, editor of True Crime in American Media.
Where to watch: Amazon Prime, Pluto TV, Tubi
Central Park Five (2012)
Ken Burns’ documentary profiles the five Black teens who were convicted in the 1989 rape and assault of a jogger in New York City’s Central Park and the sensational media coverage of the case. While the convictions were overturned in 2002, the film explores the lasting effects of the wrongful convictions, featuring interviews with the teens as grown men. That access to the exonerated suspects makes this documentary unique compared to other true crime docs, according to TCU’s Polzer.
Where to watch: PBS
The Act of Killing (2012)
A rare example of an international true crime story that got the documentary film treatment, and an even rarer example of killers participating in a film and reenacting their crimes. It features two men, Anwar and Herman, who helped carry out mass political assassinations in Indonesia between 1965 and 1966 aimed at eradicating suspected communists. Anwar, for example, describes how he strangled victims with wire. The film shows that many of the killers maintain comfortable, well-off existences despite their crimes; some even serve in local government.
Where to watch: Peacock
Tales of the Grim Sleeper (2014)
The film is a portrait of a serial killer Lonnie Franklin, Jr., known as the “Grim Sleeper,” for the murders of 10 women throughout Los Angeles from 1984 to 2007. Director Nick Broomfield connects with women who had violent experiences with Franklin via a former sex worker. The film examines how poverty, drugs, and a police force skeptical of Black women led to these cases remaining unsolved for years. “It shows how long it took the police to actually pay attention to these victims because of who they were—runaways, drug addicts,” says Dawn K. Cecil, a criminologist at the University of South Florida.
Where to watch: YouTube
The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst (2015)
It’s unheard of for a true-crime documentary to feature a criminal confessing a crime, but that’s exactly what happens in The Jinx. Real estate tycoon Robert Durst is in the bathroom, forgets that his mic is on and mutters “killed them all of course,” referring to the murders of his wife Kathie in 1982 and her friend Susan Berman in 2000. He was convicted in 2021 and was serving a life sentence in prison when he died in 2022.
Where to watch: Max
Making a Murderer (2015-2018)
This docu-series sparked an unprecedented audience reaction, establishing Netflix as a key platform for true crime documentaries. More than 180,000 people signed petitions calling for then-President Barack Obama to pardon the main subject Steven Avery, even though a president cannot pardon someone for a state offense. Avery served 18 years in prison for a sexual assault, and was released in 2003 when DNA evidence proved him innocent. But two years later, he was found guilty of another murder and sentenced to life in prison. The documentary asks viewers to consider whether he did indeed transform into someone capable of murder after serving in prison so long for a crime he didn’t commit, or whether law enforcement officials, embarrassed by his 2003 exoneration, had it in for him. He remains in prison.
Where to watch: Netflix
O.J.: Made in America (2016)
The comprehensive, nearly 8-hour-long docu-series chronicled the rise and fall of O.J. Simpson, who went from NFL stardom to being tried (and acquitted) for the brutal killing of his ex-wife. Tanya Horeck, author of Justice on Demand: True Crime in the Digital Streaming Era, and a professor at Anglia Ruskin University in the U.K., says O.J.: Made in America stands out for delving into issues of race, gender, and sports, arguing, “a true crime documentary and true crime docu-series is at its best when it’s making us think about the wider social context and not just treating these cases as isolated incidents.”
The Keepers (2017)
The 1969 murder of Catherine Cesnik, a Roman Catholic nun, is a window into a larger story about abuse at the all-girls catholic school in Baltimore where she taught. The docuseries features former students’ perspectives, some of whom believe that a priest was behind her death, though the question of who murdered Cesnik remains unsolved. As Danielle Slakoff, an assistant professor of criminal justice at California State University, Sacramento, explains, “you go in thinking this documentary is about the murder of a nun,
