#true-crime

#true-crime

Didion describes San Bernadino County as 'the country of the teased hair and the Capris and the girls for whom all life's promise comes down to a waltz-length white wedding dress and the birth of a Kimberly or a Sherry or a Debbi and a Tijuana divorce and a return to hairdressers' school.'

The myth is that the murdered woman was 'a sex worker, a gangster's moll, or a movie extra yearning to become Lana Turner.' In fact, Elizabeth Short was a young woman who wanted to see more of the world than her hometown offered. She had suffered abuse from her father and dreamed of making a new life for herself in Los Angeles.

Billy Preston was a genre-bending singer-songwriter whose work climbed the charts, won Grammys, and saw him collaborating with fellow legends like Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin & The Beatles (even earning him the nickname "The Fifth Beatle). Yet he was battling a number of demons on-stage & off, including struggling to come to terms with his sexuality, which he'd repressed thanks to a lifetime in the church.

"True crime can just be about one particular incident in isolation," he explains, "but what interests us is the way it sort of radiates out... It was almost like watching a ghost story happen in real life. Every kind of murder isn't just an isolated tragedy... it involves the entire community."

The 10-episode series will premiere on the streamer in June 2026, but Apple unveiled a first look during the Apple TV press day this week. There, Antosca teased his plans for the new Cape Fear alongside its stars, Amy Adams and The Conjuring's Patrick Wilson. The duo play a pair of happily-married lawyers whose idyllic life immediately unravels when Max Cady (Bardem), the notorious serial murderer they convicted years prior, is released from prison.

Even in an era of CGI and AI, nothing is more vivid than the intimacy and imagination of radio or more direct than the connection radio has with listeners. I remember when the legendary Stan Freberg drained Lake Michigan and filled it with hot chocolate, a 700-foot mountain of whipped cream, and a 10-ton maraschino cherry. We didn't have to see it. We heard it on the radio. It was Freberg's demonstration of what radio can do better than television.

You're probably (unfortunately) at least vaguely familiar with some pretty infamous serial killers in the U.S., like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. However, you may never have heard of Stephen Morin, even though his suspected crimes rival both Bundy's and Dahmer's in number. And although none of these pieces of sh*t deserve to be immortalized, what makes Fear Not unique is that it tells Morin's story through the lens of a survivor's lived experience.

On February 8, 1977, Indianapolis businessman Tony Kiritzis (Bill Skarsgard) kidnapped Richard Hall, a mortgage company president (Stranger Things' Dacre Montgomery), claiming that Hall's company had sabotaged his real estate investment. Kiritzis rigged a 12-gauge shotgun with a hair-trigger "dead man's wire" around Hall's neck, ensuring that Hall would die if police sharpshooters tried to kill him. He held Hall for three days as police, family members, a charismatic local radio DJ (Colman Domingo) and TV reporters were drawn into the standoff.

It begins with a murder, and then another. A woman is killed, a man grievously injured, and a letter is sent to the news media. The killer gives himself a name this is the Zodiac speaking and provides a message written in code. So we start with three mysteries: the man, his motives and his message. The third is quickly cracked; the first hypothesized, but never definitively proven.

We are always aware, I think, of man's inhumanity to man. The latest true-crime documentary from Netflix is here to remind you that this is an umbrella term. It is undoubtedly rarer, though precisely why is unclear, but women can inflict the most awful suffering too and here, a pair of them do so on children. Evil Influencer: The Jodi Hildebrandt Story is the latest offering from Skye Borgman, who is the undisputed queen of the genre, specialising in high-end takes on the most extreme,

KENREX is a one man show, co-written by its star performer, Jack Holden, alongside the show's director, Ed Stambollouian. Holden, fresh from writing The Line of Beauty, which recently enjoyed a sell-out run at The Almeida, now bounces back onto stage himself, in a role portraying the entire town of Skidmore and resident bully, Ken Rex McElroy. Skidmore is a Missouri town too small and far away from anywhere to have a sheriff.

In a chaotic and distressing year, books provided a respite, a chance to commune with works of coherent voice and vision. Some people find it harder to read during days overflowing with one-minute distractions and incessant notifications, but when I took the time, I was rewarded with a slightly bigger foothold in a world of decency, humanity, patience, and compassion. Here are 10 good reasons to give that a try.

The kayaker who went missing-and stayed missing for so long that rescue teams were at a loss. The seemingly perfect man who conned women-and was brought to justice by his own victims. The following stories pack a double punch, starting with a mysterious circumstance and tracing the story to places unknown and unexpected. Today, sit back and explore five gripping reads that aren't what they seem.

Such begins the story of The Carman Family Deaths, Netflix's latest true crime documentary, based on a 2021 WIRED feature by Evan Lubofsky. Carman was, according to his father, the "first-born grandson of a Greek dynasty," and when questions began to emerge following his rescue, suspicions arose that what happened at sea wasn't what he claimed.

Now, a new book details the campaign of coercive control waged against the late Tina Satchwell, and the deep extent of his manipulation. 'Beneath the Stairs' written by Paul Byrne and Ralph Riegel details the sheer cruelty of convicted killer Richard Satchwell and features extensive interviews conducted with Satchwell after his wife went missing in 2017, as he tried to portray himself as a victim and claimed she had run off with €26,000 of their life savings.

Five family members, murdered. A sixth in prison for life. It's one of Britain's most infamous crimes. But did the justice system get it wrong? "Blood Relatives," a six-part series from In the Dark, is coming on October 28th.

But Jeffrey Manchester, the robber known as "Roofman," made headlines for being unusually polite when he executed his misdeeds. After he surprised McDonald's employees by dropping in through the roof-hence his nickname-and holding them at gunpoint, he gently reminded one of them to breathe while they collected cash. Before he locked them in the walk-in refrigerator, he made sure that they had coats to wear so they'd be comfortable in the cold.