Noteworthy True Crime Podcasts
A curated podcast list by Justin Clavet
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About This List
These are the best podcasts in the true crime category. For podcasts that cover different cases over multiple seasons, the recommended season is noted.
Anthologies
- Forensic Files is a pioneer in the field of fact-based, high-tech, dramatic storytelling. This series of television programs delves into the world of forensic science, profiling intriguing crimes, accidents, and outbreaks of disease from around the world.
- Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
- Small Town Dicks is a podcast about the big-time crime that’s happening in Small Town, USA. Each episode features the detectives who broke the case in their small town, and includes assets like jailhouse phone calls, suspect interviews and 9-1-1 calls. The show is anchored by veteran, identical-twin detectives Dan and Dave, and hosted by actress, Yeardley Smith.
Serial Reporting
- Susan Powell vanished on Dec. 7, 2009. Her body has never been found. From the beginning, West Valley City, Utah police suspected Susan's husband, Josh Powell, had murdered her. They never arrested him. COLD dives deep into the case files, uncovering never-before-heard details. You'll learn why Susan stayed with an abusive husband, why Josh did what he did and how the justice system failed Susan and her two boys.
- From the archives of You Must Remember This, Karina Longworth presents her hugely popular series, “Charles Manson’s Hollywood.” It chronicles the murders committed by followers of Charlie Manson in the summer of 1969, and how the lurid crime and its aftermath were inseparable from the show business milieu in which they occurred. Originally released in 2015. For more great Hollywood stories, subscribe to the You Must Remember This podcast.
- Debra Newell is a successful interior designer. She meets John Meehan, a handsome man who seems to check all the boxes: attentive, available, just back from a year in Iraq with Doctors Without Borders. But her family doesn’t like John, and they get entangled in an increasingly complex web of love, deception, forgiveness, denial, and ultimately, survival. Reported and hosted by Christopher Goffard from the L.A. Times.
- Hollywood and Crime is a ground-breaking true crime series about the most infamous murders in Tinseltown history.In The Black Dahlia Serial Killers, host Tracy Pattin investigates the sensational unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short. Known as the Black Dahlia, Short was a star-struck young woman whose body was found completely severed at the waist in January 1947. Many remember her tragic story, yet few know that more than a dozen other women died in similar circumstances around that same time.
Justin Clavet
- Where is Cleo? Taken by child welfare workers in the 1970’s and adopted in the U.S., the young Cree girl’s family believes she was raped and murdered while hitchhiking back home to Saskatchewan. CBC news investigative reporter Connie Walker joins the search to find out what really happened to Cleo.
Justin Clavet
- Serial investigative journalism from APM Reports, with host Madeleine Baran and a team of reporters. Season 1 looked at the abduction of Jacob Wetterling in rural Minnesota and the accountability of sheriffs in solving crime. Season 2 examined the case of Curtis Flowers, who was tried six times for the same crime. Also, a special report on Covid-19 in the Mississippi Delta.
Justin Clavet
- Two young men, living the good life -- surrounding themselves with all the trappings of wealth and success. But their sun-kissed California lives are darkened by greed, paranoia and accusations of wrongdoing. What seemed to be paradise is tainted by mistrust and, ultimately, violence -- concealed for months by a convincing web of lies -- until a few determined investigators and a worried family unravel them to reveal a stunning story of deception. Hosted by Matt Gutman.
- In the second season of Verified, Host Natasha Del Toro and the Verified team again ask tough questions about whom we trust and why. This time, they’re investigating whether a group of women developed ovarian cancer from dusting their bodies with Johnson & Johnson’s baby powder—an iconic brand associated with innocence and comfort since the 1800s. One woman's mysterious illness snowballs into thousands of court cases, claiming that baby powder is to blame for their cancer. Verified: Dust Up is the story of a trusted brand’s fight to convince consumers and regulators that baby powder is safe while minimizing the work of the scientists who claim it is not. Verified follows this decades-long journey to ask: Could a product so many of us have in our medicine cabinets be putting us at risk? Hear more great stories about complicated people from Witness Docs at witnesspodcasts.com.
Justin Clavet
- A live investigation: Two murders, one fugitive and a hunter tracking down the target.
Justin Clavet
- Abby and Libby - 2 young girls murdered. Investigators are searching for the killer using their biggest clue: a recording of his voice from one of the victims' phones ordering the girls Down the Hill. Almost three years later, it's a mystery that still haunts the small town of Delphi, Indiana while police say the killer may walk among them.
- The LISK (Long Island Serial Killer) investigation began in May 2010 with the disappearance of sex worker Shannan Gilbert. In the following months, Suffolk County Police uncovered human remains from nine more murders, including those of the "Gilgo 4", all sex workers whose bodies were disposed of similarly. Inspired by the New York Times best-selling book "Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery", follow the series as it’s told through previously unheard interviews with family members, friends, police officers, government officials and others whose lives were touched by the gruesome murders. LISK: Long Island Serial Killer premieres on March 11th. Hosted by Chris Mass. www.liskpodcast.com
- Serial is a podcast from Serial Productions, a New York Times company, hosted by Sarah Koenig. Serial unfolds one story - a true story - over the course of a whole season. The show follows the plot and characters wherever they lead, through many surprising twists and turns. Sarah won't know what happens at the end of the story until she gets there, not long before you get there with her. Each week she'll bring you the latest chapter, so it's important to listen in, starting with Episode 1. New episodes are released on Thursday mornings.
Justin Clavet
- Two murders, months apart, in Houston. The young victims knew each other, but did they also know their elusive killer? Dateline’s Josh Mankiewicz takes you inside one of the most twisted and confounding cases he’s ever covered. From the team who brought you the #1 podcast The Thing About Pam comes the chilling story of the race to find a killer by unmasking the motive.
- Two days after Christmas, 2011, Russ Faria came home from game night to find his wife, Betsy, dead. He was soon charged and convicted of her murder. But Russ Faria insisted he did not kill his wife. Betsy’s brutal murder set off a chain of events that would leave one man dead, another man implicated, and expose a diabolical scheme. It would also see Dateline NBC—the true-crime original—become a part of the never-ending saga that proves the old adage: Truth is stranger than fiction. This original series from Keith Morrison and Dateline defies all expectations.
- In 2019, we brought you the story of five unsolved murders in and around the small, tight-knit town of Bardstown, Kentucky. Season 2 brings us to a bayou community in Louisiana — Lacombe — where the wife of a local fire chief is missing the day a mysterious fire rips through her house. 'Beyond Bardstown: Lacombe' will explore why Nanette Krentel turned that home into a fortress, and ultimately, how that fortress failed to protect her. WWL-TV Investigative Reporter Katie Moore shares a story she’s been following since 2017. A story about fear, loss and a family's search for answers.Season 2 of 'Bardstown' is coming March 31, 2021.
Series About Frauds
- Deep in the Mojave Desert, there is a little town with a big name and a bizarre history: California City. For decades, real estate developers have sold a dream here: if you buy land now, you’ll be rich one day. Thousands of people bought this dream. Many were young couples and hard-working immigrants looking to build a better future. But much of the land they bought is nearly worthless. In this new podcast from LAist Studios, host Emily Guerin tells a story of money, power and deception.
- Money. Romance. Tragedy. Deception. The story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos is an unbelievable tale of ambition and fame gone terribly wrong. How did the world's youngest self-made female billionaire lose it all in the blink of an eye? How did the woman once heralded as "the next Steve Jobs" find herself facing criminal charges -- to which she pleaded not guilty -- and up to 20 years in jail? How did her technology, meant to revolutionize healthcare, potentially put millions of patients at risk? And how did so many smart people get it so wrong along the way? ABC News chief business, technology and economics correspondent Rebecca Jarvis, along with producers Taylor Dunn and Victoria Thompson, take listeners on a journey that includes a three-year-long investigation. You'll hear exclusive interviews with former employees, investors, and patients, and for the first-time, the never-before-aired deposition testimony of Elizabeth Holmes, and those at the center of this story.
Justin Clavet
- In Season 2 we look at a world just as shady and mysterious as MLMs, but one whose promises are at times even more bombastic and unfathomable: WELLNESS. What is it? Who sells it? And will it bring you eternal happiness…and, perhaps, eternal life? Hear more great stories about complicated people from Witness Docs at witnesspodcasts.com.
Justin Clavet
Satire
- A Very Fatal Murder sends Onion Public Radio (OPR) correspondent David Pascall from New York City to the sleepy town of Bluff Springs, Nebraska to investigate the mysterious death of a 17-year-old girl, Hayley Price. Hayley was a popular, smart animal lover, with a bright future ahead of her. Everyone in town knew her name, and now everyone in town is a suspect. Join David as he works to understand why the initial investigation of Hayley’s death failed, and how a very inquisitive and Pulitzer-hungry podcast host might shed new light on the case.
Justin Clavet
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