Crime Writers On...True Crime Review

Audiences were charmed by “Free Willy,” the 1993 movie about a captive orca returning to the wild. But when the world learned the real whale was wasting away in a Mexican amusement park, scientists and activists united in a project to re-introduce Keiko to the open ocean, just like his on-screen counterpart.

NOTE: We are reviewing the entirety of The Good Whale, although some of it is still behind a payway via The New York Times. (I...

The Garvey sisters gather to celebrate Grace’s wedding to Ian, a man far more loving than her dead first husband, John Paul. But Roger is struggling with his guilt of helping Grace get rid of The Prick and making it look like an accident. After an unexpected turn, Eva and her sisters struggle with a pushy neighbor, an unexplained absence, and a possible blackmail scheme. As the Garveys dig themselves deeper into a hole, the Garda r...

Jared Akron seemed to be living the perfect life: a newlywed with a new house and twins on the way. But as the due date approached, that life started to unravel. Their home was destroyed in a fire. Then, kept from the delivery room by COVID protocols, his wife Kristy texted that the babies were gravely ill. As he tried to put their lives back together, Jared realized he overlooked some red flags about the pregnancy and his social m...

After she quits Scotland Yard, detective Millie Black takes a post in her native Jamaica to confront her troubled past. She tries to reconnect with Hibiscus, the sibling who for years she thought was dead, but is now living on the margins as a trans sex worker. Millie works the case of a missing child who may be connected to a powerful family. The investigation takes a turn when a British detective turns up in Kingston with an inte...

There was something for everyone on the TV in 2024. We saw documentaries that revealed intimate aspects of the justice system. And there were some that challenged viewers to decide what is fact and what is fiction. But there were also shows that made us laugh…and more than one that made us cry. But which TV shows and documentaries truly stood out? Here are the crime writers; top ten lists for the best TV of 2024.

Lara Bricker:

1. JU...

2024 was an exceptionally strong year for podcasts. There were multiple investigative series, fascinating retrospectives of the history you thought you knew, and even some light-hearted fare that was quirky and entertaining. But which titles truly stood out?  Here are our top ten selections for 2024.

Lara Bricker:

1. In the Dark season 3
2. Stolen: Trouble in Sweetwater
3. Beyond All Repair
4. Hysterical
5. Hush
6. The Runaway Princesses
7. On Our Watch: ...

Sap farmer Ruth Landry is deeply in debt and faces losing her property to the Quebec Maple Association. Her friend Mike hatches a million dollar scheme with a security guard to rip off the association. They plan on stealing barrels of syrup from the warehouse and selling it themselves. Plans for the heist become more ambitious, but a murder connected to the conspirators threatens to complicate the operation. And if Mike’s mob bosse...

By day, Kevin Curtis was a janitor at a Mississippi hospital. By night, he was an Elvis impersonator, performing with his brother - who was also an Elvis impersonator. But after seeing something disturbing in the morgue, Kevin became consumed with conspiracies about illegal organ harvesting rings. Fueled by his paranoia, Kevin damaged personal relationships and crossed swords with powerful people in Tupelo. Then in 2013, when ricin...

In 1974, Karen Silkwood wanted to blow the whistle on the nuclear fuel plant she worked at. Armed with documentation about insufficient safety measures, radiation leaks, and unaccounted plutonium, Silkwood drove to meet an investigative reporter. But on her way, she was killed when her car went off the road - an accident some believed was caused by the powerful company hoping to silence her.

Though police said they believed Silkwood...

Thirty years after his involvement in the shooting of a cop, Todd Scott prepares for his sixth parole hearing and a chance to demonstrate his rehabilitation. Convicted at age 14 for killing another teen and a baby, Chad Campbell faces the parole board for the ninth time to argue for his release. But their lawyers fear the board will only ever consider one factor: the heinous nature of their original offenses. Because they can never...

Her mother’s dying wish was that her daughter complete her memoir about her childhood in Nazi Germany. That’s how reporter Suzanne Rico learned a secret about her grandfather. Years before Robert Lusser was an American rocket designer, he was the German engineer who invented the V-1 flying bombs that rained down on London. 

Suzanne’s grandmother was killed when Allied planes dropped bombs on their secluded farmhouse, a revenge attac...

San Diego’s McKamey Manor drew fame as a boundary breaking, interactive haunted house - not one filled with ghosts and goblins - but one where visitors are tied up, waterboarded, or buried alive. Now located in Tennessee, attraction goers are saying the manor is going too far with its physical and mental abuse. 

Owner Russ McKamey disagrees, pointing to its rabid online following for his no charge, “extreme haunt” experience. But it...

Karen Falasca was the last person to see her sister Denise alive before she was murdered in 1969. Haunted by the tragedy, Karen spoke to podcaster Anthony Scalia about her five decade search for Denise’s unidentified killer. Scalia retraced Karen’s investigation into likely suspects. But the sister remained skeptical of the police’s findings. And as a terminal illness threatened to take her life, Karen made one request of Scalia: f...

In 1971, Stanford psychologist Philip Zimbardo conducted an experiment with college students to evaluate behavior in a mock prison. Within days, the guards were abusing their power and mistreating the prisoners so badly the study was shut down early. The “Stanford Prison Experiment” was heralded in academia and in pop culture as a landmark study into the corrupting power of authority. But a re-examination of Zimbardo’s methods ques...

When researchers found that providing stimulants to hyperactive children improved their behavior in school, educators, pediatricians, and drug manufacturers helped build interest in identifying and treating a new condition: Attention Deficit Disorder. Some saw it as a breakthrough in treating learning disabilities. But the implications of medicating children drew a backlash from advocates. Plus, doctors could not agree on concrete ...

Speaking to an historian, Dolours Price discussed her life as a volunteer in the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Beginning in the 1970s, Dolours and her sister, Marian, convinced its operatives, including leader Gerry Adams, to let them fight in their guerilla war against British troops in Belfast. Throughout The Troubles, the sisters were part of a secret IRA unit whose missions included robbing banks, blowing up cars, and maki...

Through her Facebook friends in the London Sikh community, Kirat Assi met a charming man named Bobby Jandu. Though a series of health problems and other entanglements kept him away from Great Britain, the two began a long term, online romance. But their virtual relationship took a turn as Bobby became more cruel and controlling. When Kirat learned he was back in the UK and living with his ex, her confrontation with him ended in con...

American ambassador Kate Wyler believes the Prime Minister orchestrated a false flag operation to rally the nation and thwart a Scottish secession movement. As British forces hunt the Russian fixer behind the attacks, Kate takes a risk hiding a politician with inside knowledge of the plot. Kate sets aside her attraction to the Foreign Secretary to help expose the PM. Meanwhile, her politically-savvy husband, Hal, tries to convince ...

Set in a Chicago housing project, the 1992 horror movie “Candyman” features a deadly ghost who can be summoned by chanting in a bathroom mirror. But some plot points were inspired by a real life robbery homicide in which the killer broke into an apartment through a hole in the medicine cabinet. A reporter found the flawed design of the bathroom walls were a contributing factor into Ruthie Mae McCoy’s 1987 death. The exposé raised q...