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To say that true-crime stories are a hit would be a huge understatement. With podcasts like Serial pulling in listeners, and Netflix shows like Making a Murderer, The Ted Bundy Tapes, or Dahmer racking up impressive viewing figures, it’s clear that we have an insatiable appetite for all things grim. With this in mind, we’ve decided to share our favourite true-crime podcasts that are so gripping, they will likely keep you wide awake at night. We should warn you, this article contains some very graphic descriptions.
This harrowing podcast delves into the whirlwind romance between successful businesswoman Debra Newell and conman John Meehan—a.k.a. Dirty John. Within two months of dating, John manages to convince Debra to rent a beachfront home for them to live in together, a decision which is soon followed by an impulsive wedding in Las Vegas. Displeased by their fast-tracked relationship, Debra’s daughters investigate their mother’s new beau and prove that he’s a con man. As Deborah gets drawn deeper into John’s web of lies and deceit, things start to get ugly for the entire family. Gripping stuff.
Melissa Moore is a writer, Emmy-nominated crime correspondent for the Dr Oz Show, and executive producer and host of LMN’s Monster In My Family. She also happens to be the daughter of the infamous “Happy Face” serial killer, Keith Hunter Jeperson. This 12-part podcast investigates her father’s brutal crimes, but also wades through the emotional trauma and fears that Moore struggled with due to the horrific legacy her father left behind.
The podcast is now registered as “Happy Face Presents: Two Face” on most streaming platforms, and Moore took to the mic again in 2020 for a second season, working closely with Becky Babcock, daughter of killer Diane Downs, about her mother’s motives and secrets.
Wondery—the same network responsible for hit podcast and Netflix series Dirty John—returns with another story of a charismatic man who isn’t who he claims to be.
Recounting the tales of surgeon Christopher Duntsch’s horrifyingly sinister practices, Dr Death is at times almost too difficult to listen to. Over the span of two years, the sadistic doctor operated on 38 patients, leaving 33 paralysed or permanently in pain, and two dead. He sewed up one man’s throat with a bloody sponge inside, surgically detached his own friend’s spinal column from the base of his skull, and amputated another patient’s spinal nerve root and left screws driven into her muscle tissue.
The podcast goes into the lawsuits that were filed against the doctor, exploring how he practised for so long despite his history of botched surgeries.
Many existing crime podcasts focus on white, female, middle-, or upper-class victims, forgetting a vast population of victims of colour. CBC’s investigative podcast, Finding Cleo, however, departs from that norm with the story of a young Indigenous girl. Part of the Cree tribe, she disappeared from her Saskatchewan First Nations community in a Canadian government programme and is thought to have been raped and murdered while hitchhiking back home.
CBC’s award-winning investigative reporter, Connie Walker—who is Cree herself—joins the search to find out what really happened to Cleo, and brings light to the issue of Indigenous children being taken by child welfare services.
NXIVM (pronounced “Nexium”) calls itself a humanitarian community, but you probably know it as a sex cult after hearing about how a former member of the group, Smallville actress Allison Mack, was arrested on sex trafficking charges.
The investigative podcast series, Uncover: Escaping NXIVM, takes a look inside the controversial group, its leader, and former high-level member Sarah Edmondson’s journey to escape it. Through the inside perspective of Edmondson’s childhood friend and producer Joshua Bloc, the podcast asks questions we all want to know about people who get involved in cults, including how they get sucked in in the first place, and why don’t they leave sooner.
In the first season of this podcast hosted by Helen Molesworth, we learn about artist Ana Mendieta and her untimely death. Ana Mendieta was a Cuban-American artist, now celebrated for the massive influence she exerted in her field. What we don’t talk or hear about as much is how she died at the age of 36 after falling from the thirty-fourth-floor residence she shared with husband and fellow artist Carl Andre. Despite neighbours hearing the couple fight and Mendieta scream, and Andre having scratches on his face, Andre’s version is that his wife jumped—and he was acquitted in court.
The story has caused uproar in closed circles since the end of the 1980s, but Death of an Artist has given Mendieta’s story a wider audience. Molesworth goes back on Mendieta’s death, Andre’s trial, and the silence that dominated in the art world.
A second season about Jackson Pollock and his wife Lee Krasner’s story is being released throughout 2024.
West Cork explores the 1996 murder of French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier, after British journalist Ian Bailey was found guilty and sentenced to 25 years in prison by the French court of justice back in 2019. Protected by a no-extradition decision, Bailey was absent at his trial and convicted in absentia. He died of a cardiac arrest in January 2024.
To revisit the case, Toscan du Plantier was found dead outside her holiday home in Toormore, Ireland. She had suffered blunt trauma to the head. Bailey, who had a history of domestic violence and assault, started reporting on the murder and writing articles about the victim, despite being under investigation for her murder. Unfortunately, no witnesses or motives allowed for his arrest.
In the 14-episode podcast, Jennifer Forde and Sam Bungey explore how the tragedy affected the small town in West Cork, interviewing people of the small community for the first time.
If you’re looking for a multi-case podcast, The Deck might do the trick. Ashley Flowers of the Crime Junkie podcast (which is also worth a listen) tackles cold cases. The disappearances that go unsolved may be the most gripping of them all, and the ones explored in The Deck are so cold, law enforcement have resorted to putting photos of victim’s faces on playing card decks before distributing them in prison, in the hopes that prisoners might know something and come forward.
New episodes are released weekly, shedding light on disappearances across the US by interviewing the people who knew the victims and police officers who worked the cases.
First published on 14 March 2019. Written by Sarah Moran. Last updated by Lily Valette.
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