True crime is consistently the most popular genre in podcasting, which makes it really tricky to narrow it down to a best-of list. Some shows are definitely trying to cash in on the trend, and even if they're popular or fairly well done, the aim for quantity over quality.
But not these ten: After listening to literal days' worth of podcasts in 2024. these are the true crime shows I could not stop texting my friends about.
Season three of In the Dark, produced by The New Yorker, is one of the greatest long form investigative projects I've ever encountered. Madeleine Baran is reporting on the 2005 Haditha massacre, during which 24 unarmed Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. Marines, leaning on jaw-dropping audio recordings and with access to classified documents and photos that reconstruct what happened and belie nearly everything the military previously disclosed. More than just explaining this terrible morning and the anguish of the families left behind or finally identifying people responsible for these war crimes, it explores the ways war can dehumanize others. It's a sobering, compelling, difficult listen.
Chenjerai Kumanyika is the host of Empire City, a show that delves into the NYPD’s complicated history, all the way back to the beginning—and not to sound all tag line-y, but it's the history the cops don’t want us to know. Chenjerai is an amazing storyteller, he transports you back through time. If you're the kind of person who doesn't put a lot of faith into policing, Empire City will confirm that you probably shouldn't. This is a history podcast infused with so much life.
On Dec 7, 2014, there was a major chemical attack at Midwest FurFest, a convention for the Furry community, that remains unsolved a decade later. The police didn’t conduct a proper investigation, and the media made a joke of the story, even though it was a hate crime that sent 19 people to the hospital. Who would do such a thing? Finding out has been internet reporter Nicky Woolf’s white whale, and now he’s covering it on Fur & Loathing, a new podcast that’s both a compelling true crime case and a comprehensive, humane look at the tight-knit Furry community, the most creative and, as Nicky puts it, “nicest” community on the internet. Nicky is working (and attending a Furry Convention) with a community member known as Patch O’Furr to put a spotlight on the story, dig into the FBI investigation, and interview a likely suspect in an “alt-fur” group with links to far-right and neo-Nazi organizations.
In 1998, 28-year-old Harriet Thompson was murdered in her home, and thanks to a poor investigation, a racist jury, and an inhumane death penalty policy, wrongly accused Jesse Lee Johnson sat on death row for 17 years for killing her. Hush is Jesse’s story, and it delves into the weak case the state had against him, why he never for a moment considered a plea deal, and how it felt to get out of jail when the state finally decided he never should have been there in the first place. Hosts Leah Sottile and Ryan Haas (of Bundyville) seek to give the case the spotlight it deserved the first time around via great investigative reporting. They get some things on tape that are truly shocking and track down people crucial to revealing the truth of what happened.
The Confessions of Anthony Raimondi introduces you to Anthony, a man from one of New York City’s crime families who claims to have played a part in murdering the pope in 1978. He’s so full of yarns, it's impossible to believe all of them, and that’s the whole point of this podcast: Marc Smerling (co-creator of HBO series The Jinx) is following along with Anthony's stories and fact-checking them, which is hard, because Anthony is such an unforgettable subject and fantastic storyteller, it can be difficult to separate truth from fiction. I actually don't care if the stories are true or false, as Anthony is fascinating and the podcast is wonderfully made.
Ripple tells the story of the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill, the largest oil spill in American history, with in-depth reporting that will anger you to no end. Dan Leone takes us to the gulf waters to get to the bottom of what happened, and what is still happening. He’s pulling truth from lies, capturing real heartbreak, and telling us the real story about how BP attempted to clean up the spill and the people they put at risk doing so. Dan talks to people who risked their lives, lost loved ones, and lost their livelihoods. He rewrites the timeline of the disaster we were fed by BP and the media, and is able to prove how out of control this disaster was, and how feeble the response.
Beyond All Repair, Amory Sivertson’s true-crime series about woman accused of murdering her mother-in-law, never misses a beat. Every episode thickens the plot, making me second guess my assumptions, and ends on a cliffhanger. Amory takes us into every corner of the murder scene to investigate what really happened, and in the end, shares her own theory formed after chasing this story for three years. The last episode has a mic drop moment that I won’t soon forget.
Noble is a fascinating story about Tri-State Crematory, a crematory that wasn’t cremating bodies, but throwing them into a huge mass grave. It’s also about Tri-State's hometown of Noble, Georgia, and the criminal family at the heart of the corrupt enterprise. It builds out a compelling cast of characters in those involved in the discovery of all these bodies, as well as the family members who thought they were doing right by the memory of their loved ones. Though it all, host Shaun Raviv shows true empathy for all the people caught up in such bizarre, sad circumstances.
For season nine of Slow Burn, subtitled Gays Against Briggs, Christina Cauterucci takes us to 1970s California, where the biggest gay rights fight in the country was underway, thanks to a ballot proposition that sought to ban lesbians and gays from working in California public schools. The show provides all the context you need to understand the climate that allowed this to happen, all the hard work that went into stopping it, and the likelihood something similar will happen again.
Ransom is a documentary-style retelling of the ransom kidnapping and murder of 12-year-old McKay Everett from his Texas home in 1995, but that horrific crime is only a tiny piece of the story: The podcast doesn’t start or end with McKay’s death, or even the trial of the man who killed him, a friend so close to the family the boy called him “Uncle Hilty.” Ransom pulls way back—why would a man kill the son of a family friend? How did he get there? What does the murder have to do with the fact he was a student athlete with a gambling addiction? And then it zooms forward—what happened to the Everett family after McKay was gone? What happened to Uncle Hilty? Who is Paulette, McKay’s mother, really suspicious of? The show uses interviews, archival tape, and on-the-ground reporting from producer Ben Kuebrich to tell a layered and emotionally complicated story.
