after spending far too many hours of my life watching “cold cases” / “48 hours” / “wives with knives”, i have attempt to construct a close-to-exhaustive list of the best of the true crime genre.
thank you to henry joost, dv devincentis, natalie guevara, irina aleksander, willie thurlow & isabel halley for their suggestions.
Fatal Vision, Joe McGuinness (1983)
A Wilderness of Error, Errol Morris (2012)
Blind Faith, Joe McGuinness (1989)
The Stranger Beside Me, Anne Rule (1980)
Naked in the Window: The Fatal Marriage of Ana Mendieta and Carl Andre, Robert Katz (1990)
Blood and Money, Thomas Thompson (1976)
The Journalist and the Murderer, Janet Malcolm (1990)
Iphigenia in Forest Hills: Anatomy of a Murder Trial, Janet Malcolm (2011)
The Executioner's Song, Norman Mailer (1980)
Helter Skelter, Vincent Bugliosi (1974)
Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Murder, Robert Kolker (2013)
The Night Stalker, Philip Carlo (2006)
Homicide, David Simon (1991)
The Good Nurse: A True Story of Medicine, Madness and Murder, Charles Graeber (2013)
People Who Eat Darkness, Richard Lloyd Parry
Blind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of the BTK Murderer, Roy Wenzi (2008)
In Cold Blood, Truman Capote (1965)
Devil's Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three, Mara Leveritt (2002)
The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America, Erik Larson (2004)
Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith, Jon Krakauer (2003)
The Red Parts: A Memoir, Maggie Nelson (2007)
Jane: A Murder, Maggie Nelson (2005)
American Eve: Evelyn Nesbitt & Stanford White, and The Crime of the Century, Paula Uruburu (2009)
Skyjack: The Hunt for D.B. Cooper, Geoffrey Gray (2012)
Columbine, Dave Cullen (2009)
The Staircase or Soupçons, Jean Xavier de Lestrade (2004)
The Imposter, Bart Layton (2012)
Capturing The Friedmans, Andrew Jarecki (2003)
Errol Morris' First Person specifically, S1 Ep. 5 "The Parrot" and S1 Ep. 8 "In The Kingdom of a Unabomber" (2000)
Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, Jeremiah Zagar (2014)
Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills (1996)
Into The Abyss, Werner Herzog (2013)
Cold Case Files: Obsession: Dave Reichart and the Green River Killer (2005)
The Cheshire Murders (2013)
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, Kurt Kuenne (2008)
Murder on a Sunday Morning, Jean Xavier de Lestrade (2004)
There’s Something Wrong With Aunt Diane (2011)
Crazy Love, Dan Klores (2007)
Aileen: Life and Death of a Serial Killer, Nick Broomfield (2003)
Brother’s Keeper, Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky (1992)
The Central Park Five, Ken Burns (2013)
The Thin Blue Line, Errol Morris (1988)
Tabloid, Errol Morris (2011)
The Jinx, Andrew Jarecki (2015)
The Perverted World of Marc Dextrou (2005)
Killer in a Small Town: The Ipswich Murders (The Suffolk Strangler) (2009)
The Pig Farm [Canada's most prolific serial killer Robert Pickton] (2011)
Fictionalized Film/TV Series for Lovers of True Crime:
Red Riding Trilogy: In The Year of Our Lord 1983, 1980, 1974 (2009)
Silence of The Lambs (1991)
Top of The Lake, Jane Campion (2013)
Zodiac, David Fincher (2007)
Reversal of Fortune (1990)
Se7en, David Fincher (1995)
Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, John McNaughton (1990)
The Fall (BBC Series - 2013+)
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