9 Best True Crime Docs, Docuseries of 20204

Hulu’s Perfect Wife: The Mysterious Disappearance of Sherri Papini differs from other missing person procedurals in that Sherri Papini doubles as the captive and the culprit. The three-part docuseries starts by painting a glossy picture of Papini, a mother of two happily married to Keith, who goes missing. She appears about three weeks later, covered in bruises, rashes, and a shoulder brand, and news outlets deem it a “Thanksgiving miracle.” What makes the docuseries so enthralling is that Sherri Papini was never kidnapped at all. She alleged two mariachi-playing Hispanic women abducted her, when in reality she camped out at her ex-boyfriend’s home and asked him to help create the bruises that coated her body. It’s a troubling case that caused a wave of racial profiling in Redding, California, and gave a new name to the hapless white damsel in distress. – Kalia Richardson

Laci Peterson became a fixture of American news broadcasts in 2002, when the eight-months pregnant woman went missing on Christmas Eve. Netflix’s American Murder: Laci Peterson traces the moment Laci was reported missing in Modesto, California, the statewide search that ensued, and the discovery of her body and her fetus on a San Francisco Bay shoreline. It’s a chilling retelling that concludes with a tear-jerking speech from Laci’s mother Sharon Rocha and the death penalty for Scott. Peacock’s Face to Face With Scott Peterson, also released this year, had a different objective: It focused on the Los Angeles Innocence Project’s effort to get Scott Peterson a new trial. With a sentence reduced to life in prison and his family’s efforts to get him out, this Netflix three-part series doesn’t take the bait and aims to spread awareness on intimate partner violence. -KR

This fast-paced documentary from Netflix manages to pack a lot of twists into 90 minutes: stolen identities, love triangles, catfishing, murder. It’s set in early 2010s Omaha, Nebraska, where an automotive technician named Dave Kroupa moves after his marriage breaks up and his ex-wife decides to relocate there. Thirty five and single, he joins the dating sites of the day, and soon enough meets two women who seem interested in the no-strings kind of relationship he has to offer. But things quickly take a dark turn, and he’s left trying to keep his family — and himself — out of harm’s way. It does a great job of pulling the viewer into the anxiety and paranoia that comes with having a stalker, while also championing the scrappy team of investigative IT guys who were able to solve the case. -Elisabeth Garber-Paul

This three-part series delves into the 2015 “real Gone Girl” kidnapping case from Northern California, where Denise Huskins’ kidnapping turned into one of the most spectacular examples of police ineptitude in recent history. When Huskins was snatched from her home in Vallejo and held for 48 hours. Cops first assumed the boyfriend did it. Then, after Huskins reappeared, dropped off at her childhood home, they claimed it was a hoax perpetrated by the couple. But Huskins maintains her innocence, recounting in excruciating detail the treatment and sexual assaults she endured while she was held captive. In this suspenseful and engaging documentary, it quickly becomes clear that the authorities just might be the bad guys in this instance — well, them and the actual kidnapper. -EGP

Unlike the Oscar-winning documentary My Octopus Teacher, there are absolutely no real octopuses in this four-part series. Instead, the title refers to the spindly rabbit holes that New York Times photojournalist Christian Hansen fell into during his decade-long investigation into the death of freelance writer Danny Casolaro. He was found with his wrists slashed in a West Virginia hotel room in 1991; though his death was ruled a suicide, there has long been speculation that it was the result of an investigation he was conducting into a lawsuit against the government. When Hansen first begins looking into the case 20 years later, it quickly turns into a deep obsession — with theories that stretch from the NSA to the Reagan Administration. Using both contemporaneous interviews as well as clips of Hansen from the course of the investigation (think Telemarketers-style time jumps) it sketches out conspiracy theories so plausible you remember why they became popular in the first place. -EGP

What a year it’s been for Erik and Lyle Menendez. The brothers have been a point of fascination since their arrest for the 1989 murder of their parents, but this year saw a rethinking of their crimes. Though prosecutors and the media had largely painted them as spoiled rich kids looking to speed up their inheritance, they made the argument on the stand that the crime had been in self-defense, that years of sexual abuse by their father, and indifference from their mother, had driven them to it. While it didn’t fly in 1990s court, modern audiences are more willing to believe that young men could have faced sexual abuse and trauma. Ryan Murphy’s Hulu show Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, a star-studded dramatic retelling of the case, brought it into the zeitgeist enough that the Los Angeles District Attorney has asked for a resentencing hearing. But it’s this two-hour documentary that was actually cited in the legal request, because it offers new evidence that the boys had reached out for help about the alleged abuse long before they became notorious household names. -EGP

Twenty-eight years ago, JonBenét Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her Colorado home on Christmas Day, and the fascination with the case was almost instantaneous. The American people, newly introduced to the 24-hour news cycle, eagerly tore apart the evidence as quickly as it came in. When the police narrowed their focus on the 6-year-old child-pageant star’s parents, so did the media — and the public. For nearly three decades, that has largely been the narrative: even though they were never charged, the assumption was that they had killed their little girl (just a few years ago, the family sued CBS for $750 million for airing a documentary that accused her older brother, Burke, of committing the crime.) This three-part series, instead, focuses on alleged ineptitude of the Boulder Police Department — like possible contamination at the crime scene in the hours after her disappearance — incorporating new interviews with her father, John Bennett Ramsey, and archival interviews with her mother Patsy, who died of ovarian cancer in 2006. Sure, his involvement can make it feel slanted at times, but it’s a powerful piece that lets the family reclaim their story, and approaches the crime with the care that sets the new wave of true crime apart from its more exploitative counterparts of the 1990s. -EGP

Canadian sister duo Tegan and Sara got their start by connecting with their fans. At early shows in their hometown of Calgary, Canada, they’d stick around the merch booth to chat; as they got more popular, they’d visit lines outside their venues to talk to the people who’d come to their shows. But as they got more popular, they had to pull back, because the sheer size of the fandom was becoming unfeasible, and also to preserve their own mental health. But people were used to the accessibility, so some fans weren’t that surprised when someone claiming to be Tegan started having conversations with them on Facebook, and when those conversations turned into more intimate relationships, they were ecstatic. The only problem? Tegan had no idea that any of this was going on. In this new documentary, the twins open up to director Erin Lee Car about dealing with this impersonator for a decade, the toll it took on them, and how social media forever changed the nature of fandom. -EGP

OK, maybe we’re a little biased on this one because of our own Cheyenne Roundtree’s excellent 2022 story “She Faked Her Death. Then Things Went Apeshit” plays such a pivotal role in the show — but even without the Rolling Stone connection this would probably have still made Number One. The four-part series from Tiger King producer Eric Goode focuses on Tonia Haddix, a gregarious Florida woman with a penchant for tanning beds, hairspray, and great apes. While the treatment of the animals can be, at times, hard to watch (and the doc’s treatment of Haddix is its own can of worms) the mini-series has everything — faked deaths, PETA raids, hilarious Zoom fails, Alan Cumming, people being called Pee-Wee Herman, in a bad way — and shows how easy it can be to blur the line between humans and other primates, sometimes with deadly results. -EGP