Eve and I, two weeks ago: “We’d love to get this true-crime take on March Madness set up, but who has the time?” Eve and I now: “[holding each other’s beers]” …But seriously, folks: our esteemed colleague Kevin Smokler and I have been talking off and on for years now about a Mount Rushmore of true crime, and who would get carved onto it, and for what. Running a bracket
TV: It is not multiple installments (though is part of a larger program) but the American Experience: Jonestown is so good I'm hoping it might be the exception to the rule
More classic books: I think “Fatal Vision” and “Executioner’s Song” should be in the running. There are some recent books that I think will hold up: maybe “I’ll be Gone in the Dark,” but definitely “Say Nothing” and “Bad Blood.”
Maybe a dark horse, but my favorite Jack the Ripper book, in a walk, is Alan Moore’s “From Hell.” The movie was bad, but the book is absolutely riveting and chilling.
I'm not 100% sure this would qualify, but how about the first season of the podcast In the Dark? It's a deep dive into the disappearance/kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling.
Some of my picks for text: The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh; Adnan's Story by Rabia Chaudry; You All Grow Up and Leave Me by Piper Weiss; I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara; Road to Jonestown and Manson by Jeff Guinn; A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold; Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard Logan and Tere Duperrault Fassbender; The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (if it qualifies); Alligator Candy by David Kushner; Frozen by Larry Johnson; The Darkest Night by Ron Franscell; Missoula by Jon Krakauer; She Said by Jodi Kantor; Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow
Film: Zodiac
Podcast: Bear Brook
Podcast: Charles Manson's Hollywood season on You Must Remember This
Texts: aside from the classics you listed, Hollywood Babylon is an all-timer, along with Calvin Trillian’s Killings.
Films: Capturing the Friedmans, There's Something Wrong with Aunt Diane
Podcasts: Crime Writers On, Accused
TV: The Staircase, Making a Murderer, Unbelievable
TV: The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story. (I'm about to rewatch it. Mostly because I'm obsessed with Judith Light.)
Podcast: A Date With Dateline; Small Town Dicks; CBC Missing and Murdered: FINDING CLEO
Text: True Crime Addict by James Renner
TV: It is not multiple installments (though is part of a larger program) but the American Experience: Jonestown is so good I'm hoping it might be the exception to the rule
Text: Columbine, Under the Banner of Heaven, Say Nothing, The Devil in the White City, Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Film: Paradise Lost (should all the installments be grouped together?)
More classic books: I think “Fatal Vision” and “Executioner’s Song” should be in the running. There are some recent books that I think will hold up: maybe “I’ll be Gone in the Dark,” but definitely “Say Nothing” and “Bad Blood.”
One of my favorite books is Precious Victims; I nominate that. And of course Fatal Vision the book AND the miniseries. More later.
Maybe a dark horse, but my favorite Jack the Ripper book, in a walk, is Alan Moore’s “From Hell.” The movie was bad, but the book is absolutely riveting and chilling.
I'm not 100% sure this would qualify, but how about the first season of the podcast In the Dark? It's a deep dive into the disappearance/kidnapping of Jacob Wetterling.
Text (book): Bad Blood
Some of my picks for text: The Onion Field by Joseph Wambaugh; Adnan's Story by Rabia Chaudry; You All Grow Up and Leave Me by Piper Weiss; I'll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara; Road to Jonestown and Manson by Jeff Guinn; A Mother's Reckoning by Sue Klebold; Alone: Orphaned on the Ocean by Richard Logan and Tere Duperrault Fassbender; The Radium Girls by Kate Moore (if it qualifies); Alligator Candy by David Kushner; Frozen by Larry Johnson; The Darkest Night by Ron Franscell; Missoula by Jon Krakauer; She Said by Jodi Kantor; Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow