Be it a guilty pleasure or not, true crime documentaries have often taken discourse every once in a while for just how wild and unbelievable these stories can get.
Take Netflix’s The Staircase, for instance. The docuseries, which follows the mysterious case of Michael Peterson following the death of his wife, Laci, captivated audiences. After all, with a husband determined to speak his truth, and an “owl theory” that leaves viewers in shock, the case is one of the most riveting ones in history.
Luckily, The Staircase isn’t the only true crime documentary that will leave you guessing. The streaming platform has quite a plethora of documentaries to watch, from Wild Wild Country to Tinder Swindler. We promise you won’t believe what you’re watching is real—these documentaries are that crazy.
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‘Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.’
Image Credit: Netflix In a story that might be too wild to believe, Bad Vegan follows restaurant mogul and chef Sarma Melngailis. After she meets a man who promises to make her dog immortal, Melngailis disappears, goes into debt, and becomes a fugitive.
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‘The Staircase’
Image Credit: Netflix In a story that has now become a docuseries too, The Staircase tells the story of Michael Peterson after his wife, Laci, falls down their stairs and dies. Now, Michael’s life is under the microscope, but he refuses to admit any guilt in her death.
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‘Tinder Swindler’
Image Credit: Joshua Wilks/Netflix © 2022 Tinder Swindler is a true lesson about the dangers of the internet. The documentary tells the story of a group of women who were scammed out of millions of dollars by the same man they matched with on the internet.
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‘Tiger King’
Image Credit: ©Netflix / Courtesy Everett Collection Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness follows the ever-so eccentric Joe Exotic and other, well, interesting cast of characters, all with one shared love, big cats.
But when Carole Baskin, an animal activist and owner of a big cat sanctuary, threatens to put Joe’s roadside Oklahoma zoo out of business, things take a dark turn and ignite a rivalry that eventually leads to Joe’s arrest for a murder-for-hire plot.
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‘Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich’
Image Credit: ©Netflix/Courtesy Everett Collection The mysterious tycoon Jeffrey Epstein had been accused of abusing women and underage girls for decades, but he wasn’t arrested until 2019.
Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich explores how Epstein manipulated and lied his way to the top of the financial world, gaining extreme wealth and power while running an international sex trafficking ring.
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Don’t F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer
Image Credit: Netflix The internet went nuts when a mysterious figure in a dark green hoodie was seen killing two kittens. It ignited a dangerous game of cat and mouse, and as internet trolls tried to track down the killer new and even more disturbing videos would emerge.
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‘The Innocent Man’
Image Credit: Netflix Getting national attention with John Grisham’s non-fiction book, The Innocent Man: Murder and Injustice in a Small Town, this six-part documentary series focuses on two murders that shook the small town of Ada, Oklahoma, in the 1980s — and the controversial chain of events that followed.
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‘Wild Wild Country’
Image Credit: Netflix Wild Wild Country tells the story of the Rajneesh movement led by the Indian mystic, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, also known as Osho.
Known to many as a “New Age sex cult”, the Bhagwan’s followers attempt to build a utopian city in the Oregon desert, which ends up creating massive conflict with local ranchers, producing the first bioterror attack in U.S. history and the largest case of illegal wiretapping ever recorded.
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‘Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution’
Image Credit: Netflix. Crip Camp: A Disability Revolution is the untold story executive produced by President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama that tells the story of a revolution that blossomed in a rundown summer camp for teenagers with disabilities, transforming their lives and igniting a landmark movement.
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‘Conversations With a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes’
Image Credit: Netflix Thirty years after serial killer Ted Bundy confessed to murdering 30 people, Netflix released Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes. In the footage, viewers learn just how twisted Ted Bundy’s mind actually was through exclusive, never-before-heard interviews from the “Jack the Ripper of the United States,” himself.
His good looks and sociable demeanor allowed him to hide in plain sight as he committed brutal sex crimes before being caught in 1978.
This unique and gripping docuseries focuses on a man whose personality, good looks and social graces defied the serial-killer stereotype, allowing him to hide in plain sight as he committed the brutal sex-crime slayings of more than 30 women before being caught in 1978. While on trial, Bundy received extraordinary adoration from American women, which made his gruesome crimes doubly haunting, even in an era of anything-goes mayhem.
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‘Evil Genius: the True Story of America’s Most Diabolical Bank Heist’
Image Credit: Netflix The truth behind the terrifying public murder of Brian Wells and one of the most insane bank robberies (that went horribly wrong) of all time — the extraordinary 2003 criminal case, known as the “pizza bomber heist,” is brought to light in the four-part series you could easily watch all at once.
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‘Abducted in Plain Sight’
Image Credit: Netflix You think you’ve seen it all, just wait. Abducted in Plain Sight chronicles the kidnapping case of Jan Broberg, an Idaho teenager who was abducted by her decades-older neighbor Robert Berchtold in the 1970s — and right in front of her parents’ eyes.
Berchtold, known as “B,” entrapped Jan’s religious parents in such a web of complicity and shame that he somehow convinced the family to drop charges against him. Really nuts.
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‘The Keepers’
Image Credit: Netflix The story of The Keepers is about the unsolved murder of nun Sister Cathy Cesnik, who taught English and drama at Baltimore’s Archbishop Keough High School who disappeared in 1969 and whose body was discovered in months later is more than a murder mystery— the documentary exposes decades of child abuse within the church, the police force, and collusion to silence victims and cover up horrific crimes.
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‘Amanda Knox’
Image Credit: Netflix Was she a cold-blooded psychopath who murdered her roommate or a naive student abroad trapped in a never-ending nightmare? That’s the question Netflix has us asking ourselves.
Amanda Knox features Knox herself describing what she went through as the police, the media, and as the entire world debated whether or not she was a cold-blooded killer — we also see interviews with her codefendant and former boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, the attorney for the man believed to have really been behind the deadly attack, and the lead Italian investigator.
Trust us, you’re not gonna know what to believe after watching it.
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‘Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror’
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix While watching Oklahoma City Bombing, we learn about the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building and the man who conceived it, planned it, and more or less singlehandedly executed it, Timothy McVeigh. And we come to realize just how much influence the alt-right movement had on him.
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