The best true crime podcasts for 2025

Scam Inc

"Scam Inc", a new series from The Economist, tells an "extraordinary story" – albeit one that starts slowly, said James Marriott in The Times. The series kicks off with an account of a Kansas banker who got sucked into a crypto scam that destroyed his bank and his career. We hear about Karina, a middle-aged American woman who was catfished into giving away tens of thousands of dollars. We meet a chap called Edgar who was similarly scammed. All of these are "sad tales", of course, but familiar ones. "It is when we meet Edgar's scammer, Rita (keep up!), that it all comes together", and the true subject is revealed. Rita, it turns out, is "not a villain but another victim" – a Filipina who had flown to Thailand to take a job in a call centre, only to find herself trafficked to a massive criminal compound in Myanmar – and forced to work as a scammer by a Chinese crime syndicate. What unfolds is a grim but gripping tale, about what The Economist calls "the most significant change in transnational organised crime in decades".

Snitch City

The Boston Globe's investigative team is known for its exposés of institutional corruption – such as the cover-up of abuses in the Catholic Church depicted in the Oscar-winning film "Spotlight", said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. The newspaper's "gripping" new podcast, "Snitch City", about police informants in New Bedford, Massachusetts, is very much in that tradition. Reporter Dugan Arnett spent two years penetrating crime networks in New Bedford, a city where police are locked in a fierce battle with drug gangs, and he has a rare talent for getting people to talk. What emerges is a "remarkable piece of reporting" – a multilayered story of police "drunk on power, informants hung out to dry and officials closing ranks to protect their own". The tension lies "not in exposing the bad guys, but in seeing what the so-called good guys do to get results – and the extraordinary damage left in their wake".

The Golden Toilet Heist

"I waive my usual moral objection to true-crime podcasts for 'The Golden Toilet Heist', a splendidly light-hearted caper from the BBC's 'Crime Next Door' series," said James Marriott in The Times. The case is well known: in 2019, thieves broke into Blenheim Palace and stole a solid gold toilet worth £5m from an art exhibition. While not quite a victimless crime, it is "hard to summon much grief over it". And there is something "irreducibly British" about the tale – "like Agatha Christie or Richard Osman via Salvador Dalí. The story is so absurd that it has the pleasing effect of making everyone involved sound rather mad." Presenter Clodagh Stenson brings verve, humour and a welcome dose of "whimsy" to proceedings. "It gleams, it glows, it flushes," she exclaims of the toilet at one point. It's a "cheerful listen in a grim week of news".

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Bed of Lies

The terrific third series of the award- winning investigative podcast "Bed of Lies" is "not for the faint-hearted", said James Marriott in The Times. Its subject is the execution-style murders of three Catholic men in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, none of whom had connections to paramilitary activity. The first episode focuses on Michael Power, who was shot dead by three gunmen who forced his car to stop as he was driving to Mass. His wife and children were in the car with him – and one of them was horrifically injured by shattering glass. Written and presented by the Telegraph journalist Cara McGoogan, the podcast examines the devastating impact of these murders. But it also explores the links between the killers – members of the loyalist Ulster Defence Association (UDA) – and the British Army and police. "It's gripping and shocking stuff, sensitively told."

The Copernic Affair

On 3 October 1980, a bomb exploded outside a packed synagogue on Rue Copernic in western Paris. Four people died and 46 were injured in the first targeted attack on France's Jewish community since the Second World War. But no group claimed responsibility, and the crime went unsolved for decades. Finally, a Canadian academic of Lebanese descent, Hassan Diab, was extradited to France and charged with the murders. But when he went on trial, having spent three years in jail on remand, the case was thrown out for lack of evidence. Then, in 2023, a higher court reversed that decision – and Diab was tried again, this time in absentia. A superb new podcast, "The Copernic Affair", follows this twisty case in absorbing detail, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. It's partly the story of France's bewilderingly slow-moving justice system; partly about "a Jewish community left grieving and in limbo for decades": and all riveting. I binged all six episodes in a day.

Stalked

"Stalked" is about cyber-harassment, said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer – and the tale it tells is "awful and gripping". The hosts are the jewellery designer Hannah Mossman Moore and her former stepmother, the Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr. Together, they investigate a vicious campaign of online harassment that Hannah suffered in her 20s. She was fresh out of university and working as an intern when she met a "charming older man-about-town" called Kin at an event during London Fashion Week. They became friends and he helped her with her career; but then she started getting messages from people who claimed to be connected to him and who knew all about her. "I've only heard two episodes but am agog to hear more."

The Pitcairn Trials

It's harder than ever to root out true-crime gems, such is the volume of the genre's output, said James Marriott in The Times. Without question, though, Luke Jones's engrossing and "quietly horrifying" new series, "The Pitcairn Trials", is one; in fact, it is the "best true-crime series I've heard in a long time". The subject is the child sexual abuse scandal that erupted in the 1990s on Pitcairn Island, the tiny British territory in the South Pacific, inhabited by just a few dozen people, most of whom are descendants of the Bounty mutineers.

A Kent police detective, Peter George, was sent to investigate a rape allegedly committed by Shawn Christian, a direct descendant of Fletcher Christian, the leader of the 1789 mutiny. But what emerged was not mere "isolated incidents of criminality", but "an ingrained and possibly quite ancient culture of routine sexual abuse" of young girls. All this is handled by Jones with "admirable sensitivity"; and by "weaving in the strange history of Pitcairn", he creates a portrait "of one of the most unusual communities in the world", and not just "a lurid opportunity to gawk at human misery".

Operation Seal Bay

Another standout new true-crime podcast is "Operation Seal Bay", from BBC Radio Wales, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. The bay in question lies near Newport, Pembrokeshire, where, in 1983, locals spotted groups of men hanging around the remote beach – only accessible from the sea – who did not look as though they'd come to admire the scenery. Fearing that they were poachers, out to empty lobster pots, local fishermen landed a boat on the beach.

"There, underneath a pile of rocks, they found a hatch, beneath which was a ladder leading to a large underground chamber." What unfolds from there is an "enjoyable crime caper", with sophisticated international criminals "ultimately undone by the intrinsic nosiness of rural populations".

Kill List

In my time as a podcast critic, "I have surfeited on horror", said James Marriott in The Times: I am now "blithely unsurprised by the depthless human capacity for evil". Yet "even I, a jaded, broken connoisseur of human turpitude", had my interest piqued by the premise of "Kill List", a podcast about a site on the dark web where members of the public arrange the contract killings of their enemies.

"Seeking house to be burned down with occupants inside. No survivors," runs a typical order, quoting a few thousand dollars. "Kill him and make it look like a car accident on the road," demands another. The twist, as journalist Carl Miller relates, is that the website is a scam, conning the homicidal. Miller "doesn't have any assassins on his hands. What he does have is a list of people whom he knows someone wants dead" – and decides to phone them to let them know. "This goes badly." It's a "fascinating story, well told and with less grisly leering over tragedy than is usual in the true-crime genre".

Dangerous Memories

The six-part Tortoise podcast Dangerous Memories is about a "small set of very posh young women" who all fell under the spell of the same self-styled "healer", said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Anne Craig presented herself as a lifestyle guru, and came warmly recommended to her clients as "that amazing healer lady". But she ended up dominating their lives, planting false memories of past abuse and cutting them off from their families and friends – in some cases for years.

These are devastating stories, told by three of the "brainwashed" young women, whose "well-educated accents and polite cadences sound utterly at odds with the awful situations they find themselves in". Hosted by Grace Hughes-Hallett, the series is a "sensitive telling of a really difficult story". I was "fascinated and horrified throughout".

The Trial of Lord Lucan

The Daily Mail's "The Trial" podcasts have taken listeners behind the scenes of a handful of high-profile criminal cases, including the prosecutions of Lucy Letby, Constance Marten and the teenage killers of Brianna Ghey. "The Trial of Lord Lucan" has a twist: the case never made it to court. John Bingham, the seventh Earl of Lucan, was accused of murdering his children's nanny, Sandra Rivett, and attempting to kill his wife, Veronica, on 7 November 1974, but disappeared the same night and was never seen again.

After getting their hands on a previously unearthed document written by the investigating officer at the time, hosts Caroline Cheetham and Stephen Wright draft in two real-life barristers to take on the roles of prosecution and defence. "As always, it is nostalgia that fires up interest," said William Sitwell at The Telegraph. The story includes "exquisite nuggets", from the "rarity of an aristo accused of murder" to the "bedraggled sight of Lady Lucan fleeing to the Plumbers Arms screaming 'Murder, murder!'", as well as "the Cluedo-like instruments of murder: lead piping and a US mail bag".

The Price of Paradise

"The Price of Paradise" is a cold case podcast but "blimey, it's a hot one", said Miranda Sawyer in The Guardian. The madcap happenings kick off when mum-of-three Jayne Gaskin decides to sell the family home, buy a tiny island off the coast of Nicaragua and "drag" her partner and children to live there. She calls it Janique ("a combination of Jayne, Mustique and unique"). Other than the family's "one-room shack and some mangrove trees", there's nothing there, except, of course, a TV crew, which is filming them for a Channel 4 show, "No Going Back".

Presenter Alice Levine, whose "humorous delivery and script tweaks are a highlight", describes the subsequent events, including the whole family being kidnapped by gangsters (they escape). And if it couldn't get any madder – some locals angrily explain that Janique belongs to them, and the family discover that the shack is a stop-off point for cocaine smugglers. The story is "completely bananas" and "a binge-er".

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