Whether you're new to the genre of true crime or a seasoned sleuth, there are countless shows to choose from in the podcast world. Here are our top picks of con artists, cults and cold cases.
Pipeline: Left to Die
The second episode of this "unmissable electric shock of a show" from the Daily Mail's investigative journalist Isabelle Stanley is "one of the tensest things I've ever heard", said Miranda Sawyer in The Observer. Stanley tells the story of four divers who died in February 2022 off the coast of Trinidad after they were "sucked with enormous force into the pipe they were mending". A fifth man who escaped "describes how he was smashed along the pipe like a ball". There's also a GoPro recording of the disaster. "Every terrifying detail all true, all lived" will burn itself "unforgettably into your brain". Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the new prime minister of Trinidad and Tobago, "has promised to bring about justice and she surely must".
Dancing with Shadows
George Balanchine, the co-founder of the New York City Ballet, was "one of the most revered figures in dance", but not everyone held him in high regard, said Fiona Sturges in the Financial Times. "Dancing with Shadows" looks at the legacy of Balanchine, who died in 1983, "because of the culture he fostered that can still be felt decades after his death". The dance company has been "mired in scandal" in recent years, with allegations of mental abuse, body shaming and sexual harassment. Journalist and producer Nicky Anderson, who talks about her own love of dance, offers a "rare and penetrating portrait of a notoriously closed world where dancers often sacrifice a personal life, bodily autonomy and their health in pursuit of their art".
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Sea of Lies
This "expertly produced" podcast from CBC's "Uncover" series tells the story of Canadian con-man Albert Walker, brought to justice by the discovery of a dead man's Rolex watch, said The New Yorker. It begins off the coast of Devon in 1996, when a father and son "make a grisly discovery in the net of their trawler". Presenter Sam Mullins "patiently unspools a head-spinning mystery of keen detective work, false identities, embezzlement schemes and murder". It "makes for a vivid parable about the creative treachery of some financial crime" and how important the "guarding against it" is. Mullins promises that the story will "blow your mind". And it will.
Deep Cover
This "meaty investigative podcast" delves into the motivations and mysteries behind people who have lived double lives, said The Guardian. The most recent series tells the "audacious tale" of Sarah Cavanaugh, who was unmasked in 2022 after extracting money from the US government while posing as a decorated military veteran suffering from cancer. Cavanaugh had not only deceived institutions, but also her loved ones, even her wife. Presenters, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern and journalist and prolific writer Jess McHugh, "go deep" into the psychological and real-world implications of this notorious deceiver.
Heists, Scams and Lies
Daily Mail crime correspondent George Odling and senior reporter Andy Jehring have spent five years investigating the £25 million jewellery robbery at Formula One heiress Tamara Ecclestone's London home in 2019, and it shows, said The Independent. This is a podcast that "puts listeners in the room" with those directly involved in the case, featuring exclusive interviews with Jay Rutland, Ecclestone's husband, the police chiefs who led the investigation, and "even acquaintances of the thieves themselves". Whether you're a "true crime fanatic" who already has thorough knowledge of the crime that was one of the Met's "most iconic sting operations" or entirely new to the case, "Heists, Scams and Lies" is sure to steal your attention.
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 Sturges in the Financial Times. The newspaper's "gripping" 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 £5 million 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". It is a story "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".
Bed of Lies
The terrific third series of the award- winning investigative podcast "Bed of Lies" is "not for the faint-hearted", said 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 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.
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 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".
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