True crime podcasts: from Lord Lucan to Kill List

Answers for Claudia

Tom McDermott delves into the 2009 unsolved disappearance of York University chef Claudia Lawrence in this haunting six-part podcast, said Patricia Nicol in The Times. The York-based journalist "scores credibility" by having gained the trust of Joan, Cladia's 80-year-old mother, who "vents her upset" and frustration at how the police investigation was handled when details began to emerge about her daughter's "complex" private life and alleged affairs with married men. While the series mostly re-examines information already in the public domain, it soon becomes clear that McDermott "suspects more than he is able to share" and is "not done" with trying to solve the mysterious case.

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".

The Lady Vanishes

This "sprawling missing person podcast" investigates the decades-old mystery of Marion Barton – an Australian teacher and mother who left her home to embark on an overseas adventure in 1997 and was never seen again. Despite being "fobbed off by authorities for years", said Fiona McCann in The Irish Times, her daughter, Sally Leydon, didn't stop asking questions. "The Lady Vanishes" producer, Alison Sandy, and investigative journalist, Brian Simmond, "match her in determination" in the quest for answers. This isn't a "neatly packaged crime podcast": it's a "strange tale, jagged in the telling", that pushes "persistently, if not always elegantly, for the truth".

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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".

White Devil

When veteran police superintendent Henry Jemmott was shot dead in Belize three years ago, Jasmine Hartin, the 32-year-old partner of Lord Ashcroft's son, was found covered in blood, not far from his floating body. Hartin told police the shooting had been an accident and she was charged with manslaughter by negligence. "Everyone assumed," said Deadline, "given her father-in-law's influence in Belize, that she would simply pay a fine and walk free back into her privileged life." Instead, she was "locked away in the country's most notorious prison, iced out by her adopted family, cut off from its fortune".

Presenter Josh Dean spent 18 months investigating for the "White Devil" podcast for Campside Media, "talking often to Hartin and the ever-shrinking circle of confidantes around her", as well as Belizean locals, journalists and expats. "The story is a trojan horse into a sprawling yarn about power, corruption, and the dying embers of colonialism," said Dean.

The Kids of Rutherford County

Although this series is "not a particularly terrifying" story, said Sawyer in The Guardian, "at first I just couldn't bear it". The action centres on a 2016 children's fight in Tennessee, which was filmed and put online. The disturbing element is that the police arrest those involved ("these aren't teenagers: these are eight-year-olds, 10-year-olds") and take them off "to juvenile detention".

Presenter Meribah Knight meets the defence lawyers trying to stop "this awful – and illegal – detention of kids" in this four-part series, which explores this county juvenile court, a court that is "shrouded in confidentiality and privacy, which in turn allowed something secretive and illegal to grow", said The New York Times. "Will the people in charge face any consequences?"

The Coldest Case in Laramie

Serial Productions' "The Coldest Case in Laramie" follows host and New York Times journalist Kim Barker as she looks into the death of a college student, Shelli Wiley, who died in the Wyoming city in 1985. Barker is granted a "stunning amount of access" to material surrounding the cold case, including the original case files and recorded police interviews, said Slate's Laura Miller.

But if you're a true crime fan who needs "a definitive resolution pinning down who did it and why", then this "is not for you". This isn't a "clear-cut story of police incompetence", Miller noted. It's more of an "unsettling call and response between then and now", as sources remember – and appear to misremember – what happened on the fateful night of Shelli's death.

The Crossbow Killer

This BBC Sounds production attempts to "fathom an unfathomable act", said The New Statesman. In 2019, retired lecturer Gerald Corrigan was shot by a bolt fired from a crossbow as he went out at night to check his television aerial. It was the "most brutal and inexplicable murder the small Welsh community of Holy Island" had experienced, and "The Crossbow Killer" attempts to make sense of "why anyone would commit such a crime".

It is given "dramatic narration by Tim Hinman, a "Happy Valley"-style soundtrack of bluesy guitar riffs, and a specially commissioned poem by Rhys Iorwerth".

The Retrievals

"The Retrievals" investigates the agonising journey female patients went through at Yale Fertility Center. Women on IVF attended the fertility clinic for the "surgical procedure" of egg retrieval, but were given saline instead of fentanyl, resulting in "excruciating" pain, said The New York Times.

This five-part series is reported by Susan Burton, a staffer at "This American Life", who explores how we "tolerate, interpret and account for" women's pain, and what happens when it is "minimised or dismissed".

I Am Not Nicholas

Audible's "I Am Not Nicholas" is a "bizarre, chilling story", said The Sunday Times radio and podcast critic Patricia Nicol. In December 2021, police arrived at a Glasgow hospital with an international arrest warrant for one of its patients, Arthur Knight. Except that police said this man was in fact the convicted sex offender Nicholas Rossi.

Investigative journalist Jane MacSorley's story provides a "knock-out listen". MacSorley was invited to dinner with "Knight/Rossi", and began wondering "if this was, genuinely, a case of mistaken identity".

Bone Valley

Here is a real treat for "all you fans of true-crime-cold-case-clue-by-clue-to-the-truth podcasts", said The Observer. "Bone Valley" is about the 1987 murder of an 18-year-old from Florida called Michelle Schofield. Despite a lack of either physical or eyewitness evidence, her husband Leo – then 21 – was convicted of the crime and spent 35 years behind bars before being freed on parole in April 2024.

This is "not one of those true-crime shows that starts brilliantly and then falls away because the investigator can't track down the real perpetrator", or finds them but isn't able to interview them. In the course of this "gripping" nine-parter, the Pulitzer-winning journalist Gilbert King and his colleague Kelsey Decker not only identify the real killer and extract a confession – they also extract a second confession related to a separate unsolved murder. "Dogged and meticulous, with a spine of moral certainty, it makes other true-crime podcasts look lazy."

Filthy Ritual

True crime podcast writers have "already mined a rich seam of stories about fraudsters", said The Times, but "Filthy Ritual" is "a doozy". From the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Juliette D'Souza "conned £1 million out of credulous clients".

Her "new age racket", run from Hampstead in north London, saw people part with envelopes of cash as "a 'sacrifice' to be hung on a money tree in the Amazonian rainforest", among other activities. "Kudos" to this podcast's creators for "reshaking this money tree to bring listeners an eye-popping tale".

The Evaporated

"The Evaporated" has elements of true crime, said Fiona Sturges in the FT. Concerning the thousands of people who deliberately disappear in Japan each year, it starts with the case of Morimoto, an accountant who'd been embezzling funds. But the podcast isn't really focused on solving such cases: it explores why people feel the need to vanish, and how they do it.

In Japan, this can involve engaging the services of a "yonige-ya", or "night-moving company". In the second episode we hear from Miho Saita, whose business "helps people find new homes and jobs, organises the removal of their belongings and assists them in creating a new identity".

Who Killed Daphne?

Not all true-crime podcasts reward "the hours devoted to them", said Gerard O'Donovan in The Telegraph. But good ones keep coming, and "Who Killed Daphne?", by the Reuters reporter Stephen Grey, proves that at their best, "such series are vital outlets for investigative reporting".

In 2017, the assassination of the Maltese investigative journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia made global headlines, exposed a network of corruption in the island nation, and ultimately brought down its government. The story is well known, but what Grey "brings to the table is extraordinary detail and deep links with many of those directly affected" – plus a "veteran journalist's flair" for "gripping storytelling".

Vishal

The BBC's 10-part series investigates the disappearance of Vishal Mehrotra, an eight-year-old boy who was abducted from the streets of London as the country celebrated Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer's wedding on 29 July 1981. The boy's remains were found eight months later.

Suchin Mehrotra, Vishal's half-brother, and investigative journalist Colin Campbell "attempt to piece together" the events that took place more than 40 years ago, said the Financial Times. Vishal's family are put "at the heart" of the series, and Campbell's "methodical linking of seemingly unconnected pieces of information makes for remarkable listening". The series shares "a story of a family left in limbo, a murder mystery and a vivid portrait of a moment in time".

West Cork

"Is 'West Cork' the next 'Serial'?" asked The Irish Times after the show premiered in February 2018. As it turned out, the Irish podcast failed to win as much attention as the US hit had four years earlier but, for many Irish listeners, Sam Bungey and Jennifer Forde's series represented "the first time a podcast approaches a local story with the same depth".

The reporters investigate the case known simply in West Cork as "the murder". Sophie Toscan du Plantier was found dead near her home in the area in 1996. There was no known motive for the crime. Over the series, they introduce a cast of characters involved in a case that still makes headlines today.

Sweet Bobby

"Sweet Bobby" is not a "regular true crime podcast", said the FT. In this episodic investigation, Alexi Mostrous unpicks what Tortoise Media describes as "one of the world's most sophisticated catfishers".

For more than a decade of her life, Kirat Assi was deceived by a catfish, someone who creates and uses false online identities to lure victims into a relationship with them. It's "an extraordinary story that's made even more powerful by Mostrous's empathetic and wide-ranging reporting".

The Bakersfield Three

In the Californian city of Bakersfield in 2018, two friends went missing in the space of a few weeks: 20-year-old "party girl" Baylee Despot and 34-year-old Micah Holsonbake, a "white-collar finance guy". Shortly afterwards James Kulstad, 38, a "wellness-type surfer dude", was shot dead in the street, said Sawyer in The Observer.

This excellent (though rather long, at 15 episodes) podcast tells their interlocking stories, which involve drug addiction, illegal weapons and sex trafficking, with multiple layers of criminal and romantic subterfuge. The "music is subtle and effective", and it's all held together by its top-notch presenter, a Bakersfield journalist named Olivia LaVoice. "I listen to a lot of true-crime shows", said Sawyer, and this one is a cut above.

The Witness: in his Own Words

Joseph O'Callaghan was 18 years old when he became the youngest person to go into witness protection in Ireland. In this 10-episode series, O'Callaghan tells his life story, and explains what happened when he assisted the courts in convicting two drug dealers of the murder of a rival gang member, Jonathan O'Reilly.

Executive producer Nicola Tallant has written a book of the same name. "Groomed into gangland and forever a prisoner to his past, Joey tells his story with conviction, honesty and a rawness that I have never heard before or since," she said.

Hoaxed

"Nowadays you can't expect to start a conspiracy about a murderous paedophile cult in an upmarket area such as Hampstead without attracting the attention of a podcast producer", said James Marriott in The Times. And this one, about a satanic cult conspiracy which began in the leafy north London neighbourhood back in 2014, has "attracted the best in the business" – namely, Alexi Mostrous and Tortoise Media.

"Hoaxed" is "thoroughly researched and thoughtfully reported", said The New Statesman's Anna Leszkiewicz, but it's "grim entertainment". The six-part series is "lurid in all the awful ways it has to be to keep the momentum of a podcast of this kind going", said Marriott. If you've been looking "for the next 'Sweet Bobby'", then "this is it".

Dr. Death

This podcast "proved so riveting it was quickly adapted into a TV series" starring Joshua Jackson and Mandy Moore, said Vogue. "Dr. Death" is "not a podcast for the squeamish or faint of heart". Host Laura Beil follows the "horrifying career" of neurosurgeon Christopher Duntsch, who "performed a series of disastrous operations" on unsuspecting patients in Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, from 2011 to 2013. Of those he operated on, 33 were left injured and many were "maimed or paralysed".

The series "highlights the dangers and dysfunctions within the American medical system", and gives "an insight into Duntsch's sociopathy". It's "a terrifying story of what can happen when we place our trust in the hands of someone we shouldn't", said Stylist.

The Patsy

The 1976 car bombing of journalist Don Bolles is "one of the most famous murders in Arizona history", said Arizona's Family. The unsolved case remains "shrouded in mystery and intrigue", and is the subject of a new podcast, "The Patsy".

A Phoenix local, Max Dunlap, has twice been convicted of the murder, but his daughter Karen Graham claims "there is more to the story", the news outlet added. After reading letters written by her father in prison, Graham believes he became the "scapegoat for powerful men with a motive to kill Bolles". Nearly 50 years after the crime took place, Graham shares her story for the first time.

The Shrink Next Door

Wondery's 2019 podcast explores "what it's like when a relationship with a psychiatrist goes terribly wrong", said Rolling Stone. When journalist Joe Nocera began investigating the relationship between his neighbour, Marty Markowitz, and his neighbour's psychiatrist, Isaac Herschkopf, he "discovered a deeply layered story of manipulation and betrayal", said Time magazine.

A dark comedy drama of the same name starring Will Ferrell and Paul Rudd was released on Apple TV+ in 2021. A two-star review from Empire suggests crime fans might be better advised to tune into the more highly rated podcast instead.

The Dropout

ABC News's "The Dropout" follows the story of Elizabeth Holmes and her biotech start-up, Theranos. The first series documents the rise and fall of the blood testing company, while the second follows the trial of Holmes, who is now serving an 11-year prison sentence in a facility in Texas.

The podcast succeeds in a "bulletproof retelling" of the story, "without any stylistic flourish", said Podcast Review. It's an investigative work "through and through", with host Rebecca Jarvis's "grilling" interviews of investors making for a "thrilling" listen.

Serial

It almost goes without saying that "Serial" is a must-listen for any true crime fans. The New Yorker's Sarah Larson described the concluding episode in 2014 as "a major cultural event".

Over the 12-part series, host and "This American Life" producer Sarah Koenig examines the murder of Hae Min Lee in 1999 through a series of interviews with her ex-boyfriend Adnan Syed. It's "the podcast to end all podcasts", said Larson.

Fake Heiress

For years, Anna Sorokin went by the name Anna Delvey, posing as a German socialite with a trust fund of millions of dollars, and leading a lavish lifestyle in New York. In 2018, an article published on The Cut exposed the truth.

The series is "gripping, lively, scandalous and comprehensive", filling listeners in on "all the details you need to know" about the case, said Stylist magazine. The six-part podcast explores how Delvey tricked friends, investors and high-profile figures before her masquerade began to unravel.

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