Best true crime documentaries to watch in 2025

Jack Curtis in The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga

The Kings of Tupelo has been hailed as the next Tiger King

(Image credit: Everett Collection / Netflix / Alamy Stock Photo)

last updated 8 January 2025

Our fascination with true crime shows no sign of waning. It is hard to "pinpoint the exact reason why", said GQ magazine. Is it a way to protect ourselves against the "possibility of personal harm", or the chance to get "into the minds of the depraved from the safety of a 30-inch screen"? Whatever the reason, here are some cracking real-life crime stories available to watch in documentary form.

The Kings of Tupelo: A Southern Crime Saga

Hailed as the "next 'Tiger King'", the US documentary "The Kings of Tupelo" tells the story of a feud between Paul Kevin Curtis, who was "raised on Jesus, Elvis, and cornbread", and karate instructor James Everett Dutschke. Set in Tupelo, the Mississippi birthplace of Elvis, the plot encompasses a "small-town feud, an internet conspiracy, an Elvis impersonator, black-market body parts, and an assassination attempt on former president Barack Obama", said the Daily Mail.
Netflix

Originally aired as a podcast, the "UK's longest-known case of catfishing" has "come to Netflix in the form of a new film". Victim Kirat Assi tells the "gobsmacking tale" of how she began a relationship, eventually becoming engaged, to someone who did not exist "in the way she'd been led to believe", said GQ. Beginning with a Facebook friend request, the friendship "deepened into a virtual romance, an engagement and eventually an all-consuming web of unfulfilled promises" that consumed most of Kirat's 30s, said The Guardian. Kirat is a "cogent and remarkably grounded narrator", who explains "how she grew closer and closer to 'Bobby', as well as to his friends and family".
Netflix

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The elements of this documentary are "lurid, brash and sensational", said The Guardian. It's a "horribly mesmerising look" at a group of Los Angeles TikTok dancers who sign up to 7M, a "management company that is also a private, invite-only church" led by Robert Shinn. This pastor saw "an opportunity" in their "combination of creative ambition, relative poverty and a youthful lack of business knowhow or desire", and encouraged them to devote themselves to him, and to cut themselves off from "the people who love them in order to strengthen their ties to their new belief system". "Dancing for the Devil" is a "harrowing look at abuses of power, allegations of sexual assault" and how hard it is to bring people to justice "when the US legal system still doesn't fully recognise coercive control", said GQ.
Netflix

The "best and worst of the internet are on full display" in this 2024 documentary, said The Daily Beast. When a male body was found in a tent in Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve in 2018, with no ID, it took two years to identify him as the Appalachian Trail hiker Vance Rodriguez. He had been known by some as "Mostly Harmless" as that was how he would introduce himself to fellow walkers. The documentary shows how online detectives discovered his real name and how revealing his identity "came with bombshells about the man so many had turned into a romantic victim of mysterious circumstances".
Apple TV+

From the creators of "The Tinder Swindler", this three-part 2024 docuseries follows the bizarre story of what the media dubbed a "real-life 'Gone Girl' ruse", said James Mercadante in Entertainment Weekly. On 23 March 2015, Aaron Quinn called 911 to report that he and his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, had been attacked in their home by an intruder who blindfolded and drugged them, then abducted Denise in the boot of his white Mustang car. It wasn't long before fingers were pointing at Quinn as the prime suspect. That was until Denise suddenly reappeared. This is more than just the retelling of an unbelievable crime. It also dissects "matters such as the stigmatisation of rape survivors" and the influence of "pop culture on our collective consciousness".
Netflix

When a decaying corpse wrapped in 41 layers of plastic turns up in the "sleepy" village of Beddau in south Wales, the community is "shaken", said Emily Watkins on The i Paper. As we start to hear from locals, an elderly woman soon emerges as the prime suspect: Leigh Sabine. Expertly mixing the "claustrophobia" of a small town with a "family mystery spanning generations", the first episode sets a compelling scene. "It's been a long time since a film gripped me quite like Sky's stylish and surprising" three-part series.
Sky

This three-part German-language docuseries details "the hunt for the man dubbed the Darkroom Killer by the press" after several young men were murdered in Berlin in 2012, with one body found in one of the "dimly lit anonymous sex spaces that are a feature of gay clubs around the world", said The Guardian. The police "talk us through what seems like the very model of a well-run police operation", after their "decisive initial determination that a crime has taken place". Because with "no witnesses, no visible marks on the body and no sign of a struggle, it would have been possible to assume a self-administered drug overdose, mark it up as an accidental death and move on", as has happened elsewhere. The killer remained at large until "one of his victims survived", said GQ magazine. Produced by the "team behind other Netflix docs like 'Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich' and 'The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel', 'Nightlife Killer' will be one to earmark".
Netflix

In November 2010, Jennifer Pan phoned 911 in Toronto, saying men had broken into her family home, "shot both her parents and fled", said the Daily Express. The 24-year-old's Vietnamese-born parents had been tied up and taken to the basement. Her mother had died, but her father was still alive. However, "the case had a few unusual details that raised questions with investigators", said London's The Standard. The front door had been unlocked, and Pan hadn't been taken to the basement by the men. Her parents had always "put a huge emphasis on academic achievement", and she and her brother "had restricted social lives". After her "grades started slipping" at the age of 14, she began faking results and reports, even pretending to go to university. "The charade continued for years" until Pan's lies were exposed and the "murderous plotting seems to have begun".
Netflix

"The odd thing about the characters" in this saga is "how familiar they are from fiction", said The Telegraph. "A powerful family ruling over a small town. An indulged and entitled son who thinks he's above the law. Corruption and murder in a Deep South setting." The two seasons feature a fatal boating accident, in which the wife and younger son of disgraced lawyer Alex Murdaugh were found dead. The filmmakers "do a fine job spinning the yarn, pulling the viewer this way and that, and letting the 'Can you top this?' details slowly pile up", said Rolling Stone.
Netflix

The shooting of John Lennon outside his New York home in December 1980 by Mark Chapman is "so well known that it's extraordinary to realise how much has never been revealed till now", said the Daily Mail. Chapman surprised his own defence team by pleading guilty and never stood trial, meaning many witnesses have not testified publically before. This "tense and economical documentary" has an "emotional punch", said The i Paper. It "comes from the unflinching fashion" in which many of the eyewitnesses speak on camera for the first time and "share their recollections, along with flinty narration by Kiefer Sutherland".
Apple TV+

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Adrienne Wyper has been a freelance sub-editor and writer for The Week's website and magazine since 2015. As a travel and lifestyle journalist, she has also written and edited for other titles including BBC Countryfile, British Travel Journal, Coast, Country Living, Country Walking, Good Housekeeping, The Independent, The Lady and Woman’s Own.