Author: Suzanne Hamlin

Show: Sins of the South

Homicide cases with a bit of Southern flair

Sins of the South
Photo by Jeswin Thomas on Pexels.com

About Sins of the South

From executive producer Dick Wolf comes the Southern-tinged true crime show Sins of the South. The show features a narrator with a Southern accent, adds a few Southern phrases, and tells stories of homicide cases that took place across the American South.

Much like Southern Fried Homicide, Sins of the South features all varieties of cases, from spouse murders to serial killers, but many of them are covered in other shows.

Episodes bring on detectives, victims’ friends and family, and others to tell the stories, and they include police interviews and re-creations. If you liked Southern Fried Homicide, and enjoy a little Southern flair with true crime stories, check out Sins of the South.

The Show Elements

Seasons: 1 (2024-)

Where to stream: Peacock, Hulu

More shows like Sins of the South: Southern Fried Homicide, Homicide City: Charlotte, Homicide Squad: Atlanta, Murder Nation: Blood on the Bayou, The Real Murders of Atlanta, Serial Killer Capital: Baton Rouge, Southern Gothic

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Documentary: Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult

The strange story of how TikTok dancers were sucked into a cult

Cults come in a variety of flavors, but they all serve the same purpose: control. And Robert Shinn follows that formula with his cult. In 1994, he founded Shekinah Church, a church for Korean Americans, then slowly began to control its members by convincing them to work in his many businesses and give him most of the money they earned. But this was not enough for him. In 2021, he decided to combine religion with entertainment when he searched for dancers on TikTok for his talent management company, 7M Films, and then pushed them into joining Shekinah. He did these things not because he was a truly religious man or truly interested in helping young people with their careers, but for the typical reasons of a cult leader: money and power.

The three-episode Netflix docuseries Dancing for the Devil describes how Shinn turned these dancers into Shekinah followers and cult members who he isolated from their families and took advantage of financially. It follows the Wilking family as they try to get their daughter Miranda to leave the cult. It also follows former members filing civil and criminal charges against its Shinn and others, and brings on other members who left the cult.

Documentary: Escaping Twin Flames

A cult manipulates people looking for true love

If you could find true love, how far would you go to get it? Would you join a cult? That’s the question asked by Escaping Twin Flames. Twin Flames Universe preyed on people’s desires to find love, by espousing the doctrine that everyone has a “twin flame,” a person who is the other half of their shared soul. It promised people that its methods—and its expensive courses and coaching sessions—would help them find that person, and as a result, find happiness.

But Twin Flames Universe was—and still is—a cult, and this documentary outlines just how crazy its beliefs are. From advocating stalking and harassment, to pushing members to work for the cult, to claiming that one of the leaders, Jeff Ayan, was Christ-like, the cult used typical manipulation tactics to control its members, take their money, and convince them to do whatever its leaders wanted.

Twin Flames Universe made many promises to its members, promises that it could not keep when the soulmates the leaders guaranteed people did not manifest themselves. But because it had brainwashed its members into believing its unbelievable concepts, Twin Flames convinced members to follow new promises, new doctrine, and new guidance about how to find true love, to the point of some changing their gender identity. As the cult morphed, some members saw the true darkness underneath this twisted facade and left. Others, however, are still beholden to its nonsense.

Netflix’s three-part docuseries charts the rise of the cult and the realizations of members who left, as well as documenting the heartbreaking stories of family members of those still in the cult struggling to get them back.

Documentary: Scamanda

How Amanda Riley used a fake cancer diagnosis to scam everyone around her

If someone you knew said they had cancer, would you believe them? Most likely. Because no one assumes their friend, or coworker, or family member would lie about something that serious. And that’s what Amanda Riley counted on. Riley faked a cancer diagnosis, chemotherapy treatments, remission, and even a clinical trial to garner sympathy, attention, and thousands of dollars in donations.

She started a blog detailing all of her travails and in the process, fooled friends, fellow church members, strangers, and parents of kids who went to school where she was principal. She took their money and gifts, and even filed for bankruptcy as part of her scam.

But some close to her were suspicious, and this suspicion led to an email to a TV producer, which snowballed into a police investigation, an IRS investigation, and an arrest for wire and bankruptcy fraud.

The four-part ABC News series Scamanda details the story, as told by friends, church members, the producer who first investigated the case, the subsequent detective, an IRS agent, and the Scamanda podcast host.

Documentary: The Tinder Swindler

The story of con artist Simon Leviev

A brand-new con exists, one that preys on those looking for love online: romance scams. Netflix’s The Tinder Swindler details the story of Simon Leviev, who conned women he dated—and others—out of millions of dollars to support his lavish lifestyle. He met women on the dating app Tinder, and at first, seemed like the perfect rich boyfriend, showering them with fancy dinners, expensive hotels, and flights on private jets. And by pretending to be rich, he laid the foundation for the lies that convinced girlfriends, friends, and others to give him money, lies about enemies out to get him and needing to avoid using his own bank accounts and credit cards.

Leviev was eventually exposed for his dirty deeds by some of the women he cheated, and they worked with a Norwegian newspaper, VG, to reveal his fraudulent activities and warn the world about him.

The Tinder Swindler is a warning about online dating, believing what you see online, and trusting someone who is too good to be true. Who is so bad, in fact, that you might lose your life savings over them.

Show: Your Worst Nightmare

A thriller-esque true crime show

Your Worst Nightmare
Photo by Ron Lach on Pexels.com

About Your Worst Nightmare

What’s your worst fear? Maybe it’s getting buried alive, or stalked, or kidnapped. You might discover it in an episode of Your Worst Nightmare, a thriller-esque true crime show that features nightmarish situations like being terrorized in one’s own home, tortured, or murdered by a jealous and abusive ex. In one case, the victim is shot and run over by a car and lives to tell the tale.

This show has heavy emphasis on scary dramatizations, which are sometimes graphic and include plenty of screams and jump scares, making Your Worst Nightmare more like a thriller than a docuseries. You won’t be able to fall asleep to this one. It does include some descriptions from detectives, reporters, and victims’ friends and families, and sometimes survivors, but dramatizations are front and center.

The Show Elements

Seasons: 6 (2014-2020)

Where to stream: Discovery+, Tubi

More shows like Your Worst Nightmare: Betrayed, True Nightmares, True Nightmares: Tales of Terror

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Documentary: Bad Vegan: Fame. Fraud. Fugitives.

A vegan restaurateur gets scammed by a practiced con artist

Stories like the one in Bad Vegan are almost unbelievable, that one person could fall for so many lies and end up in the trap of scammer only interested in draining them of all of their money. Somehow the charisma and storytelling abilities of such a con artist can exceed all logic and rationality and even the most intelligent person can fall prey.

In Bad Vegan, vegan restaurateur Sarma Melngailis was the target. Melngailis met Shane Fox on social media, who claimed to be involved in black ops and covert activities, and they began a friendship, then a relationship. They met in person, and he made grand promises: to wipe out her restaurant debt, to make her dog immortal, to make her the queen of some secret society. If only she’d send him money. To prove herself. Which she did, many times.

The story isn’t so much about her veganism—that is only a small part—but how Fox, whose real name is Anthony Strangis, manipulated, brainwashed, and conned Melngailis out of $1.7 million, as well as scamming her mother, her investors, and causing her vegan restaurant business to go under.

Melngailis is the main interviewee for this four-part Netflix documentary, along with former employees from her restaurant, a reporter, and her family members. Strangis, while not interviewed directly for the film, appears in conversations she secretly recorded after the scam.

It’s a cautionary tale, and if you think you’d be immune to a con like this, pay close attention. It could happen to anyone.

Show: Sin City Murders

Murder cases in the shadow of the Las Vegas Strip

Sin City Murders
Photo by Hejaar on Pexels.com

About Sin City Murders

Las Vegas is known for its bright lights, nightlife, gambling, and sinful fun, but murders happen in the famous city, too. Sin City Murders features stories about homicides that occurred beneath the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip. Instead of focusing on the other sins of the city, the sin at play in these episodes is murder.

The homicides revolve around jobs particular to the Las Vegas nightlife, as well as local celebrities, such as hip hop artists, lounge musicians, showgirls, influencers, and poker players. The show includes other cases, such as an armored car heist and murder.

Shots of the city are interspersed with interviews with detectives, victims’ loved ones, and reporters, setting the scene for the sins that occurred.

The Show Elements

Seasons: 1 (2024-)

Where to stream: Peacock, Hulu

More shows like Sin City Murders: Las Vegas Law, Las Vegas Jailhouse, Jail: Las Vegas

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: Where Murder Lies

Lies, murder, and eventually, the truth

Where Murder Lies
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About Where Murder Lies

Where Murder Lies focuses on cases where the murderer is desperate to cover up a lie, such as an affair, hidden identity, money issue, or other lie—and desperate enough to murder because of it.

This true crime show also illustrates the lies that infiltrate a murder case as the perpetrator tries to mask their crime. Some of these lies are uncovered during police interviews, others during investigations, and the detectives on the show describe how they slowly uncovered the false statements and mistruths in a perpetrator’s story. The detectives are joined by victim’s loved ones, who speak for themselves, without the need for narration.

Where Murder Lies follows the lies to their eventual end: The truth is uncovered, and the killer or killers revealed.

The Show Elements

Seasons: 2 (2021-2023)

Where to stream: Discovery+

More shows like Where Murder Lies: Dirty Little Lies, The Lies That Bind

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✘ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts

Show: Unraveled

Lives unravel to the point of murder

Unraveled
Photo by Rose Rosen on Pexels.com

About Unraveled

How does a person’s life fall apart to the point that they become a killer? What does it take to push a person past rationality towards the most heinous of crimes? Unraveled attempts to answer these questions. The show’s cases consider how a person unravels so fully that they turn to murder, often due to mental illness or being pushed to the edge by their life circumstances, choosing what they see as the only way out.

Because of this focus on the killer’s unraveling, episodes devote more attention to their life and background, rather than the victim’ story, and not all episodes include victims’ loved ones, instead emphasizing interviews with people who knew the killers. The show still includes narration and re-creations, like most true crime series, as well as police interviews, but deviates by focusing on the killer’s narrative.

Similar to Snapped, Unraveled follows perpetrators who disintegrate into crime, snapping and unraveling to the darkest place imaginable.

The Show Elements

Seasons: 2 (2015-2017)

Where to stream: Tubi, Discovery+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Max

More shows like Unraveled: Snapped, Evil Lives Here

See also this list of true crime shows

✓ Police interviews
✘ Trial clips
✓ Narration
✓ Re-creations
✘ Experts
✓ Victims’ families and friends

Latest Posts