Category: Articles

26 True Crime TV Episodes with a Not-So-Merry Christmas

Murder doesn’t take a holiday vacation

Suzanne Hamlin
Christmas true crime
Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

Gather ‘round the Christmas tree and snuggle up for some holiday tales of murder and mayhem.

Happy holidays? Nuh-uh, says Homicide for the Holidays, which dominates the round-up of Christmas true crime show episodes. But there are plenty of gems hiding in other shows, including several shows about the JonBenét Ramsey case. And scroll down for a bonus story from Dateline’s Keith Morrison.

Homicide for the Holidays: “Christmas Carnage in Carnation” (Season 1, Episode 2)

It’s the day after Christmas 2007 in Carnation, Washington, and a co-worker worries that her friend, Judy Anderson, hasn’t shown up for work. She drives to Judy’s house and stumbles across four of Judy’s family members dead in the home, including two children, and Judy and her husband Wayne dead outside near a shed. Eerie, silent 911 calls had been made from someone at the house on Christmas Eve, but police could not legally go past the locked gate to the property. Other family members are also missing, and when found, the truth comes out.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “A Christmas Massacre” (Season 1, Episode 3)

Christmas Eve 2008 in Covina, California, turns from a fun family celebration into a horrific mass shooting. During a poker game after dinner, a man dressed as Santa Claus enters the home of Joseph and Alice Ortega, shoots and kills nine people, and sets the house on fire using a homemade flamethrower. In nearby Sylmar, a man discovers his brother dead in his apartment, and police find a booby-trapped car, both connected to the Christmas massacre.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Christmas Morning Murder” (Season 1, Episode 4)

Steve and Carla Barron are shot and killed early Christmas morning while sleeping in their home in Tyler, Texas, in 1999. Police come across the murder weapon in their daughter’s room. She appears on the episode.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Christmas Mourning” (Season 2, Episode 3)

Christmas Eve 2003, in Nampa, Idaho, and Bob and Idella Young are found stabbed and bound with Christmas lights, each having one strategically placed stab wound to the back. The case goes cold by the next Christmas, and it is finally solved a few years later.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Christmas Rampage” (Season 2, Episode 5)

December 28, 1987, in Russellville, Arkansas, four shootings across different locations in the town leave two people dead. The police apprehend the shooter and take him into custody, discovering five more bodies at his house, seven in a mass grave outside the house, and two dead infants in a car trunk, all family members killed around Christmas.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Christmas Rager” (Season 2, Episode 6)

A few days before Christmas 2007 in St. Paul Park, a suburb of Minneapolis, Kristine Larson fails to show up to make Christmas cookies with her mother. A stranger finds Kristine’s dead body in a burning car in an alley, strangled. Detectives investigate both her ex and her current boyfriend.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Silent Night, Lethal Night” (Season 2, Episode 7)

Nightmare Next Door: “Murders Under the Mistletoe” (Season 7, Episode 10)

It’s Christmas Eve 2002 in Middletown, Pennsylvania, and Jean Wholaver, her two daughters, and her granddaughter fail to show up for dinner at Jean’s parents’ house. Police find Jean and her two daughters shot dead in her home and the baby abandoned. The daughters had made allegations of sexual abuse against their estranged father, and the case was scheduled for trial that January. From jail, he attempts to hire someone to stage a suicide and pin the murders on someone else.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Last Christmas” (Season 3, Episode 2)

Two days after Christmas 2005 in Fort Myers, Florida, 911 operators receive a call with a young child’s voice in the background. Police discover the child covered in blood at the home, and his parents, Steven and Michelle Andrews, dead. Steve had been shot, and Michelle had been beaten, strangled, and posed nude.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Christmas Heartbreak” (Season 3, Episode 3)

Jack and Elaine Denney are found shot on Christmas Day 2007 in their home in Locust Grove, Oklahoma. The case goes cold and is finally solved seven years later.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Death in Santa Claus” (Season 3, Episode 4)

In the aptly named Santa Claus, Georgia, it’s three weeks before Christmas 1997, when a passing motorist finds three girls from the Daniels family wandering on the side of a road, after a family friend had woken the girls up and told them they needed to leave with him. Police officers go to the Daniels house and discover four bodies, including two children, all members of the family. One of the daughters shares her experiences in the episode.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Six Slays of Christmas” (Season 4, Episode 2)

Sins of the City: “Dayton, Ohio” (Season 3, Episode 3)

In 1992, several seemingly unconnected shootings around Christmas in Dayton, Ohio, are traced to a group of four young people, who murdered six people between Christmas Eve and December 26 in a spree shooting.

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Stream Sins of the City on Philo

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Killing of the Christmas Tree Farmers” (Season 4, Episode 3)

A Time to Kill: “The Mystery Passenger” (Season 5, Episode 9)

Cold Case Files: “Killings on Christmas Eve” (Season 1, Episode 2)

Christmas tree farmers Ed and Minnie Maurin disappear from their home December 19, 1985, in Ethel, Washington. Police officers find their car dumped in a parking lot, but no Maurins, only their blood. A random motorist discovers their bodies on Christmas Eve, and it takes 27 years to solve the crime.

Stream Homicide for the Holidays on Peacock and Hulu

Stream A Time to Kill on True Crime Network, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Discovery+

Stream Cold Case Files on Netflix, The Roku Channel, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, Peacock, and Discovery+

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Murder Under the Mistletoe” (Season 4, Episode 4)

Pregnant mother Melissa Sowders disappears the day after Christmas 2013 in Houston, Texas. Police find her abandoned car the next day, and eventually discover her body on the banks of a river. A love triangle holds the key to solving the case.

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Deadly Women: “Red Hot Temper” (Season 9, Episode 10)

In the third story in this episode, a drunk Karen Walsh breaks into the house of her neighbor, Maire Rankin, on Christmas Eve in Newry, Northern Ireland, in 2008. After Maire lectures Walsh about her drinking, Walsh attacks her, and beats her to death with a crucifix. She then passes out on her bed and finds her way home the next morning. Maire’s family discover her body on Christmas Day.

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Homicide Hunter: “My, My, Merry Christmas” (Season 3, Episode 9)

Christmas night 1986 in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Donald Ott’s roommate finds him dead in their apartment and assumes it’s a suicide. He has a gunshot wound to the head, but a gun is nowhere to be found. Police learn that Ott’s brother is involved in the drug trade and their investigation leads to the killer.

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People Magazine Investigates: “JonBenét: The Untold Truth” (Season 1, Episode 8)

How It Really Happened with Hill Harper: “Who Killed JonBenét?” (Season 1, Episodes 9 and 10)

Barbara Walters Presents American Scandals: “JonBenét Ramsey: The Mystery” (Season 1, Episode 1)

True Crime with Aphrodite Jones: “JonBenét Ramsey” (Season 2, Episode 1)

JonBenét: An American Murder Mystery (3-part series)

The day after Christmas 1996 in Boulder, Colorado, and Patsy Ramsey finds a ransom note claiming that her daughter, JonBenét, had been kidnapped. Police allow Patsy’s husband John and his friend to search the house, and they find JonBenét in the basement dead, strangled and bound. The crime scene had not been secured, leading to a botched investigation, despite DNA evidence, and an unsolved case to this day.

Law enforcement officers who participated in the case appear on People Magazine Investigates, JonBenét: An American Murder Mystery, and How It Really Happened with Hill Harper. The Barbara Walters Presents episode includes an interview with John and Patsy Ramsey from 2000, as well as an interview with John Ramsey from 2015. True Crime with Aphrodite Jones takes a different approach, bringing in outside experts and a private investigator for the Ramsey family to review the case, while How It Really Happened with Hill Harper includes a plethora of news clips, especially from CNN.

There are additional series specifically focusing on the case; see this list for more details.

Stream People Magazine Investigates on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video

Read the People Magazine Investigates profile

Stream JonBenét: An American Murder Mystery on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video

Stream How It Really Happened with Hill Harper on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video

Stream True Crime with Aphrodite Jones on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video

Stream Barbara Walters Presents on Discovery+ and Amazon Prime Video

A Crime to Remember: “Coffin for Christmas” (Season 5, Episode 4)

College student Barbara Mackle is kidnapped on December 17, 1968 in Atlanta, Georgia, by a man dressed as a police officer and someone wearing a ski mask. A ransom note is found at the family home in Miami, asking for $500,000 and claiming that Mackle is buried in a ventilated container. The ransom drop is interrupted by the Miami police, who were unaware of the kidnapping. A new drop is scheduled, and on December 21, the FBI gets an anonymous tip to where Barbara is buried.

Stream A Crime to Remember on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video

Dateline NBC: “A Dangerous Man” (Season 25, Episode 4)

December 15, 2013, when people are preparing for Christmas in Spokane, Washington, Doug and Elberta Carlile return to their home to find a masked man in black who shoots and kills Doug. Police discover another murder related to Doug’s business dealings, then a murder-for-hire plot against the estranged wife of the main suspect. Keith Morrison narrates the episode.

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Keith Morrison reads “The Night Before Christmas”

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22 True Crime TV Episodes That Will Make You Want to Skip Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving murders from Dateline to Homicide for the Holidays

Suzanne Hamlin
Thanksgiving true crime
Photo by Tim Mossholder on Pexels.com

Thanksgiving is a time for food, family, and apparently, murder. Crimes between family members spike on Thanksgiving. Just check out the stats from Los Angeles. Given those numbers, and the cases in these true crime episodes, you might think twice about attending that Thanksgiving dinner.

Hear No Evil: “Whispers from the Dead” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Dateline NBC: “12 Minutes on Elm Street” (Season 22, Episode 38)

Both Dateline and Hear No Evil cover the story of a double murder in Little Falls, a small town in Minnesota, on Thanksgiving in 2012, when two unarmed teens, Nick Brady and Haile Kifer, break into Byron Smith’s home. Smith shoots them multiple times in what he claimed was self-defense, yet keeps their bodies in his basement for a full day. Police find audio that recorded events before, during, and after the murders and exposed the whole story behind what happened. Both Dateline and Hear No Evil include excerpts from the recording, along with excerpts from Smith’s police interview, but Hear No Evil incorporates more of the graphic parts from it.

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Stream Hear No Evil on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video

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People Magazine Investigates: “Flight Risk” (Season 5, Episode 3)

Pilot Kelsey Berreth moves from Washington to Woodland Park, Colorado, after becoming engaged to a man she met online. She disappears around Thanksgiving in 2018, after her fiancé went to her apartment to pick up their baby. Police find blood and two unknown DNA profiles in her apartment, and soon learn that she had been beaten to death on Thanksgiving Day.

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Snapped: “Omaima Nelson” (Season 14, Episode 1)

Model Killers: “Finger-Licking Good/Slaying of a Tennessee Beauty Queen” (Season 1, Episode 1)

Deadly Women: “Love You to Pieces” (Season 6, Episode 7)

Snapped, Deadly Women, and Model Killers all cover the murder case of Bill Nelson in Costa Mesa, California, in 1991. A few days after Thanksgiving, model Omaima Nelson shows up at a friend’s house, claiming that her husband Bill had attacked her and that she had to kill him. The friend calls the police, who find body parts in her car and an even more gruesome scene at the couple’s apartment.

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Stream Model Killers on Amazon Prime Video and the Roku Channel

Stream Deadly Women on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Discovery+

Read the Snapped and Deadly Women profiles

Homicide for the Holidays: “A Deadly Thanksgiving” (Season 1, Episode 1)

It’s Thanksgiving in Jupiter, Florida, in 2009, at a seemingly festive family celebration. After dinner, Paul Merhige shoots and kills four of his family members, including a child.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “Thanks-killing” (Season 2, Episode 1)

Earl and Terry Robertson are murdered in South Carolina two days before Thanksgiving, when family members are set to arrive at their home, in what first looked like a robbery. But the brutality of the murders exposes the personal nature of the killing, and police soon learn that the murderer is close to home.

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American Justice: “The Wife Who Knew Too Much” (Season 9, Episode 17)

Homicide for the Holidays: “Thanksgiving Terror” (Season 3, Episode 1)

Homicide for the Holidays and American Justice detail a Thanksgiving murder in 1992. Sara and Fred Tokars travel from Georgia to Florida separately for a Thanksgiving celebration with family. After she and her two sons return home, she is shot in her car while her sons witness the murder. Details emerge that the shooter was hired by her husband, a defense attorney who had been involved in illegal activities. One of the sons, who was six years old at the time, recounts his experiences in Homicide for the Holidays.

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Homicide for the Holidays: “The Last Thanksgiving” (Season 4, Episode 1)

Joel and Lisa Guy are found murdered in their home a few days after celebrating Thanksgiving with their family in 2016. Police find chemicals, plastic tubs, and knives in their home, along with severed body parts, and similar materials at the suspect’s home, in an apparent pre-murder experiment meant to test how to dispose of the bodies.

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Fatal Vows: “Death in the Family” (Season 1, Episode 5)

After Karen Kahler spends Thanksgiving 2009 with her family in Kansas, she picks up her son the next day from her ex-husband, Craig, and they head to her grandmother’s house, along with her two daughters. The following day, Craig shoots and kills Karen, her grandmother, and the couple’s daughters, claiming insanity due to the breakup of their marriage.

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Someone You Thought You Knew: “Thanksgiving Ambush” (Season 1, Episode 4)

Snapped: “Brenda Andrew” (Season 2, Episode 7)

Snapped: Killer Couples: “Brenda Andrew and James Pavatt” (Season 3, Episode 2)

Someone You Thought You Knew, Snapped, and Snapped: Killer Couples detail a murder that occurred two days before Thanksgiving in 2001 in a suburb of Oklahoma City. Rob and Brenda Andrew are shot in their home in what appears to be a home invasion robbery. He dies at the scene, but she survives. When neighbors find a shotgun shell in their home, they call the police, who discover bullets in their attic near a window facing the Andrew home. Further investigation of the Andrew’s church leads investigators to the killer.

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Stream Snapped on Peacock and Hulu

Stream Snapped: Killer Couples on Peacock

Read the Snapped, Snapped: Killer Couples, and Someone You Thought You Knew profiles

Murder Comes to Town: “Who Killed Thanksgiving?” (Season 2, Episode 3)

In the small town of Northport, Washington, Narleen Campton is found dead in her home during Thanksgiving weekend of 2011. She had been beaten, stabbed, and strangled. Empty prescription bottles at the scene help detectives find the killer.

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The Last 24: “Stranger in the Dark” (Season 2, Episode 8)

Dead of Night: “Blood Brothers” (Season 1, Episode 2)

A Time to Kill: “The Night Creeper” (Season 2, Episode 5)

College student Corey Parker is found stabbed in her apartment in Jacksonville Beach, Florida, after she didn’t show up for a Thanksgiving party in 1998 or work the next day. A Time to Kill, The Last 24, and Dead of Night detail the detectives’ investigation of friends, neighbors, co-workers, and her boyfriend, to see if their alibis match her time of death. (Note: A Time to Kill and The Last 24 are the same show with a different title.)

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Stream Dead of Night on Discovery+

Stream A Time to Kill on Discovery+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the Roku Channel

Nightmare Next Door: “Thanksgiving Tragedy” (Season 8, Episode 11)

Early Thanksgiving morning in Waldorf, Maryland, in 2004, police find Chris Mader dead in his car after driving home from work as a bartender, in what turned out to be a botched robbery.

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Killer Instinct with Chris Hansen: “Deadline: Thanksgiving” (Season 2, Episode 10)

Just before Thanksgiving 2007 in Taunton, Massachusetts, Jim Madonna goes to play poker with friends and never returns. His son and best friend find Jim dead, shot five times, in a parking lot. Financial problems play a part in the murder.

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Blood Relatives: “Thanksgiving Day Charade” (Season 6, Episode 7)

On Thanksgiving 2010 in East Hartford, Connecticut, Bednarz family matriarch Beverly Therrien was found beaten to death, along with her two roommates, Michael Ramsey and Pamela Johns. Strained family relationships reveal the killer.

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8 True Crime Shows with Killer Women and Female Detectives

Women take the lead in murders and their investigation

Suzanne Hamlin
Killer women
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com


(Note: This site contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)

Women commit about 12 percent of the murders in the US, and people want to know about them. From Snapped to Killer Couples, Deadly Wives to Deadly Women to Wives with Knives, and Dateline NBC to Meet, Marry, Murder, female killers get equal time in true crime shows. And in Murder She Solved, the spotlight is on the female investigators who solve murders.

Snapped

Thought women don’t kill? Snapped proves otherwise. Snapped is a long-running show featuring 31 seasons of murders perpetrated by women through various means, from poisoning, to stabbing, to gunshots, to murder-for-hire. It balances narration, re-creations, and the victim’s and suspect’s background and relationship with interviews with detectives, prosecutors, and victims’ families and friends, sprinkling police interviews and trial clips into the story.

The draw of the show is its ability to show how a relationship can devolve and how detectives discover that it isn’t what it first appears to be. Episodes in Seasons 1-23 detail the suspect’s background first; recent seasons tell the victim’s life story first.

Suggested episode: A special 90-minute episode, Season 26, Episode 15 features the case of Sheila Davalloo, a pharmaceutical researcher who not only murdered her romantic competition but also attempted to kill her husband. Davalloo tells her side of the story in a prison interview.

Where to stream: Peacock, Hulu

Read the full profile of Snapped

Snapped: Killer Couples

Produced by the same folks who make Snapped, this show (also called Killer Couples) focuses on couples who kill together, mostly heterosexual, with plenty of women taking the lead. Episodes delve into cases involving love triangles, spree killings, serial killers, murder for financial gain, and others.

Suggested episode: Season 3, Episode 9 covers the famous Canadian killer couple of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, who tortured, sexually assaulted, and killed at least three victims.

Where to stream: Peacock

Read the full profile of Snapped: Killer Couples

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Dateline NBC

While Dateline doesn’t only focus on female killers, its dedication to murders of romantic partners qualifies it for this category. Plenty of women hire others to kill or do their own dirty work.

Dateline includes episodes with other investigative pieces than murder (such as the recent Johnny Depp-Amber Heard defamation case), but it mostly concentrates on true crime.

Although it can sometimes be predictable, the writing leaves the audience wondering until the end as to the identity of the murderer. Dateline’s storytelling and the correspondents’ empathy for victims’ families and friends, makes it a standout in the genre. Correspondents like Keith Morrison often interview suspects before or after conviction, and their hard-nosed questioning is a highlight.

Suggested episode: Dateline has covered many well-known cases, from the Kathleen Peterson case to the Gianni Versace murder, but the lesser-known ones can be just as compelling. Try “The Real Thing About Pam” (Season 30, Episode 22), which is the same case from the Dateline podcast and NBC fictional series, or “The Ascension of Mother God” (Season 30, Episode 4).

Where to stream: Peacock, Hulu

Read the full profile of Dateline NBC

Meet, Marry, Murder

Meet, Marry, Murder features disturbing homicide cases committed by one spouse against the other, often preceded by domestic abuse or coercive control, and women are just as likely to be the abuser.

Episodes concentrate on couples from the US and UK and rely on detectives recounting their investigations, along with outside experts like psychologists, former detectives, journalists, criminologists, attorneys, and domestic abuse specialists, who succeed at emphasizing the seriousness of the situation and the dangers of domestic abuse. They not only detail the story, but also the psychology behind the murder, suspect, victim, and their relationship.

Suggested episode: Season 1, Episodes 9 and 42 provide dual coverage of the Kathy Augustine murder by her husband Chaz Higgs and the murder-suicide involving her daughter, Dallas Augustine, and Dallas’ wife.

Where to stream: Tubi, True Crime Network, Peacock, The Roku Channel

Read the full profile of Meet, Marry, Murder

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Deadly Women

Deadly Women answers the question: Do women kill? Yes, they most certainly do. It tells stories of female murderers using all sorts of methods, from poisoning, to stabbing, to guns, just as well as men, if not as prolifically.

Deadly Women groups episodes by theme, such as greed, jealousy, forbidden love, obsession, revenge, and the like, even historical murders, which are not usually covered in other series, and those from countries outside the US. Some of the cases are detailed elsewhere (see Snapped, for example), but Deadly Women presents them using dramatized re-creations, with dialogue, that emphasize the murders themselves, rather than the subsequent investigations.

Suggested episode: Season 3, Episode 8, “Fatal Obsession,” includes the murder of pregnant woman Bobbie Joe Stinnett by a killer who wanted to steal her unborn child.

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

Read the full profile of Deadly Women

Deadly Wives

At first, Deadly Wives might come across as just another murder show about women who kill, but its draw is the sarcastic narration of actress Christine Estabrook, who delivers the writing with disbelief and an almost audible rolling of her eyes. She comments on trial testimony with asides like “Wait, you’re gonna love this one.” This short-lived show has episodes with 1-2 stories each that scrutinize the lies, alibis, and excuses of wives involved in killing their husbands. The police interview these deadly wives, and prosecutors cross-examine the ones brazen enough to take the witness stand, providing a lighter take on intimate partner homicide and trading suspense and cliffhangers for barbs that might shock some viewers and delight others.

Suggested episode: Season 1, Episode 10 (“Opposites Attract”) includes the murder of Bruce Cleland by his wife and her cousins, along with the murder of Becky Klein by her wife.

Where to stream: Hulu, Amazon Prime Video

Read the full profile of Deadly Wives

Wives with Knives

Stabbing is the method of choice in this true crime series about female murderers and attempted murderers. Each episode gives viewers an inside look at one case and the motives of a wife or girlfriend who stabbed her romantic partner. The show centers on the stories of the wives themselves, who give their version and provide interviews with criminologist and criminal behavior analyst Casey Jordan, who also adds psychoanalytic commentary.

Wives with Knives also brings on the wives’ families and friends, who detail the context of their lives and background. The show intersperses the competing sides of the story with dramatized re-creations (with dialogue) that tell the story event by event, focusing on what led up to the murder, in some cases abuse, and the murder itself, without a lot of information on the investigation that followed. The show’s unique presentation of both sides of the story makes it a fascinating watch.

Suggested episode: In “Demons, Drugs and Darkness” (Season 2, Episode 4), a woman who battles schizophrenia and meth addiction stabs her ex-boyfriend.

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video, Discovery+

Read the full profile of Wives with Knives

Murder She Solved

Murder She Solved emphasizes a different side of the coin: investigations involving female detectives, pathologists, and others (like private investigators, forensic scientists, and criminal profilers), who share their experiences solving homicides in the United States and Canada. It eschews fancy prose or cliffhangers and gets right down to business with the details of investigative techniques for each case, from forensics to undercover operations. Hit men, friends, spouses, and strangers kill, and female detectives solve the case.

Suggested episode: In “Never A Doubt” (Season 3, episode 4), the wife of a man wrongfully convicted for killing his mother-in-law investigates the case herself and finds the real killer.

Where to stream: Amazon Prime Video, True Crime Network

Read the full profile of Murder She Solved

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7 Spooky True Crime TV Episodes for Halloween

Celebrate Halloween with some chilling murder cases

Suzanne Hamlin
Halloween true crime
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Dateline NBC: “Under a Halloween Moon” (Season 22, Episode 6)

In this episode, Josh Mankiewicz details the murder of Joel Lovelien, which occurred outside a bar he went to with his fiancée for a Halloween party in 2007 in North Dakota. Lovelien was beaten to death in the parking lot, and police search for the killer among the large group of people in costume. This one has a surprise ending.

Stream on Peacock and Hulu

Read the Dateline profile

Dateline NBC: “The Halloween Party” (Season 26, Episode 5)

Keith Morrison lends his spooky narration to the story of Chelsea Bruck, who attends a Halloween party as Poison Ivy at a rural property in Michigan in 2014. She disappears that night, and police find her body several months later. She had been sexually assaulted and died from blunt force trauma.

Stream on Peacock and Hulu

Killer Kids: “Vampire and the Essay” (Season 4, Episode 8)

The 16-year-old leader of a vampire cult murders Naomi Ruth Queen and Richard Wendorf in 1996 in Florida, the parents of a 15-year-old girl who ran away from home with his group. Although the ringleader was convicted of murder, she was never charged.

Stream on Amazon Prime Video and the Roku Channel

City Confidential: “Monsters on Main Street” (Season 7, Episode 1)

An 11-year-old girl, Shauna Howe, disappears on the way home from a Halloween party in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1992. Police discover her body three days later, but the murder goes unsolved until 2003. The town banned nighttime trick-or-treating for 15 years after the murder. The case is also covered in Cold Case Files.

Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Discovery+, and the Roku Channel

Read the City Confidential profile

Snapped: “William Dennis” (Season 26, Episode 9)

In 1984, pregnant mother Doreen Erbert is murdered on Halloween in California by a man in a wolf mask wielding a machete. The episode is rare coverage of a male killer on the female-focused series.

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Read the Snapped profile

Bizarre Murders: “Vampire Diaries” (Season 1, Episode 22)

In a ritualistic killing, a teen interested in the occult kills an elderly woman, removes her heart, and drinks her blood. The episode is based on the story of the murder of Maybel Leyshon in the UK in 2001.

Stream on Tubi, True Crime Network, and the Roku Channel

Read the Bizarre Murders profile

Killer Cases: “Murder Under a Blue Moon” (Season 1, Episode 5)

The triple homicide by a man who killed his mother, Voncile Smith, and two half-brothers, Richard Thomas Smith and John William Smith, in Florida in 2015. The murder occurs close to the blue moon, and the positioning of the bodies and the killer’s pagan practices make detectives mistakenly think it is a result of witchcraft. Also featured on Family Massacre.

Stream on Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and True Crime Network

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