A peaceful, snowy Christmas. Thanksgiving dinner. New Year’s celebrations. None are safe from murder, as Homicide for the Holidays illustrates through cases during what is supposed to be a happy holiday season.
Narrated by the very journalistic-sounding Chris Hansen (To Catch a Predator), the series showcases murders that happened on or around the holidays, and the tangled motivations behind them, including family murders, mass murders, spree killings, intimate partner homicides, and even a case in Santa Claus, Georgia.
Episodes first set the scene with descriptions of the festive atmosphere of the cities and towns, along with home videos and photos of the victims and their families during past holiday celebrations. Then, through heartbreaking testimonials by survivors and family members, stories from detectives, and re-creations, the show details the often shocking murders that occurred, the ensuing investigations, and the impact of the murders on the victims’ families, changing their holidays forever.
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.
Stream Dateline on Peacock and Hulu
Stream Hear No Evil on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video
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.
Stream on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video
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.
Stream Snapped on Peacock and Hulu
Stream Model Killers on Amazon Prime Video and the Roku Channel
Stream Deadly Women on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and Discovery+
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.
Stream on Peacock and Hulu
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.
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.
Stream on American Justice on Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the Roku Channel
Stream Homicide for the Holidays on Peacock and Hulu
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.
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.
Stream on Discovery+, Amazon Prime Video, the Roku Channel, and Hulu
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.
Stream Someone You Thought You Knew on Discovery+, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and the Roku Channel
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.
Stream on Discovery+, Amazon Prime Video, the Roku Channel, and Hulu
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.)
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.
Stream on Discovery+ and Amazon Prime Video
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.
Stream on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video
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.
Stream on Discovery+, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video
True Crime Docket 