In recent years, the true crime genre has become more popular than ever. The fascination with real criminals has stealthily crept into our pop culture, replacing romcom evenings with binge-watching marathons of series and movies about cults, murders, and fraud. Such high demand for the genre has left no other choice for directors but to continue finding true crime stories and turning them into TV shows or movies, feeding into viewers’ strange obsession.

Many of these series and films based on true crimes can be found in the list below, carefully curated by our Bored Panda team. Scroll down to find them, and make sure to upvote the ones you’re definitely adding to your next-to-watch list.

#1 I Enjoyed Candy, 2022 Documentary TV Series Based On The True Story Of Candy Montgomery, Who Murdered Her Friend In The 1980s After Having An Affair With Her Husband

Candace Lynn Montgomery is an American woman who was accused of murdering her lover’s wife, Betty Gore. The killing took place in Wylie, Texas, on June 13, 1980. During the assault, Gore was struck 41 times with a wood splitting axe. Montgomery pleaded not guilty to charges of murder on the basis of self-defense, alleging that Gore confronted her about an affair she had with Gore’s husband and attacked her with the axe. She was acquitted.

The verdict received a great deal of criticism from the community. Crowds chanted, “Murderer! Murderer!” as Montgomery exited the courthouse following her acquittal.

Image credits: tiggyentwhistle

#2 2022 Documentary TV Show “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts – typically all or part of the skeleton.

Although he was diagnosed with many disorders, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of fifteen of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin and was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992. Dahmer was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.

Image credits: Wikipedia

#3 2020 Documentary TV Show “The Trials Of Gabriel Fernandez”

On May 24, 2013, Gabriel Fernandez, an eight-year-old boy from Palmdale, California, who had been abused and tortured over a period of months, died due to a beating from his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, two days earlier. Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre were charged and convicted of first-degree murder with special circumstances of torture. According to prosecutors, Aguirre allegedly abused Gabriel due to his perceived homosexuality.  Pearl was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and Aguirre was sentenced to death.

Throughout his eight-month stay in the household of Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre, Gabriel Fernandez was systematically abused and tortured. This included regular physical beatings that broke his bones, burns from cigarettes and heated objects, shots from a BB gun, having his teeth knocked out with a bat, and the forced consumption of cat litter, cat feces, spoiled food, and his own vomit.

Beyond the physical torment, he was subjected to psychological abuse such as being forced to sleep bound and gagged in a small cabinet and made to wear girls’ clothing. Fernandez’s siblings reported that his mother and stepfather would laugh during the abuse. According to prosecutors, one of Aguirre’s motivations for this abuse was that he believed Fernandez was gay.

On May 22, 2013, Fernandez was beaten for not tidying his toys. The assault rendered him unresponsive, prompting Pearl to call 9-1-1. Paramedics transported Fernandez to Antelope Valley Hospital, where he was declared brain dead. He died two days later at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The autopsy concluded that his death resulted from blunt force trauma, aggravated by neglect and malnutrition.

Image credits: netflix.com

#4 2019 Documentary TV Show “The Act”

Gypsy-Rose Alcida Blanchard (born July 27, 1991) is an American convicted of murder. She rose to worldwide prominence when she was convicted of second-degree murder in Springfield, Missouri, for the death of her mother Dee Dee Blanchard, who subjected her to lifelong physical, mental, and medical abuse. She was sentenced to ten years in prison.

She was paroled after eight years, near the end of December 2023. Given the sensational aspects of Gypsy’s childhood, including her mother forcing her to pretend to be disabled and terminally ill, she gained widespread media attention.

Image credits: hulu.com

#5 2024 Documentary Movie “What Jennifer Did”

On November 8, 2010, police in Markham, Ontario, Canada, a suburb outside of Toronto, responded to a report of a robbery and assault at the Unionville home of Hann and Bich Pan, ethnically Chinese Vietnamese immigrants. Both had been shot repeatedly; Bich died of her injuries and Hann was permanently blinded. The investigation revealed that the crime was not a robbery but instead a kill-for-hire orchestrated by the couple’s daughter Jennifer Pan. She had expected to inherit her parents’ money and was angered that they had forbidden her to see her boyfriend after they discovered she had been deceiving them about her education.

At trial, Pan was found guilty on multiple charges and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years, the same penalty as her co-conspirators. In May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a retrial for Pan and her conspirators on the first-degree murder charge but upheld the attempted murder conviction. It is still not clear who actually fired the shots.

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#6 2022 Documentary Movie “American Murder: The Family Next Door”

In the early hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, Christopher Lee Watts murdered his pregnant wife Shanann (34) by strangulation, and their two children Bella (4) and Celeste (3) by suffocation. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage facility, and dumped his children’s bodies into crude oil tanks. Watts initially maintained his innocence in his family’s disappearance, but was arrested on August 15, after confessing in an interview with detectives to murdering Shanann. Months later he also admitted to murdering his children.

On November 6, 2018, Watts pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree murder as part of a plea deal when the death penalty (which was later abolished in Colorado in 2020) was removed from sentencing. He was sentenced to five life sentences without the possibility of parole, three to be served consecutively.

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#7 2022 Documentary Movie “Our Father”

Donald Lee Cline (born December 10, 1938) is a former American medical doctor of obstetrics and gynecology and convicted felon. Between 1974 and 1987, Cline sired over 90 children without disclosing himself as the sperm donor to his patients. As of May 11, 2022, Cline has been confirmed as the biological father of 94 doctor-conceived offspring.

In 2014 when Jacoba Ballard, a daughter of a former patient of Cline, reviewed the results of her at-home DNA test, she discovered a biological connection to eight previously unknown half-siblings. Her genetic genealogy research ultimately revealed Cline, her mother’s fertility doctor, as her biological father. Cline is now known to have covertly fathered at least 94 offspring.

Ballard filed a complaint with the Attorney General of Indiana who initiated an investigation in 2015. Then Indiana attorney general Tim DeLaney declined to prosecute because “there was no law forbidding Cline’s conduct.” Ballard then pursued media coverage. Fox59 anchor Angela Ganote investigated her story. During her investigation, Ganote learned that Cline had lied to the attorney general’s office in their investigation. Documents show that he had told investigators, “I can emphatically say that at no time did I ever use my own sample for insemination nor was I a donor.”

After a story aired on Fox59, Cline left a voicemail for Ballard contradicting what he had told investigators. “Uh, this is Dr. Cline, You know, I thought I was doing the right thing. I only donated my own sample nine or 10 times,” he said. He had placed the call to ask Ballard for help with damage control. “Um, my wife and I, uh, after 57 years of marriage, um, we have had a great deal of problems over this. She considers this adultery. I donated my sample. Gonna lose my wife. Our marriage will be over. Can you help?”

Ganote told DeLaney that Cline was lying to them. Ballard played the audio of the voice mail. The attorney general then conducted an independent DNA test. The results confirmed a 99.9997% probability of paternity. Charges were filed against Cline. In State of Indiana v. Donald Cline, Cline pleaded guilty to two Level 6 felony counts of obstruction of justice and received a one-year suspended sentence.

As of May 2022, Cline had paid out more than $1.35 million to settle three civil lawsuits filed by donor children and families. Three more are pending.

Image credits: netflix.com

#8 2020 Documentary Series “Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich”

Jeffrey Edward Epstein (January 20, 1953 – August 10, 2019) was an American financier and child sex offender.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, began investigating Epstein after a parent reported that he had sexually abused her 14-year-old daughter. Federal officials identified 36 girls, some as young as 14 years old, whom Epstein had allegedly sexually abused. Epstein pleaded guilty and was convicted in 2008 by a Florida state court of procuring a child for prostitution and of soliciting a prostitute. He was convicted of only these two crimes as part of a controversial plea deal, and served almost 13 months in custody but with extensive work release.

Epstein was arrested again on July 6, 2019, on federal charges for the sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York. He died in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. The medical examiner ruled that his death was a suicide by hanging.

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#9 2022 Documentary Series “Keep Sweet: Pray And Obey”

Warren Steed Jeffs (born December 3, 1955) is an American cult leader who is serving a life sentence in Texas for child sexual assault following two convictions in 2011. He is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a polygamous cult based in Arizona. 

In 2006, Jeffs was placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List for his flight from the charges that he had arranged illegal child marriages between his adult male followers and underage girls in Utah. In 2007, Arizona charged him with eight additional counts in two separate cases, including incest and sexual conduct with minors.

In September 2007, Jeffs was convicted of two counts of rape as an accomplice, for which he was sentenced to imprisonment for ten years to life in Utah State Prison. This conviction was overturned by the Utah Supreme Court in 2010 due to flawed jury instructions.

Jeffs was extradited to Texas, where he was found guilty of sexual assault of a minor, for raping a 15-year-old child bride; and aggravated sexual assault against a child, for raping a 12-year-old child bride; for which he was sentenced to life in prison, plus twenty years, and fined $10,000. Jeffs is incarcerated at the Louis C. Powledge Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice near Palestine, Texas.

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#10 2021 Documentary Series “Night Stalker: The Hunt For A Serial Killer”

Ricardo Leyva Muñoz Ramirez (February 29, 1960 – June 7, 2013), better known as Richard Ramirez, and nicknamed the Night Stalker, was an American serial killer and sex offender whose killing spree occurred in Greater Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in the state of California.

From April 1984 to August 1985, Ramirez murdered at least fourteen people during various break-ins, with his crimes usually taking place in the afternoon, leading to him being dubbed the Night Stalker, the Walk-In Killer, and the Valley Intruder. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 1989 and died while awaiting execution in 2013.

Ramirez’s crimes were heavily influenced by a troubled childhood. Frequently abused by his father, he developed brain damage and started abusing drugs at the age of 10.

Ramirez used a wide variety of weapons, including handguns, various types of knives, a machete, a tire iron and a claw hammer. He punched, pistol whipped, and strangled many of his victims, both with his hands and in one instance a ligature; stomped at least one victim to death in her sleep; and tortured another by shocking her with a live electrical cord.

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#11 2022 Documentary Movie “I Am Vanessa Guillen”

The murder of Vanessa Guillén, a 20-year-old United States Army soldier, took place inside an armory at Fort Hood, Texas, on April 22, 2020, when she was bludgeoned to death by another soldier, Aaron David Robinson. Guillén had been missing for more than two months before some of her dismembered, burned remains were found buried along the Leon River on June 30. Robinson fled Fort Hood after learning of the discovery. When law enforcement tried to apprehend him in nearby Killeen, Texas, he fatally shot himself.

Cecily Aguilar, a local woman identified as Robinson’s girlfriend, was taken into custody for assisting him in dismembering and burying Guillén’s body. On July 2, 2020, Aguilar was charged with one federal count of conspiracy to tamper with evidence. On July 13, 2021, she was indicted on eleven counts by a federal grand jury. On November 29, 2022 Aguilar pleaded guilty to accessory to murder after the fact and three counts of making a false statement. On August 14, 2023, Aguilar was sentenced to the maximum of 30 years for her role in covering up the murder of Guillén.

Guillén had long had the goal of serving in the Army but, after being assigned to Fort Hood, told friends and family of being sexually harassed by a superior. She did not report it officially for fear of retaliation, as such reports were supposed to go through the chain of command.

Image credits: netflix.com

#12 2024 Documentary Series “American Nightmare”

Matthew Daniel Muller (born March 27, 1977) is an American kidnapper, rapist, former immigration attorney, and Marine veteran. 

In March 2015, Muller developed a delusion that he should kidnap “evil wealthy people” for ransom to give to the poor. During his psychosis, he committed two home invasions and kidnapped and raped Denise Huskins, originally deemed a hoax by authorities. He was caught on June 9, 2015 after leaving his cell phone and other evidence at the site of the unsuccessful second home invasion. He is being held in Federal Correctional Institution, Tucson, until 2049.

Muller was diagnosed with major depression with signs of mania after contemplating suicide. After his symptoms continued to worsen, he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder in 2008.

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#13 2019 Documentary Series “Conversations With A Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes”

Theodore Robert Bundy (November 24, 1946 – January 24, 1989) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, and murdered dozens of young women and girls during the 1970s. After more than a decade of denials, he confessed to 30 murders. The total number of his victims is likely to be higher.

Bundy frequently revisited the bodies of those he abducted, grooming and performing sex acts on the corpses until decomposition and destruction by wild animals made further interactions impossible. He decapitated at least twelve of his victims, keeping their severed heads as mementos in his apartment. On a few occasions, Bundy broke into homes at night and bludgeoned, maimed, strangled and sexually assaulted his victims in their sleep.

In 1975, Bundy was arrested and jailed in Utah for aggravated kidnapping and attempted criminal assault. He then became a suspect in a progressively longer list of unsolved homicides in several states. Facing murder charges in Colorado, Bundy engineered two dramatic escapes and committed further assaults in Florida, including three murders, before being recaptured in 1978. For the Florida homicides, he received three death sentences in two trials, and was executed in the electric chair at Florida State Prison on January 24, 1989.

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#14 2017 Documentary Movie “Casting Jonbenet”

JonBenét Patricia Ramsey (August 6, 1990 – December 26, 1996) was an American child beauty queen who was killed at age six in her family’s home at 755 15th Street in Boulder, Colorado, on the night of December 25, 1996. Her body was found in the house’s basement about seven hours after she had been reported missing.

She had sustained a fractured skull, and a garrote was tied around her neck. The autopsy report stated that JonBenét’s official cause of death was “asphyxia by strangulation associated with craniocerebral trauma”. Her death was ruled a homicide.

After the homicide of JonBenét was discovered, Boulder law enforcement officials declared that Patsy and her husband were “under an umbrella of suspicion” because of their possible involvement in the crime. The couple spent the next 10 years defending themselves against the allegations by insisting that an intruder killed their daughter.

This mysterious murder of JonBenét Ramsey remains unsolved.

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#15 2015 Documentary Movie “3096 Days”

Natascha Maria Kampusch (born 17 February 1988) is an Austrian author and former talk show host. At the age of 10, on 2 March 1998, she was abducted and held in a secret cellar by her kidnapper Wolfgang Přiklopil for more than eight years, until she escaped on 23 August 2006. Upon her escape, Přiklopil killed himself by stepping in front of a train at a nearby station. 

Dietmar Ecker, Kampusch’s media advisor, said that Přiklopil “would beat her so badly that she could hardly walk”. He would also starve her to make her physically weak and unable to escape. He also raped her. Přiklopil had warned Kampusch that the doors and windows of the house were booby-trapped with high explosives. He also claimed to be carrying a gun and that he would kill her and the neighbours if she attempted to escape.

The 18-year-old Kampusch escaped from Přiklopil’s house on 23 August 2006. At 12:53 pm, she was cleaning and vacuuming her kidnapper’s white van in the garden when Přiklopil got a call on his mobile phone. Because of the vacuum’s loud noise, he walked away to take the call. Kampusch left the vacuum cleaner running and ran away when Přiklopil was out of sight. She ran for some 200 meters (218 yards) through neighbouring gardens and a street, jumping fences, and asking bystanders to call the police, but they paid her no attention. After about five minutes, she knocked on the window of a 71-year-old neighbour known as Inge T, saying, “I am Natascha Kampusch”. The neighbour called the police, who arrived at 1:04 pm. Later, Kampusch was taken to the police station in the town of Deutsch-Wagram.

Image credits: tv.apple.com

#16 2008 American Mystery Crime Drama Film “Changeling”

The story was based on real-life events, specifically the 1928 Wineville Chicken Coop murders in Mira Loma, California.

The Wineville Chicken Coop murders, also known as the Wineville Chicken murders, were a series of abductions and murders of young boys that occurred in the city of Los Angeles and in Riverside County, California, United States between 1926 and 1928. The murders were perpetrated by Gordon Stewart Northcott, a 19-year-old farmer who had moved to the U.S. from Canada two years earlier, as well as his mother, Sarah Louise Northcott, and his nephew, Sanford Clark.

Northcott was arrested while visiting his sister in Canada in November 1928. The case received national attention because one of the assumed victims was Walter Collins, the nine-year-old son of Christine Collins, who had gone missing in March 1928. While authorities initially considered the possibility that the total number of boys killed might have been as high as 20, this theory was eliminated as the investigation began to unfold. Northcott was found guilty of three of the murders in February 1929 and was executed at San Quentin State Prison in October 1930.

Image credits: primevideo.com

#17 2013 Drama Film “Jodi Arias: Dirty Little Secret”

The film focuses on Jodi Arias, a woman who was convicted of murdering Travis Alexander (her ex boyfriend).

Travis Victor Alexander (July 28, 1977 – June 4, 2008) was an American salesman who was murdered by his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Ann Arias (born July 9, 1980), in his house in Mesa, Arizona while in the shower. Arias was convicted of first-degree murder on May 8, 2013, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on April 13, 2015. Alexander sustained 27 stab wounds, a slit throat and a single gunshot wound to the forehead. Arias testified that she killed him in self-defense, but she was convicted by the jury of first-degree murder. During the sentencing phase, the jury deadlocked on the death penalty option, and Arias was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Alexander’s death and the subsequent investigation and trial attracted widespread media coverage in the United States.

Image credits: tv.apple.com

#18 2015 American Crime Drama Television Film “Cleveland Abduction”

Movie is based on the kidnapping of three Cleveland women by Ariel Castro in the early 2000s.

Between 2002 and 2004, Ariel Castro abducted Michelle Knight, Amanda Berry, and Gina DeJesus from the roads of Cleveland, Ohio, and later held them captive in his home at 2207 Seymour Avenue in the city’s Tremont neighborhood. All three women were imprisoned at Castro’s home until 2013, when Berry successfully escaped with her six-year-old daughter, to whom she had given birth while captive, and contacted the police. Police rescued Knight and DeJesus, and arrested Castro hours later. Castro was charged with four counts of kidnapping and three counts of rape. He pled guilty to 937 criminal counts of rape, kidnapping, and aggravated murder as part of a plea bargain. He was sentenced to life imprisonment plus 1,000 years in prison without the possibility of parole. One month into his life sentence, Castro died by suicide by hanging himself with bedsheets in his prison cell.

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#19 Best Limited Series I’ve Ever Seen, “When They See Us” Based On The 1989s Case Of Five Teens Who Were Wrongfully Convicted Of Raping A Woman In Central Park, NY

The Central Park jogger case was a criminal case concerning the assault and rape of Trisha Meili, a woman who was running in Central Park in Manhattan, New York, on April 19, 1989. Crime in New York City was peaking in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged. On the night Meili was attacked, dozens of teenagers had entered the park, and there were reports of muggings and physical assaults.

Six teenagers were indicted in relation to the Meili assault. Charges against one, Steven Lopez, were dropped after Lopez pleaded guilty to a different assault. The remaining five – Antron McCray, Kevin Richardson, Yusef Salaam, Raymond Santana, and Korey Wise – were convicted of the charged offenses and served sentences ranging from seven to thirteen years.

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#20 TV Show “Monsters: The Lyle And Erik Menendez Story” And Documentary “The Menendez Brothers”

Joseph Lyle Menendez and Erik Galen Menendez commonly referred to as the Menendez brothers, are American brothers convicted of killing their parents, José and Mary Louise “Kitty” Menendez, at their Beverly Hills home in 1989.

Following the murders, Lyle and Erik claimed that unknown intruders were responsible for the murders, framing it as a potential mob killing. Police initially investigated this claim, but grew suspicious due to the brothers’ spending and their hiring of a computer expert to delete their father’s recently updated will. 

During their first trial, the defense argued that the brothers killed their parents in self-defense after years of alleged sexual, emotional, and physical abuse. 

Lyle and Erik were charged with two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances for lying in wait, making them eligible for the death penalty, and charges of conspiracy to murder.

Image credits: netflix.com

#21 2023 Documentary Movie “Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case”

Joji Obara, born Kim Sung-jong is a Korean-Japanese serial rapist who raped between 150 and 400 women between 1992 and 2000. He was charged with drugging, raping and killing an English woman, Lucie Blackman; the rape and manslaughter of an Australian woman, Carita Ridgway; and the rape of eight other women.

In 2007, Obara was sentenced to life imprisonment on multiple rape charges and manslaughter but was acquitted in the Blackman case for lack of direct evidence. In December 2008, the Tokyo High Court found Obara guilty on the counts of abduction, dismemberment and disposal of Blackman’s body. Blackman’s death, as well as Obara’s trial, received extensive press coverage internationally, especially in the United Kingdom.

Image credits: netflix.com

#22 2023 Documentary “Curry & Cyanide – The Jolly Joseph Case”

The series is based on actual events in Koodathayi, a village in Kerala, India, between 2002 and 2016. Jolly Joseph, a mother and wife, was accused of poisoning six members of her family, including her first husband, with cyanide-laced food. She allegedly did this to inherit the family property and to marry her lover, who was her husband’s cousin. 

In 2002, Annamma Thomas (aged 57), the mother-in-law of the accused, drank a glass of water. Immediately afterwards, she began to feel uneasy and dizzy, eventually collapsing on the floor. She was taken to the hospital where she later died.

In 2008, Tom Thomas (aged 66), Annamma’s husband and Jolly’s father-in-law, passed away after swooning and collapsing.

In 2011, Roy Thomas (aged 40), Jolly’s then husband, died after consuming his dinner of rice and Bengal gram curry. He was found dead in a bathroom which was locked from the inside.

In 2014, Mathew (aged 68) swooned and died after Jolly allegedly gave him poison-laden whisky. The deceased Roy has a cousin named Shaju Zachariah.

The same year (2014), Shaju’s two-year-old daughter, Alphine Shaju, died after “choking on food”.

In 2016, Jolly allegedly gave Sily Shaju (aged 41), Alphine’s mother, a mushroom capsule, which Jolly convinced Sily that would help her with energy and depression and Sily died on the spot soon after.

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#23 2022 Documentary Movie “The Gabby Petito Story”

In August 2021, 22-year-old American woman Gabrielle Venora Petito was killed by her fiancé Brian Christopher Laundrie while they were traveling together on a vanlife journey across the United States. The trip was planned to last for four months and began on July 2, 2021, but Petito disappeared on August 27.

The Laundrie family’s lawyer released the full notebook entry, in which Laundrie claims that he killed Petito after she had fallen and injured herself: “I ended her life. I thought it was merciful, that it is what she wanted, but now I see all the mistake I made.” The note ends with his plans for suicide: “I am ending my life not because of a fear of punishment but rather because I can’t stand to live another day without her.” 

On October 20, Laundrie’s skeletal remains (identified by forensic dentistry) and some of his belongings were found in the Myakkahatchee Creek Environmental Park, in an area that had recently been underwater due to flooding. His cause of death could not be determined by an autopsy, and his remains were given to a forensic anthropologist for further examination. On November 23, it was announced that the anthropologist had concluded that Laundrie died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.

Experts, however, contend that Laundrie’s account does not match investigators’ findings. Michael Alcazar from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice believed Laundrie was “someone who doesn’t want to own up to what he did” and was “trying to find justification for the actions he did”.

Image credits: hulu.com

#24 2006 American Neo-Noir Crime Thriller Film “Lonely Hearts”

Movie is based on the true story of the notorious “Lonely Hearts Killers” spree killing of the 1940s, Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez.

Raymond Martinez Fernandez (December 17, 1914 – March 8, 1951) and Martha Jule Beck (May 6, 1920 – March 8, 1951) were an American serial killer couple. They were convicted of one murder, are known to have committed two more, and were suspected of having killed up to twenty victims during a spree between 1947 and 1949.

After their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949, Fernandez and Beck became known as the Lonely Hearts Killers for meeting their unsuspecting victims through personal ads, posted in newspaper lonely hearts columns.

Fernandez quickly confessed. The pair vehemently denied committing seventeen murders that were attributed to them, and Fernandez tried to retract his confession, saying he made it only to protect Beck. They were extradited to New York, which still instituted the death penalty. Fay’s murder was the only one for which the couple were tried, and they were both sentenced to death. They were executed at Sing Sing prison on March 8, 1951.

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#25 2010 American Mystery/Crime Romantic Drama Film “All Good Things”

Movie is inspired by the life of Robert Durst.

Robert Alan Durst (April 12, 1943 – January 10, 2022) was an American real estate heir and convicted murderer. The eldest son of New York City real estate magnate Seymour Durst, he garnered attention as a suspect in the unsolved 1982 disappearance of his first wife, Kathleen McCormack; the 2000 murder of his longtime friend, Susan Berman; and the 2001 killing of neighbor Morris Black. Acquitted of murdering Black in 2003, Durst did not face further legal action until his participation in the 2015 documentary miniseries The Jinx led to him being charged with Berman’s murder. Durst was convicted in 2021 and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. He was also charged with McCormack’s murder shortly after his sentencing, but died in 2022 before a trial could begin.

His conviction for Berman’s murder was automatically vacated upon his death because his appeal was still pending.

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#26 2007 American Psychological Horror-Thriller Film “The Girl Next Door”

Movie is based on Jack Ketchum’s 1989 novel of the same name, which was inspired by the real-life murder of Sylvia Likens, to whom the movie is dedicated.

Sylvia Marie Likens (January 3, 1949 – October 26, 1965) was an American teenager who was tortured and murdered by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, many of Baniszewski’s children, and several of their neighborhood friends. The abuse lasted for three months, occurring incrementally, before Likens died from her extensive injuries and malnourishment on October 26, 1965, in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Likens was increasingly tormented, neglected, belittled, sexually humiliated, beaten, starved, lacerated, burned, and dehydrated by her tormentors. Her autopsy showed 150 wounds across her body, including several burns, scald marks and eroded skin. Through intimidation, her younger sister, Jenny, was occasionally forced to participate in her mistreatment. The official cause of her death was determined to be a homicide caused by a combination of subdural hematoma and shock, complicated by severe malnutrition.

Gertrude Baniszewski; her oldest daughter, Paula; her son, John; and two neighborhood youths, Coy Hubbard and Richard Hobbs, were all tried and convicted in May 1966 of neglecting, torturing, and murdering Likens. At the defendants’ trial, Deputy Prosecutor Leroy New described the case as “the most diabolical case to ever come before a court or jury” and Gertrude’s defense attorney, William C. Erbecker, described Likens as having been subjected to acts of “degradation that you wouldn’t commit on a dog” before her death.

The torture and murder of Sylvia Likens is widely regarded as one of the worst crimes in Indiana history and has been described by a senior investigator in the Indianapolis Police Department as the “most sadistic” case he had ever investigated in the 35 years he served with the Indianapolis Police.

Image credits: primevideo.com

#27 2012 American Crime Drama Thriller Television Film “Blue Eyed Butcher”

The film is based on the 2003 stabbing death of Jeff Wright by the hands of his wife, Susan Wright, but focuses on Kelly Siegler, the case’s prosecutor.

Susan Lucille Wright (born April 24, 1976) is an American convicted murderer from Houston, Texas, who made headlines in 2003 for stabbing her husband, Jeff Wright, 193 times in an act of mariticide and then burying his body in their backyard. She was convicted of murder in 2004, and was given a 20-year sentence at the Crain Unit in Gatesville, Texas. She was denied parole on June 12, 2014, and July 24, 2017. She was granted parole in July 2020 and released from prison on December 30, 2020.

Image credits: tv.apple.com

#28 2016 Documentary “Amanda Knox”

Amanda Marie Knox is an American author, activist, and journalist. She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy after her wrongful conviction in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student, with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. In 2024, an Italian appellate court upheld Amanda Knox’s slander conviction for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Meredith Kercher.

Knox, aged 20 at the time of the murder, called the police after returning to her and Kercher’s apartment after a night spent with her boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, and finding Kercher’s bedroom door locked and blood in the bathroom. During the police interrogations that followed, the conduct of which is a matter of dispute, Knox allegedly implicated herself and her employer, Patrick Lumumba, in the murder.

Initially, Knox, Sollecito, and Lumumba were all arrested for Kercher’s murder, but Lumumba was soon released because he had a strong alibi. A known burglar, Rudy Guede, was soon arrested, after his bloody fingerprints were found on Kercher’s possessions. He was convicted of murder in a fast-track trial and was sentenced to 30 years’ imprisonment, later reduced to 16 years. In December 2020, an Italian court ruled that Guede could complete his term by doing community service.

In their initial trial, in 2009, Knox and Sollecito were convicted and sentenced to 26 and 25 years in prison, respectively. Pre-trial publicity in Italian media, which was repeated by other media worldwide, portrayed Knox in a negative light, leading to complaints that the prosecution was using character assassination. A guilty verdict at Knox’s initial trial and her 26-year sentence caused international controversy, because American forensic experts thought evidence at the crime scene was incompatible with her involvement. A prolonged legal process, including a successful prosecution appeal against her acquittal at a second-level trial, continued after Knox was freed in 2011.

On March 27, 2015, Italy’s highest court definitively exonerated Knox and Sollecito. However, Knox’s conviction for committing defamation against Lumumba was upheld by all courts. On January 14, 2016, Knox was acquitted of defamation for saying she had been struck by policewomen during the interrogation.

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#29 2022 Documentary “Capturing The Killer Nurse”

Charles Edmund Cullen is an American serial killer. While working as a nurse, Cullen murdered dozens -possibly hundreds – of patients during a 16-year career spanning several New Jersey and Pennsylvania medical centers until being arrested in 2003.

He confessed to committing as many as 40 murders at least 29 of which have been confirmed, though interviews with police, psychiatrists and journalists suggest he committed many more.

Researchers who are intimately involved in the case believe Cullen may have murdered as many as 400 people. However, most murders cannot be confirmed due to lack of records.

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#30 2017 Documentary “Abducted In Plain Sight”

Jan Broberg Felt is an American actress, singer, dancer, and kidnapping survivor. Broberg was kidnapped when she was twelve, and again when she was fourteen, both times by Robert Berchtold, a friend of the family, who had sexual encounters with both parents. 

On October 30, 2003, she and her mother Mary Ann published a book titled Stolen Innocence: The Jan Broberg Story which completely omitted her father’s sexual involvement with the perpetrator. Broberg’s story was the feature of the true crime documentary Abducted in Plain Sight. Filmed and produced over a three-year period, it was released in January 2019. Robert Berchtold committed suicide in 2005 following news that another prosecution for his crimes was imminent.

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#31 2017 Documentary “The Keepers”

Catherine Anne Cesnik (born November 17, 1942; disappeared November 7, 1969) was a Roman Catholic religious sister and a teacher at Archbishop Keough High School in Baltimore, Maryland, United States.

On November 7, 1969, she left the apartment she shared with Helen Russell Phillips at the Carriage House Apartments, at 131 North Bend Road in Catonsville, en route to the Edmondson Village Shopping Center to purchase a gift for her sister’s engagement at Hecht’s jewelry store. She cashed a paycheck at First National Bank in Catonsville that night. She may have made a purchase at Muhly’s Bakery in Edmondson Village, since a box of buns from that bakery was found in the front seat of her car.

At 4:40 AM the next morning, Russell’s friends, Father Peter McKeon and Father Gerard J. Koob; both Catholic priests, found Cesnik’s car, in muddy condition, and illegally parked across from her apartment complex. Residents at the apartment complex noticed Cesnik in her car that night at approximately 8:30 PM, and others spotted her car illegally parked across the street about two hours later.

Immediately after Cesnik’s disappearance, police searched the area for her body without success. On January 3, 1970, her body was found by a hunter and his son in an informal landfill located on the 2100 block of Monumental Road, in a remote area of Lansdowne. The cause of death was determined to be blunt force trauma to the head.

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#32 2023 Documentary “A Life Too Short: The Isabella Nardoni Case”

The murder of Isabella de Oliveira Nardoni was one of the most infamous filicide cases in Brazil. On the night of 29 March 2008, the five-year-old girl Isabella died from severe injuries after being thrown out of the sixth floor of the building where her father Alexandre Alves Nardoni, stepmother Anna Carolina Trotta Peixoto Jatobá, and newborn half-siblings lived in North São Paulo. Investigations concluded that the girl had been physically abused by her father and stepmother and both were convicted for intentional homicide.

Brazilian media has closely followed the case, offering continuous updates. A survey suggested that more than 98% of Brazilians are aware of her death – the highest percentage in the history of Brazilian media coverage research.

After a five-day-long trial, in the early hours of 27 March 2010, Alexandre Nardoni was sentenced to 31 years, 1 month and 10 days of imprisonment; Anna Carolina Jatobá, to 26 years and 8 months for Isabella’s death. Outside the forum, people celebrated their sentence with fireworks.

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#33 2022 Documentary Movie “My Daughter’s Killer”

The Kalinka Bamberski case has spanned 30 years and has caused considerable publicity because of the issues of French-German relations and vigilante justice it raised. Kalinka Bamberski, a French teenager, was killed in 1982 in the house of her German stepfather, Dieter Krombach, a serial rapist and former physician. Suspicious autopsy results caused the girl’s French father André Bamberski to pressure German authorities into investigating Krombach’s involvement in the death.

When Germany closed the case and denied extradition to France, Krombach was tried in absentia in France and convicted of involuntary manslaughter in 1995, a verdict later overturned by the European Court of Human Rights on procedural grounds. In 2009, Bamberski had Krombach abducted in Germany and driven to France. Krombach stood trial there, was convicted in 2011 of having caused intentional bodily harm resulting in unintentional death, and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. The European Court of Human Rights upheld the verdict on appeal in 2018. A French court gave Bamberski a one-year suspended sentence for the abduction.

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#34 2003 Documentary Movie “Monster”

Aileen Carol Wuornos (February 29, 1956 – October 9, 2002) was an American serial killer. In 1989–1990, while engaging in street prostitution along highways in Florida, she shot dead and robbed seven of her male clients. Wuornos claimed that her clients had either raped or attempted to rape her, and that the homicides of the men were committed in self-defense.

Wuornos was sentenced to death for six of the murders. She was executed on October 9, 2002, by lethal injection after spending more than 10 years on Florida’s death row.

By the age of 11, Wuornos began engaging in sexual activities in school in exchange for cigarettes, drugs, and food. She had also engaged in sexual activities with her brother. Wuornos said that her alcoholic grandfather had sexually assaulted and beaten her when she was a child. Before beating her, he would force her to strip out of her clothes. In 1970, at age 14, she became pregnant after being raped by a family friend.

Image credits: tv.apple.com

#35 2007 Documentary Movie “Zodiac”

The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969. The case has been described as “arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history.”

He attacked three young couples and a lone male cab driver. Two of these victims survived. The Zodiac coined his name in a series of taunting messages that he mailed to regional newspapers, in which he threatened killing sprees and bombings if they were not printed. He also said that he was collecting his victims as slaves for the afterlife.

In 1974, the Zodiac claimed 37 victims in his last confirmed letter.

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#36 2016 Three-Part Biographical Crime Drama “Rillington Place”

Movie is about the real life case of serial killer John Christie, and the subsequent wrongful execution of Timothy Evans.

John Reginald Halliday Christie (8 April 1899 – 15 July 1953) was an English serial killer and serial rapist active during the 1940s and early 1950s. He murdered at least eight people—including his wife Ethel—by strangling them inside his flat at 10 Rillington Place, Notting Hill, London. The bodies of three of his victims were found in a wallpaper-covered kitchen alcove soon after he had moved out of Rillington Place during March 1953. The remains of two more victims were discovered in the garden, and his wife’s body was found beneath the floorboards in the front room. Christie was arrested and convicted of his wife’s murder, for which he was hanged.

Two of Christie’s victims were Beryl Evans and her baby daughter Geraldine, who, along with Beryl’s husband Timothy Evans, were tenants at 10 Rillington Place during 1948–49. Evans was charged with both murders, found guilty of the murder of his daughter and hanged in 1950. Christie was a major prosecution witness; when his own crimes were discovered three years later, serious doubts were raised about the integrity of Evans’ conviction. Christie himself subsequently admitted killing Beryl, but not Geraldine; it is now generally accepted that Christie murdered both victims and that police mishandling of the original inquiry allowed Christie to escape detection, which enabled him to commit a further four murders. In 2004 the High Court acknowledged that Evans did not murder either his wife or his child.

Christie committed his murders between 1943 and 1953, usually by strangling his victims after he had rendered them unconscious with domestic gas (containing carbon monoxide); some he raped as they lay unconscious.

Image credits: primevideo.com

#37 2012 Canadian Telefilm “She Made Them Do It”

Telefilm is based on the true story of American murderer Sarah Jo Pender.

Sarah Jo Pender (born May 29, 1979) is an American woman convicted along with her former boyfriend, Richard Edward Hull, of murdering their roommates, Andrew Cataldi and Tricia Nordman, on October 24, 2000, in Indiana. She has claimed ever since that she is victim of a wrongful conviction. She came to national attention in August 2008 after she escaped from the Rockville Correctional Facility and was featured on America’s Most Wanted. She was recaptured by police in December at a house in Chicago.

Image credits: primevideo.com

#38 2011 American Crime Drama Television Film “The Craigslist Killer”

Movie follows the dark, mysterious life of murderer Philip Markoff.

Philip Markoff (February 12, 1986 – August 15, 2010) was an American medical student who was charged with the armed robbery and murder of Julissa Brisman in a Boston hotel on April 14, 2009, and two other armed robberies. Markoff maintained his innocence of all charges and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment. A grand jury indicted Markoff for first-degree murder, armed robbery, and other charges. On August 15, 2010, Markoff died by suicide in Boston’s Nashua Street Jail, where he was awaiting trial. Markoff was one of several criminals described by media outlets as the “Craigslist Killer”, because the killer was alleged to have met his victims through ads placed on the internet site Craigslist. Two of Markoff’s victims were offering erotic services on Craigslist.

Image credits: netflix.com

#39 2024 Documentary “American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders”

Joseph Daniel Casolaro (June 16, 1947 – August 10, 1991) was an American freelance writer who came to public attention in 1991 when he was found dead in a bathtub in room 517 of the Sheraton Hotel in Martinsburg, West Virginia, his wrists slashed 10–12 times. The medical examiner ruled the death a suicide.

His death became controversial because his notes suggested he was in Martinsburg to meet a source about a story he called “The Octopus”.

Casolaro’s family claimed that he was murdered. They state that before he left for Martinsburg he told his brother that he had been receiving harassing phone calls late at night, that some of them were threatening, and that if something were to happen to him while in Martinsburg it would not be an accident. They also cited his well-known squeamishness and fear of blood tests, and stated they found it incomprehensible that if he were going to kill himself, he would do so by cutting his wrists a dozen times.

A number of law-enforcement officials also argued that his death deserved further scrutiny, and his notes were passed by his family to ABC News and Time magazine, both of which investigated the case, but no evidence of murder was ever found.

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#40 2023 Documentary Movie “The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker”

Caleb Lawrence McGillvary (born September 3, 1988), also known as Kai, is a Canadian man who first became known from the internet viral video “Kai the Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker”, which featured him recounting a crime he witnessed while hitchhiking. McGillvary subsequently received national attention in the press. In 2019, McGillvary was convicted of first-degree murder in New Jersey. He cited the fallout from the video as part of his defense against the homicide charge.

McGillvary was arrested on murder charges on May 16, 2013, for the death of New Jersey attorney Joseph Galfy. According to McGillvary, Galfy offered McGillvary a place to stay for the night, only to drug and rape him. Police said the sexual encounter was consensual and the murder premeditated. McGillvary contended that he acted in self defense, and after the viral video in California, he had no need to have sex with men like Galfy, whom McGillvary described as unattractive, stating, “Do you know how many hot chicks – never mind. Even if I was gay, do you know how many hot guys wanted to fuck me after that shit in California? I’m not even being vain. It’s just a fact, like – no offense, but he [Galfy] was not a looker”. In July 2013, McGillvary was hospitalized after suffering from self-inflicted wounds while awaiting trial at Union County Jail in New Jersey.

A jury found him guilty of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to 57 years in prison. He is to serve 85 percent of that term (roughly 43.5 years, after accounting for the five years of pre-trial confinement, or until approximately October 1, 2062) before the possibility of parole, with the judge telling McGillvary, “when you become eligible for parole, you will still be younger than Mr. Galfy was when you murdered him”. This is not factually accurate, as McGillvary will be 74 before he is eligible for parole. Galfy was 73 at the time of his death.

Image credits: netflix.com

#41 2023 Documentary Movie “The Manson Murders”

The Manson Family was a commune, gang, and cult led by criminal Charles Manson that was active in California in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The group at its peak consisted of approximately 100 followers, who lived an unconventional lifestyle, frequently using psychoactive drugs.

Most were young women from middle-class backgrounds, many of whom were attracted by hippie counterculture and communal living, and then radicalized by Manson’s teachings. The group murdered at least 9 people, though they may have killed as many as 24.

In 1969, Manson Family members Susan Atkins, Tex Watson, and Patricia Krenwinkel entered the home of Hollywood actress Sharon Tate and murdered her and four others.

The following night, members of the Family murdered supermarket executive Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary at their home in Los Angeles. Members also committed a number of assaults, petty crimes, theft and street vandalism, including an assassination attempt on U.S. President Gerald Ford in 1975 by Manson Family member Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme.

Image credits: primevideo.com

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