The Best New True Crime Documentaries of 2024

In 2004, after she was expelled from a Catholic boarding school, Katherine Kublar was picked up from her school by two strangers. They handcuffed her and took her to a new school in a remote location, where she arrived at 3am and was told that she couldn’t speak.

That school was Ivy Ridge. For over a year, she endured as essentially a prisoner in a program designed to psychologically break teens.

This three-part documentary details her and other student survivor stories while exposing the predatory business focused on troubled teens.

Danny Casolaro was in the middle of investigating a massive story when he was found dead in the bathtub of a motel. The medical examiner declared it a suicide.

His family was adamant he was murdered.

Over 20 years later, a journalist student stumbled on his case and quickly realized there was far more to the story than official reports indicated. For more than a decade, he picked up the pieces of Casolaro’s investigation, uncovering a web of US government conspiracies that began in the 1980s but extended as far back as the JFK assassination.

Told in four parts, The Octopus Murders is a compelling story that will leave you with more questions than answers.

Unregulated by the SEC, Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency coins that followed were seen as either the future of finance or the greatest con of the 21^st century. For a group of South Florida hustlers, it was the latter.

With a knack for smooth-talking and photoshop, Ray Trapani and two friends launched Centra Tech. Within months, the trio created a website and began promoting their alleged Visa-endorsed debit card that would allow investors to spend their crypto in real time.

The catch? The card never existed.

Following the investigation of the New York Times journalist who discovered the fraud and exposed them, Bitconned shows exactly how easy it can be to lie, cheat, and fake your way into millions of dollars.

Going viral on social media can catapult a career. No one knows that better than the group of dancers who signed with elusive management company 7m.

For two sisters, it was the start of their dreams coming true. But when they started getting pushed in strange ways, one sister realized that the company and its associated church wasn’t all that it seemed.

Only, she wasn’t just walking away from her dream. She had to leave her sister, too.

In this three-episode docuseries, former members try to rebuild their lives and heal while never giving up hope that they can save their friends and family who refuse to leave.

When Ashley Madison launched, it quickly became one of the most reviled websites on the internet. Through guerrilla marketing, they advertised to married people who wanted to have an affair.

But when the website was hacked and the CEO refused to shut the website down, millions of names, emails, addresses, credit card information, and sexual fantasies were released to the public, destroying lives and marriages.

Shockingly, the website is still active, with the current CEO reporting the company helps facilitate over a million affairs every month.

When John E. Douglas and Robert Ressler began building what would become the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI, they consulted with American researcher and Psychiatric Clinical Nurse Specialist Dr. Ann C. Wolbert Bergess.

Her expertise in crisis counseling and trauma expertise drew the agents to her work. Using her experience working with victims, she was able to shine a light on how a killer would think.

Over the course of three episodes, Dr. Burgess recounts her groundbreaking work and how it led to changing how authorities hunted violent offenders.

Throughout the 90s and early 2000s, television programming for kids saw a huge rise thanks largely to one channel: Nickelodeon. And behind that programming was Dan Schneider.

He created shows like iCarly, All That, The Amanda Show, and Drake & Josh. But behind the meteoric success was a darker story.

Quiet on the Set delves into the toxic and abusive work environment that placed child actors in the hands of predators—all in the name of ratings and profit.

On March 23, 2015, Denise Huskins and Aaron Quinn woke up to a nightmare. Forced to drug themselves, Denise was abducted while Aaron was left under surveillance so he could put together a ransom.

When Aaron went to the police, he quickly became the prime suspect. But when Denise was let go days later, authorities refused to investigate their claims, instead alleging that they faked the entire thing.

Years later, an entirely different investigation discovered evidence that forced police to reexamine everything they thought they knew about the case.

What do Elvis impersonation, black market organ trafficking, a presidential assassination attempt, and a small-town feud all have in common? That’s exactly what The Kings of Tulepo sets out to discover.

Over the course of three episodes, this docuseries follows Kevin Curtis, a former Elvis impersonator with a penchant for conspiracy theories, as he uncovers a jaw-dropping scandal in the heart of Mississippi.