The Best True Crime Podcasts

True Crime podcasts are addicting and seem to be showing up everywhere, featured in popular TV shows like Only Murders In The Building or playing out in real time with stories ripped from the daily headlines. Whether it’s murder, corruption, sexual abuse or fraud, there’s no shortage of people doing bad things. More than just guilty pleasures, true crime podcasts can reveal both the worst and the best humanity has to offer, inspiring us to speak out for truth or find redemption in helping others. Here are some of the best recent true-crime podcasts for your next listening binge.
SuspectJournalists Matt Shaer and Eric Benson examine a grisly murder at a 2008 Seattle Halloween party. The mystery of Aparna Jinaga’s death haunts everyone who attended. Crime scene DNA evidence was linked to three men, but only Emanuel Fair was convicted. He’s a black man with a prior record but had no connection to Jinaga. After serving nine years in prison maintaining his innocence, he was found not guilty of her murder and was released in 2019. This investigative podcast goes into the pros and cons of DNA evidence and how it can present racial disparities. Through extensive interviews with partygoers, forensic experts, her friends and family, they cover injustice, race and perhaps getting away with murder.
Gangster Capitalism Season 3The skeletons in the closet at Liberty University go way beyond Jerry Falwell Jr. and wife Becky Falwell’s pool-boy, real-estate fraud scandal. Shocking revelations of rape, assault, anti-LBGTQ and racism run rampant on the Virginia campus. Many students go to this school because of the “Liberty Way”. This is how they bill themselves as a safe, wholesome Christian University. Since the Gangster Capitalism podcast has been released, 12 women have filed lawsuits against Liberty. They claim the school created an environment that increased the likelihood of sexual assault and rape. You’ll hear all the shocking details, allegations and the brave women willing to tell their stories. And this just scratches the surface.
Dr. Death Season 3: Miracle ManRenowned doctor and surgeon Paolo Macchiarini appears to be a medical hero with his supposed revolutionary organ transplants. In reality his surgeries lead to horrible results, even death. Enter TV Producer Benita Alexander. When she does an NBC series on his procedures with children, she is mesmerized by his work. Alexander resists him at first, but once the project is over they fall in love. The whirlwind romance eventually leads to a marriage proposal. She soon finds out he is not at all what he seems. He makes wild promises like how the Pope was going to marry them at the Vatican and John Legend was going to perform. How she believed some of these wild lies is almost as big of a mystery. In the end her journalistic instinct helps expose the grifter and criminal he really is.