Yahoo Lifestyle 5 Great Netflix True Crime Documentaries To Catch Up On Over The Holidays
True crime documentaries once again dominated streaming services in 2024 — in fact, there were so many compelling series, even die-hard fans could feel overwhelmed by all the new debuts.
If you’re getting some down time over the holidays, here are five exceptional offerings from the last year that are worth catching up on. All are on Netflix, which should make them easy to find whether you’re home or traveling. The stories they tell are heart-wrenching and harrowing, so “sit back and relax” may not be quite the right turn of phrase — but you will find yourself fully engrossed in each twist and turn.
“Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter”
When Cathy Terkanian received a letter from an adoption agency in 2010, she expected good news — that the baby girl she’d placed for adoption as a 16-year-old in 1974 was finally trying to contact her.
Instead, she learned that the girl, whom she’d named Alexis, had gone missing 21 years earlier, when she was a teen herself. Even worse: Police were requesting Terkanian’s DNA in the hopes of identifying a body found near a cornfield.
However, the agency refused to share any more information about her daughter and the family who adopted her, because it had been a closed adoption.
“Into the Fire” unfolds like a murder mystery, as Terkanian becomes an amateur detective enlisting the help of online sleuths and social media in her relentless pursuit to discover what really happened to Alexis.
The body investigators found was not Alexis’, but it didn’t take long for Terkanian to find her daughter’s identity: She and her husband entered Alexis’ birthdate into a missing persons database and learned that her new name was Aundria Michelle Bowman. She was 14 when her parents, Brenda and Dennis Bowman, told authorities she had run away from home in Hamilton, Michigan.
Terkanian launched a Facebook page called “Find Aundria M. Bowman” in the hopes of finding more clues. The details she uncovered ― including studying years of Google Earth snapshots — convinced her that Dennis Bowman had killed her and buried her body in the backyard.
Terkanian’s relentless amateur detective work converged with law enforcement investigations into Dennis Bowman, which uncovered sinister details from his past — and more than one victim. By following her “mother’s instinct” and using gumshoe detective work (and some unsanctioned guerilla tactics), Terkanian found the answers she needed, but never wanted, to know about her daughter’s fate.
“American Murder: Laci Peterson”
Finally, a documentary that shines the spotlight on Laci Peterson rather than her headline-hungry killer. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was convicted in 2004 of murdering Laci and their unborn child over Christmas 2002 in Modesto, California, while he was secretly dating another woman.
Despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence that he plotted to kill his pregnant wife, including the fact that he said he went fishing in the same area where her remains later washed up, Scott Peterson has been the subject of numerous documentaries and podcasts trying to prove his innocence.
“American Murder” flips the script and focuses on Laci when she was alive, with numerous home movies showing her gregarious and sometimes goofy personality, and her constant smile. The documentary — from the iconic true crime filmmaker Skye Borgman (“Girl in the Picture,” “Abducted in Plain Sight”) — also includes heart-wrenching interviews with her family and closest friends, reminiscing about the happy times they shared together and the absence they still feel decades later with her loss.
“American Murder: Laci Peterson” dropped at almost the same time as Peacock’s “Face to Face With Scott Peterson,” an eye-rolling three-parter featuring “exclusive interviews” with the convicted killer in prison. That docuseries caters to sympathizers who acknowledge that while Scott Peterson was a first-class asshole, he was no killer. Yet much of the “new evidence” presented in “Face to Face” and recent court filings has already been debunked, discounted and rejected by the courts. While Scott Peterson continues to hog the limelight, “American Murder: Laci Peterson” is an essential reminder of who the real victims were and are in this case.
“American Nightmare”
If you’re tempted to give up on this three-part docuseries after watching the beginning, I’m telling you it would be the biggest mistake of your life. Stick with it, because everything you think you know (especially if you’re a savvy sleuth who tends to think the husband/boyfriend did it) is turned upside down. (I previously wrote about this case, but I urge you to bookmark the story to read later to avoid spoilers.)
Early in the afternoon on March 23, 2015, Aaron Quinn called 911 and said that his girlfriend, Denise Huskins, had been kidnapped. Intruders wearing scuba suits had broken into his house in the middle of the night — hours after the couple had argued about his relationship with his ex — then restrained and drugged him, and demanded ransom, he told police. Huskins’ disappearance made national headlines, and authorities launched a massive search for the missing woman — whom detectives accused Quinn of killing and hiding her body.
But two days later, Huskins turned up alive. She had survived a horrific and bizarre ordeal, but her nightmare was far from over. After Huskins and other victims’ accounts were discounted by male cops, it seems fitting that the detective who finally cracks this case is a woman.
“Lover, Stalker, Killer”
If you aren’t familiar with this case — about Omaha auto mechanic Dave Kroupa’s foray into casual online dating, which ends in an ugly, terrifying love triangle — get ready to buckle your seatbelts because there are some WILD twists and turns in this taut 90-minute documentary that you won’t see coming.
And even if you do know how the story unfolds, you’ll still be transfixed by new interviews with the surviving victim and investigators, as well as home movies and footage of the trial and police interviews. It’s about the same length as a “Dateline” episode and has a similar structure, but its budget and production value are much higher (and doesn’t include the newsmagazine’s standard B-roll filler of people walking down a sidewalk — although there are some silly reenactments).
Kroupa received hundreds of thousands of texts and emails — more even than those reportedly sent to the real-life “Baby Reindeer” — before the story’s deadly ending.
I’ll also spare you a trip to Does the Dog Die? and confirm that yes, several pets are killed — offscreen — but you’ll never guess by who.
“The Menendez Brothers”
When the two-hour “The Menendez Brothers” documentary dropped on Netflix on the heels of Ryan Murphy’s lurid “Monsters: The Lyle and Erick Menendez Story” docudrama, I expected it to be a slapped-together production, capitalizing on the docudrama’s massive success and a social media phenomenon calling for the brothers to be released from prison.
In truth, it was the opposite. The documentary is one of the finest I’ve seen about the 1989 murders of Jose and Kitty Menendez in their Beverly Hills mansion, and situates the case in the context of Lyle and Erik Menendez’s alleged abuse by their father. Former Los Angeles District Attorney George Garcón said at a news conference that this documentary — and another by Peacock 18 months prior in which Roy Roselló, a member of the boy band Menudo, said that he had been drugged and raped as a teen by then-record executive Jose Menendez — factored in his decision to call for the brothers’ resentencing and release.
“The Menéndez Brothers” features extensive interviews with the brothers and their relatives, many of whom are actively campaigning for their release from prison. Archival footage of the first trial and the frenzy surrounding O.J. Simpson’s not guilty verdict also provide important context for the brothers’ eventual convictions.
Garcón was recently voted out of office, and a judge has put the brakes on the case as his successor gets up to speed, rescheduling a hearing until after the new year.
Regardless, the documentary stands as an important framework to understand the complex aspects of this case and how it’s impacted by the modern understanding of sexual abuse and its effects.
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