Documentaries of all subjects are usually interesting to watch. But there’s something about true crime documentaries that is even more compelling.
Is it the fact that these are crimes that happen to real people? Or is it knowing that something similar could happen to you or someone you know?
Either way, it’s hard to take our eyes off true crime documentaries, but some are more memorable. Several of these harrowing documentaries are on Netflix and worth watching. If you want a program that will leave you thinking long after it’s done, Netflix has exactly what you’re looking for.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) made headlines when its leader, Warren Jeffs, arranged illegal marriages between children and adults. Jeffs was on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list after becoming a fugitive from justice for several months before he was caught and convicted.
Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey is told from the perspective of former FLDS members who escaped the cult. It begins with the leadership of Rulon Jeffs, Warren’s father, and details the strict rules governing the polygamous sect, especially for women, who the senior Jeffs told always to keep sweet, pray, and obey. Elements of the docuseries are hard to watch, but the story is too important to turn away from.
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal
The Murdaughs were an esteemed Southern family whose lineage went back generations. Alex Murdaugh was a successful attorney in a happy marriage to Maggie with young adult sons Buster and Paul. On the outside, the Murdaughs seemed to have it all, but deadly family secrets were just beneath the surface, threatening to ruin their standing in the community.
The docuseries starts with the death of Mallory Beach, who was killed in a boat crash caused by Paul. It continues with the events leading up to the slayings of Paul and Maggie, and two suspicious deaths of people in the Murdaugh circle. It’s a story that will leave you horrified at the thought of how so many deaths could occur around one family and how one man could commit the ultimate betrayal.
American Nightmare
In March 2015, Denise Huskins and her boyfriend Aaron Quinn were sound asleep in their Vallejo, California home when they were awoken by what they believed was more than one masked intruder. The pair were bound, blindfolded, and drugged before Denise was kidnapped and went missing for two days before she turned up, apparently unharmed.
The Vallejo police and FBI agents investigating the case didn’t believe the couple’s account of what happened, despite their insistence that the attack took place. It took the efforts of a police officer from another jurisdiction who was investigating a similar home invasion attack. The resolution of this case will leave you stunned and angry at the failures of law enforcement.
Sins of Our Mother
Mothers are supposed to be fierce protectors of their children. What happens when mom falls under the sway of a cult? In the case of Lori Vallow Daybell, she kills two of her children. She and her husband Chad Daybell are also implicated in the deaths of her estranged husband Charles Vallow, and his previous wife, Tammy Daybell.
Vallow Daybell’s surviving son, Colby, provides much of the bizarre and tragic backstory of how she went from being a devoted wife and mother to someone he barely recognized. It’s a sad and disturbing peek into the mind and life of a woman who was coming unglued in every facet of their life, and how it led her to commit the most horrific of crimes.
I Am Vanessa Guillen
Vanessa Guillén grew up wanting to be in the United States military. The young woman enlisted in the Army and was stationed at Fort Hood (now Fort Cavazos) army base in Texas. In 2020, Guillén confided to her mother that she had experienced harassment at the army base. Soon after, she went missing.
She was eventually found dead. A subsequent investigation found she had been killed by another soldier. Her murder galvanized her family to call for sweeping reforms in how harassment and assault cases are handled and how survivors are treated. Viewers can see how Vanessa Guillén’s case became a global cause, and how her surviving family wouldn’t let her death be in vain.
American Murder: The Family Next Door
Judging by her online posts, Shanann and Chris Watts had the ideal family life. They already had two daughters, Bella and Celeste, and were expecting their third child, a boy to be named Nico. Shanann was a prolific social media user and documented many elements of her family life on Facebook.
Despite their appearance as an all-American family, there was friction between the husband and wife, with Shanann suspecting Chris was having a relationship with someone else. His extramarital affair didn’t come to light until his wife and daughters disappeared. The awful details unfolded using social media posts, texts, and actual police recordings.
Night Stalker: The Hunt For a Serial Killer
In 1984 and 1985, the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas were terrorized by an unknown predator who sad*stically assaulted and killed more than a dozen people. He was so terrifying, he had people afraid to sleep at night since that was when he committed the majority of his crimes.
It’s hard to overestimate the fear Richard Ramirez struck in the hearts of community members, who didn’t feel safe in their homes. Law enforcement feared for potential victims unless they caught the elusive killer soon. The detectives assigned to solve the horrific murders describe in detail how they were finally able to track Ramirez down and bring him to justice.
Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel
When the Cecil Hotel first opened in the1920s, it was a luxury venue in downtown Los Angeles. In subsequent decades, its prestigious status went downhill, and became a Skid Row hotel. Over the years, the hotel became known for the number of grisly deaths occurring on the premises. Serial killer Richard Ramirez even lived at the Cecil Hotel during some of his rampage.
While part of the hotel remained open for low-income housing, the rest was refurbished and rebranded as an extended-stay hotel. The pattern of bizarre happenings there continued with the disappearance of Elisa Lam, a college student from Canada. The mystery behind her vanishing only deepened when she was found. It’s a whodunit in which no one is sure of the facts.
Missing: The Lucie Blackman Case
In Japan, young Western women can earn considerable amounts of money working as hostesses in bars and nightclubs. Being a Japanese hostess isn’t like being a restaurant hostess in the U.S. Hostesses in Japan offer rich men a platonic, date-like experience by sitting and talking with them while serving drinks.
Lucie Blackman, a British expat living in Tokyo, was a former flight attendant who worked at Casablanca hostess bar to earn money. In 2000, Lucie went missing after one of her hostess dates. Her family’s frantic search to find her and the shocking discoveries made along the way made Lucie’s disappearance more than a garden-variety case of someone who ran away.
Capturing the Killer Nurse
When people check themselves or loved ones into a hospital for treatment or a nursing home for long-term care, they expect the medical staff to treat them with dignity and respect, and uphold their duty of care. Nurse Charles Cullen and the institutions that employed him failed miserably in that regard.
In most places where Cullen worked as a nurse, patients suddenly died. Many were old and in poor health, making it easy to categorize the deaths as due to natural causes, even though there were reasons to suspect foul play. Some of Cullen’s former coworkers and investigators recount their experiences in the film, leaving the question of why he was allowed to prey on defenseless people for so long.
The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker
Kai the hatchet-wielding hitchhiker quickly rose to fame when he intervened in an assault that was being committed by the man who had given him a ride. Kai hit the assailant on the head with a hatchet he carried with him, and his description to the reporters about how he stopped the attack became a media and internet sensation.
Kai, who was homeless, capitalized on his newfound fame by making the rounds on television talk shows. There was another side to Kai that the public didn’t see. People around him soon began to fear Kai, and their concerns proved valid. Kai’s rapid rise and fall were seen by those around him and recalled in this film.
Athlete A
USA Gymnastics has presented the U.S. and the world with some of the greatest American gymnasts, including Simone Biles and Kerri Strug. Behind the gold medals and other awards was the upper echelon of the organization that refused to act when members of their staff were abusing the gymnasts.
When a newspaper published a story about the organization covering up for abusive coaches, the whole story came to light. There are distressing accounts of abuse, but the real heroes of this documentary, the brave survivors who told of the horrors they were subjected to, and the journalists who uncovered the truth, are front and center.
Why Did You Kill Me
When an innocent young woman is gunned down for being at the wrong place at the wrong time, the police have a difficult time finding cooperating witnesses. Her family, dissatisfied with the lack of progress in identifying the killers, take matters into their own hands to seek justice for their slain loved one.
Amazingly, all it took was a fake MySpace profile set up and run by a young, tech-savvy family member, to find those responsible. The plan spirals out of control when another relative wants to deliver vigilante justice on the perpetrators. Reenactments of online chat messages are included with interviews of the involved parties who narrate the events.
FYRE: The Greatest Party That Never Happened
The FYRE music festival was supposed to be the Caribbean equivalent of Coachella and Burning Man, attended by some of the most beautiful people in the world wearing bathing suits. A-list celebrities and top models appeared in social media promotions, promising it would be an epic, can’t-miss event for the ages.
FYRE ended up being a massive fraud perpetrated on ticket holders and vendors. There were issues with nearly everything from the musical acts to the housing accommodations. This revealing documentary shows the planning of FYRE, all of the problems that occurred leading up to the festival, the huge mess it created, and its disastrous conclusion.
Our Father
An Indiana fertility doctor was the miracle worker couples needed to have children when they had trouble conceiving on their own, or so they thought. When the results of a home DNA kit come back with baffling results, a woman goes on a quest to find out the truth about her family heritage.
Her investigation uncovered a fact about her birth that would have a ripple effect that devastated numerous families but left more questions unanswered than answered. Will anyone ever get to the bottom of what happened and why? Was there a connection to a mysterious group with specific beliefs about reproduction, or was it just one man’s ego?
