true crime – A Podcast Club

Unfinished: Deep South

By corbett on Monday, November 16, 2020

Unfinished: Deep South | 👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿 Given the current circumstances surrounding racial injustice in America, the release of season one was very timely. Over the course of 10 episodes, the journalists’ investigation leads down several rabbit holes. We were given a glimpse into the normalized practice of racial lynching in the segregated South and its devastating repercussions for generations of Black families and communities. Even 75 years later, we witness how people are still resistant to recognize or admit the racist history and practices of their community leaders, friends, and family. The ending was very thoughtful and inspiring, giving us as listeners an opportunity to look inward at what can be done to help change the narrative of what it means to be Black in America. Although this podcast is left unfinished it does not leave you without answers and we recommend giving it a listen.

@witnessdocs #witnessdocs #documentarypodcast #unfinisheddeepsouth #isadorebanks #truecrime #stitcher #stitcherpodcast

About the show | At the dawn of the Civil Rights era, a wealthy African American farmer and veteran named Isadore Banks was lynched on the Arkansas Delta. More than 60 years later, two journalists join members of the Banks family on a quest to find out who killed Isadore and restore his legacy. What they find will shake a small Southern town from its silence, explore the story of African American prosperity on the Delta, and trace the roots of racial terror from Isadore’s day up through our own.

.✒️Review by: @itsacherrylife 📷Photo by: @ohcando

documentary true crime

The Thing About Pam

By corbett on Sunday, January 5, 2020

👍🏻👍🏽👍🏾👍🏿Dateline’s podcast format is just as engaging, if not more, than the TV version. Longtime Dateline host, Keith Morrison, takes us on an intriguing true crime journey with twists and turns that even the best fiction writers could not script. Dateline, the original true crime gurus, investigates the murder of Betsy Faria during Christmas of 2011 and the diabolical schemes of Pam Hupp, that left us on the edge of our car seats. The podcast is short – only six episodes – and each episode fills a standard 30 minute commute. Our club found the podcast compelling and gave us a lot to discuss. Unlike other true crime podcasts we listened to which left us feeling unresolved, this one was wrapped up with a nice bow at the end, a perfect precursor to Christmas! We all agreed that this podcast would rank high on a list of all the true crime podcasts we have listened to this year. We highly recommend this podcast for it’s engaging story telling (Keith’s voice and intonations are killer, no pun intended), stranger than fiction storyline, and satisfying resolution at the end…no spoilers of course. @datelinenbc #apodcastclub #truecrime #thethingaboutpam #datelinepodcast

About the show | Two days after Christmas, 2011, Russ Faria came home from game night to find his wife, Betsy, dead. He was soon charged and convicted of her murder. But Russ Faria insisted he did not kill his wife. Betsy’s brutal murder set off a chain of events that would leave one mandead, another man implicated, and expose a diabolical scheme.

✒️Review by: @odhuie 📷Photo by: @odhuie photo

documentary news true crime

The Killing of Marilyn Monroe

By corbett on Tuesday, December 3, 2019

👎🏻👎🏽👎🏾 👍🏿“This podcast is like a 15 page paper that could have really taken up 2 pages” – a direct quote from our @marcopolo discussion. Needless to say, this story of Marilyn Monroe’s life and death was tragically drawn out. Spread over twelve 25-minute episodes, with the same sound bites recycled throughout, this storytelling was deathly repetitive to say the least. Our lone thumbs up is from a place of appreciation that the podcast served as a reminder of the mysterious demise of this American icon, allowing a whole new generation of people to question if Marilyn indeed committed suicide. This podcast may better seduce its listeners by diving deeper into the intel people thought Marilyn knew, as it seems the consensus she knew far more than she should have. We labored through to the end and suggest if you want to give it a listen to save some time and listen to the first couple of episodes and the last few, and you’ll get the gist. @marilynmonroe @endeavoraudio #podcast

About the show | How did Hollywood’s brightest star become its most tragic victim? From Norma Jeane, casting couch girl desperate for success, to Marilyn Monroe, global icon, it was Marilyn’s turbulent love life that ultimately sealed her final fate. Surrounded by a deadly cocktail of pills, her death was ruled “probable suicide,” but questions remain surrounding just how – and why – she died. This 12-part audio documentary analyzes the tangle of sex, power, corruption, and lies that led the most powerful men in America to silence Marilyn Monroe for good.

Review written by @ohcando photo by @pirate_ali_vega

documentary true crime

Over My Dead Body

By corbett on Friday, August 2, 2019

There’s no question that @wonderymedia produces a great podcast. The overall experience of listening to not only Over My Dead Body, but other shows in the Wondery arsenal, is captivating because of the simple sound cues that help listeners really picture the story in their head. It’s almost a step ahead of watching a tv show, because the sounds and narration really help you use your imagination to picture the story in a way other podcasts just don’t. While the production value was strong, the resolve was lacking in the end. We can’t expect all stories to have a clear-cut ending, and this one certainly did not have that, nor did it leave us wanting more. As a group, we love to put in our early guesses of “whodunit” before the story really develops, and this one was difficult to do that since the story line didn’t quite follow that format. It’s worth a listen, but for the type of discussion and debate that our group enjoys when listening to a podcast, this one fell short.
@wonderymedia #truecrime #podcast

About: Dan and Wendi are two good-looking attorneys whose wedding is featured in the New York Times. But when this “perfect” couple falls apart, it leads to a bad breakup, a worse divorce, and a murder case involving a menagerie of high-priced lawyers and unexpected co-conspirators. “Tally,” the first season of “Over My Dead Body”, is a story that says as much about love and marriage as it does about justice, revenge, and the lengths some people will go to get what they want.

From:Wondery
Genre: True Crime
Starring: The team that brought you “Dirty John” and “Dr. Death” Hosted by Matthew Shaer

true crime

Teacher’s Pet

By corbett on Sunday, July 14, 2019

👎🏻👍🏼👍🏽👍🏾 Our love for true crime stories and faux detective work brought us to The Teachers Pet. According to the podcast itself, Teacher’s Pet is famous in Australia as a real life drama that’s widely followed nationwide. The story accounts a mother gone missing after her husband, a high school teacher, begins a love affair with one of his students in the early 1980s. The podcast started off slow, peaked, then slowed again. Aside from the fact that it felt like there were a never-ending amount of episodes, the content was repetitive to say the least. Over a span of 3-4 episodes they would tell the exact same “facts” but just told by a different person. Nothing new. Although the outcome seemed to be leading up to some potential fulfillment on the overall time-investment, in the end we concluded that it was too long and too repetitive for your time. #truecrime #podcast #teacherspetpodcast #hedleythomas #hernamewaslyndawson

About: A star rugby footballer. His school girl lover. A wife who vanishes. Chris and Lyn appear to have the perfect marriage. But when Lyn goes missing, dark secrets are buried. This is no fairytale, but a sordid story of strangely close twin brothers, teenage student lovers, and probable murder. The unsolved murder of Australia’s Lyn Dawson.

From:The Australian
Genre: True Crime
Starring: Investigated and written by Hedley Thomas.

true crime

Case Closed

By corbett on Tuesday, July 2, 2019

👎🏻👍🏼👎🏽👎🏾 The group is split 50/50 in giving this one a recommendation. We feel it’s a good podcast for a group listen because it provides a lot of opportunities for guessing who the murderer might be as the episodes progress. However, we felt deceived in that it isn’t the typical true crime genre where a cold case is being investigated by a host digging up new clues from the past. Rather this podcast is exactly what the title indicates – a ‘case’ that was ‘closed’ by the authorities investigating it initially. It’s a recount of the events, the investigation and the trial that took place. The reason for throwing shade on this podcast is that the main driver of the storyline is heavily reliant on the book “Secrets of a Marine’s Wife” by Shanna Hogan. Shanna is one of the main authorities throughout the discourse so in a way listening feels like the show is somehow cheating on its Oral Book Report.
insta links: @macmillanpodcasts #truecrime #podcast

About: Case Closed is a true crime podcast about the times the bad guy didn’t get away with it. Season 1 investigates the murder of Erin Corwin, who was just 19 years old when she kissed her husband Jon goodbye at the Marine base in Twentynine Palms, California, and headed to Joshua Tree National Park to scout hiking trails. It was the last time he would ever see her alive. A true story of marriage, obsession, and murder. Learn more at bit.ly/MarinesWife

From:Macmillan
Genre: True Crime
Starring: Hosted by Charlie Spicer. Based on the book Secrets of a Marine’s Wife by New York Times bestselling author Shanna Hogan.

fiction true crime

This Sounds Serious

By corbett on Friday, May 17, 2019

👍🏻👍🏼👎🏾 This one really divided the group. Half of us really liked the quirky silliness of the whole thing. The other half half just didn’t like it all all. Take it or leave it. It was fun to guess “who done it” in this one. #thissoundsserious #podcast #comedy #truecrime #fictionaltruecrime

About: A fictional story so believable it can’t be true. Florida, 2007: A famous local weather man is found dead in his water bed. His brother calls 9-1-1 to report the murder. This sets off a shocking series of events involving cults, boy bands, horses, and mistaken identity.

From:Castbox | Kelly & Kelly Genre: True Crime Fiction Starring: Carly pope, Peter Oldring

true crime

Up & Vanished

By corbett on Sunday, March 17, 2019

This was our first ever podcast group listen and we felt a great podcast to start on. We discussed everything from the story, the host’s style, the length of each episode, whether or not they would catch the killer, all the way to the advertising we were served and what app we were all using to listen (overcast, apple podcast, stitcher). In the end we decided that we did not like Payne Lindsey’s first attempt at audio story telling. His scattered approach to laying out the case was meandering and confusing. @upandvanished, #JusticeForTara, #podcast #truecrime
.
About the show | In Season 1, Payne tackles his first cold case story, the unsolved disappearance of Georgia high school teacher and former pageant queen, Tara Grinstead. The 11-year-old case remains the largest case file in Georgia history and is still unfolding.
.
Review written by @pirate_ali_vega photo by @pirate_ali_vega