true crime podcasts – A Podcast Club

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

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.

documentary thriller

Atlanta Monster

By corbett on Sunday, June 2, 2019

👎🏻👎🏼👎🏽👎🏾 If you have kids you probably don’t want to listen to a podcast about a serial killer who preys on children. Payne Lindsey’s sporadic storytelling is hard to follow especially in audio format. Ever since Up and Vanished this group has found his true crime investigation unorganized and hard to follow. #podcast #paynelindsey #atlantamonsterpodcast

About: This true crime podcast tells the story of one of the city’s darkest secrets, The Atlanta Child Murders. Nearly 40 years after these horrific crimes, many questions still remain. This podcast aims to find truth and provide closure, reexamining the disappearance and murder of over 25 African American children and young adults.

From:Tenderfoot TV and HowStuffWorks
Genre: True Crime (cold case resurrection)
Starring: Host Payne Lindsey