In recent years, the true crime genre has become more popular than ever. The fascination with real criminals has stealthily crept into our pop culture, replacing romcom evenings with binge-watching marathons of series and movies about cults, homicides, and fraud. Such high demand for the genre has left directors no other choice but to continue finding true crime stories and turning them into TV shows or movies, feeding into viewers’ strange obsession.
Many of these series and films based on true crimes can be found in the list below, carefully curated by our Bored Panda team. Scroll down to find them, and make sure to upvote the ones you’re definitely adding to your next-to-watch list.
While you’re at it, don’t forget to check out a conversation with Nikki Young, the host of the Serial Napper true crime podcast, and Christy and Jackie, the hosts of the Kill*r Fun true crime podcast, who kindly agreed to talk with us more about adaptations of true crime cases.
#1
2019 Documentary TV Show “The Act”
Gypsy-Rose Alcida Blanchard (born July 27, 1991) is an American convicted of m****r. She rose to worldwide prominence when she was convicted of second-degree m****r in Springfield, Missouri, for the death of her mother Dee Dee Blanchard, who subjected her to lifelong physical, mental, and medical abuse. She was sentenced to ten years in prison.
She was paroled after eight years, near the end of December 2023. Given the sensational aspects of Gypsy’s childhood, including her mother forcing her to pretend to be disabled and terminally ill, she gained widespread media attention.
#2
2020 Documentary TV Show “The Trials Of Gabriel Fernandez”
On May 24, 2013, Gabriel Fernandez, an eight-year-old boy from Palmdale, California, who had been abused and tortured over a period of months, died due to a beating from his mother, Pearl Fernandez, and her boyfriend, Isauro Aguirre, two days earlier. Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre were charged and convicted of first-degree m****r with special circumstances of torture. According to prosecutors, Aguirre allegedly abused Gabriel due to his perceived homosexuality. Pearl was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole and Aguirre was sentenced to death.
Throughout his eight-month stay in the household of Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre, Gabriel Fernandez was systematically abused and tortured. This included regular physical beatings that broke his bones, burns from cigarettes and heated objects, shots from a BB gun, having his teeth knocked out with a bat, and the forced consumption of cat litter, cat feces, spoiled food, and his own vomit.
Beyond the physical torment, he was subjected to psychological abuse such as being forced to sleep bound and gagged in a small cabinet and made to wear girls’ clothing. Fernandez’s siblings reported that his mother and stepfather would laugh during the abuse. According to prosecutors, one of Aguirre’s motivations for this abuse was that he believed Fernandez was gay.
On May 22, 2013, Fernandez was beaten for not tidying his toys. The a*****t rendered him unresponsive, prompting Pearl to call 9-1-1. Paramedics transported Fernandez to Antelope Valley Hospital, where he was declared brain dead. He died two days later at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles. The autopsy concluded that his death resulted from blunt force trauma, aggravated by neglect and malnutrition.
#3
2024 Documentary Movie “What Jennifer Did”
On November 8, 2010, police in Markham, Ontario, Canada, a suburb outside of Toronto, responded to a report of a robbery and a*****t at the Unionville home of Hann and Bich Pan, ethnically Chinese Vietnamese immigrants. Both had been shot repeatedly; Bich died of her injuries and Hann was permanently blinded. The investigation revealed that the crime was not a robbery but instead a k**l-for-hire orchestrated by the couple’s daughter Jennifer Pan. She had expected to inherit her parents’ money and was angered that they had forbidden her to see her boyfriend after they discovered she had been deceiving them about her education.
At trial, Pan was found guilty on multiple charges and sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 25 years, the same penalty as her co-conspirators. In May 2023, the Court of Appeal for Ontario ordered a retrial for Pan and her conspirators on the first-degree m****r charge but upheld the attempted m****r conviction. It is still not clear who actually fired the shots.
What fascinates Nikki, the host of the Serial Napper podcast, the most about true crime is the human element—the motivations and behaviors of people who commit these wrongdoings.
“Many times we see how what they did directly relates back to personal traumas, circumstances, and societal pressures. Knowing the why behind the motivation might give us insight into how we can prevent future crimes,” she said.
“At the same time, I’m fascinated by the stories of the victims…how their lives were interrupted and the ripple effect it causes for their families, communities, and even law enforcement. True crime isn’t just gory violence, it’s about the ripple of loss, grief, and often, resilience that follows. Humans have the capacity for both good and evil—which I find fascinating.”
#4
2015 Documentary Movie “3096 Days”
Natascha Maria Kampusch (born 17 February 1988) is an Austrian author and former talk show host. At the age of 10, on 2 March 1998, she was abducted and held in a secret cellar by her kidnapper Wolfgang Přiklopil for more than eight years, until she escaped on 23 August 2006. Upon her escape, Přiklopil k****d himself by stepping in front of a train at a nearby station.
Dietmar Ecker, Kampusch’s media advisor, said that Přiklopil “would beat her so badly that she could hardly walk”. He would also starve her to make her physically weak and unable to escape. He also raped her. Přiklopil had warned Kampusch that the doors and windows of the house were booby-trapped with high explosives. He also claimed to be carrying a gun and that he would k**l her and the neighbours if she attempted to escape.
The 18-year-old Kampusch escaped from Přiklopil’s house on 23 August 2006. At 12:53 pm, she was cleaning and vacuuming her kidnapper’s white van in the garden when Přiklopil got a call on his mobile phone. Because of the vacuum’s loud noise, he walked away to take the call. Kampusch left the vacuum cleaner running and ran away when Přiklopil was out of sight. She ran for some 200 meters (218 yards) through neighbouring gardens and a street, jumping fences, and asking bystanders to call the police, but they paid her no attention. After about five minutes, she knocked on the window of a 71-year-old neighbour known as Inge T, saying, “I am Natascha Kampusch”. The neighbour called the police, who arrived at 1:04 pm. Later, Kampusch was taken to the police station in the town of Deutsch-Wagram.
#5
2022 Documentary Movie “American M****r: The Family Next Door”
In the early hours of August 13, 2018, in Frederick, Colorado, Christopher Lee Watts m******d his pregnant wife Shanann (34) by strangulation, and their two children Bella (4) and Celeste (3) by suffocation. He buried Shanann in a shallow grave near an oil-storage facility, and dumped his children’s bodies into crude oil tanks. Watts initially maintained his innocence in his family’s disappearance, but was arrested on August 15, after confessing in an interview with detectives to m*******g Shanann. Months later he also admitted to m*******g his children.
On November 6, 2018, Watts pleaded guilty to multiple counts of first-degree m****r as part of a plea deal when the death penalty (which was later abolished in Colorado in 2020) was removed from sentencing. He was sentenced to five life sentences without the possibility of parole, three to be served consecutively.
