Best of 2023: Hidden True Crime Gems
What was the most unfairly overlooked true crime property of the past year?
the true crime that's worth your time
With only a few days left in 2023, we’re rounding out our end-of-year coverage with some stuff that you might not have heard of. Our esteemed panel is taking today to cast a light on properties from this year that deserved a little more chatter or time in the spotlight. We’re sure there are some true crime highlights you feel like more people should know about, too, so please do share. — EB
In Light of All Darkness: Inside the Polly Klaas Kidnapping and the Search for America’s Child by Kim Cross is a really well-researched examination of a case a lot of us probably remember well. The book is quite strong and should have gotten more attention. — Best Evidence contributor Susan Howard
In books, Anansi's Gold by Yepoka Yeebo should have had more attention (I'll also cop to some fault: I was asked to do an event with the author, but the timing wasn't good, coming so soon after I finished the first round of promotion for Evidence of Things Seen, and then I read it and was duly blown away by the story and Yeebo's reporting).
And I am still thinking about Mark O'Connell's A Thread of Violence, too -- I need to reread it, because my first reading was deeply complicated by the similarities of its subject, Malcolm McArthur, to Edgar Smith, and now that more time has passed I can evaluate it with greater care.
In documentaries, Never Let Him Go, which is still streaming on Hulu, it pairs very well with Last Call, though the focus is on a murder in Australia and the dogged (and successful) efforts by the victim's brother to get justice. — Author Sarah Weinman, aka The Crime Lady
I don't really have one for this! I did think Burnham's By Hands Now Known, released in September of 2022, should have gotten more traction, but I can't think of anything from 2023. Louder Than A Riot shouldn't have gotten cancelled but that's a different conversation. — Best Evidence co-author Sarah D. Bunting
This might be a cheat answer, but I don’t think Jury Duty got nearly enough love. — True Crime Fiction author Tracy Bealer
I had quibbles with Tina Satter's film adaptation of her play Reality but I do think it deserved to kick up more conversation. Peter Morgan's play Patriots about oligarch Boris Berezovsky should have been as widely seen as his daft Ghost Diana in The Crown. — Margaret Howie is a marketing drone by day, co-founder of spacefruitpress.com by night.
It’s weird to name Depp v. Heard — a series about two incredibly famous people and their incredibly famous trial — as answer to this question, but I’m going with it. When it was first released in the UK, people were confused that the property didn’t take a definitive stand (preferably, theirs) on who was right (or truthful) and who was wrong in the high-profile defamation suit.
But that wasn’t the point of the property, as director Emma Cooper explained to me when I spoke to her for its Netflix release. But despite my able best (I mean, this headline is pretty fucking plain) I still feel like people didn’t understand what an interesting and meta bit of social/internet commentary this show was. In my opinion, the famous faces are a trojan horse into a greater conversation about how social media discussion of crimes and cases is shaping our perceptions far faster and more indelibly than broadcast/print coverage ever could, which is something worth scrutinizing even more. But I think a lot of folks who would have been deeply engaged by that conversation shied away from Depp v. Heard due to an understandable distaste with the case, and that’s really too bad. — Best Evidence co-author Eve Batey
For a hidden gem, I can't go past True Crime Story: Look Into My Eyes on AMC and Prime. It was directed by Brent Hodge, who directed Pharma Bro about Martin Shkreli, and Viagra: The Little Blue Pill That Changed The World, about … Viagra.
To the crime: In 2007, George Kenney, principal of North Port High School in Sarasota Florida, took a 5 day hypnotism course. He began using hypnosis on groups of students, then began one-on-one private sessions. He said this was to help with anxiety, exam stress and sporting prowess. In 2010 three students who he had given private sessions to died. Marcus Freeman died in a car accident, and Wesley McKinley and Brittany Palumo completed suicide. After investigation by a Florida Department of Health Unlicensed Activity Investigator, Kenney was charged with, and pleaded no contest to, two counts of the misdemeanor under the Florida Hypnosis Law - of practicing hypnosis for therapeutic purposes without being a “qualified person.” This is an unusual case, with plenty of contemporaneous footage. There are interviews with ride-or-die supporters of Kenney, and those to whom he is the devil incarnate. Definitely worth your time. Honorable mention to The Greatest Show Never Made on Prime, created by Liam Coutts, and Emily and Tom Dalton. — writer and Crime Seen co-host Sarah Carradine
Thursday on Best Evidence: The year’s Worsts (aka my secret favorite question).
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