The most anticipated true crime properties of 2025
the true crime that's worth your time
We're looking to the future for today's installment in Best Evidence’s Year in Review. (If you're just catching up, here are our lists of the best vintage properties we discovered this year, and the best documentaries, longreads, podcasts, books, and dramatic adaptations for 2024.) After all, we need something to look forward to in 2025, right?
There are a lot of true crime projects in the pipeline for next year, so today we asked our esteemed panel about which they were looking forward to the most. Elon Green had better get ready, as everyone is very excited for his coming book!
But what about you? We'd love to hear your most-anticipated picks, as well, as we're sure you have some on your radar that our frazzled, end-of-year brains missed. See you in the comments.
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Elon Green's The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart's New York. I've been eagerly anticipating Green's next project — no one writes better about late 20th century New York City crime and culture. — Susan Howard, Best Evidence contributor (Instagram: @veronicamers)
I am hoping Shiori Itō's documentary Black Box Diaries gets a wide release, although it's probably going to be an enraging watch. — Margaret Howie, co-founder of Space Fruit Press
I read Elon Green's THE MAN NOBODY KILLED early on but it is really astounding on multiple levels. The new Kate Summerscale is excellent and a return to form. Claire Hoffman's SISTER, SINNER, on Aimee Semple McPherson, is also super readable and fascinating. WHACK JOB by Rachel McCarthy James is the breezy cultural history of axe murder you didn't know you were looking for but need in your life. And of books I haven't yet read (though am about to) Hallie Rubenhold's STORY OF A MURDER, on the women at the center of the Crippen case, is the one I'm most looking forward to.— Sarah Weinman, author & editor
I'm looking forward to two dramatic adaptations. First, a scripted Murdaugh murders series on Hulu from Michael D. Fuller and Erin Lee Carr that reportedly stars Jason Clarke, and a Paramount+ JonBenét Ramsey series starring Melissa McCarthy and Clive Owen (seriously) as her parents. I've never been a big fictional adaptation fan, but over the years, I've watched how much fun Sarah has writing about them. I suspect that in 2025, I'll really need some opportunities for fun, so I'm getting on the drama train today. — Eve Batey, Best Evidence co-editor, journalist, and sighthound person.
Elon Green's The Man Nobody Killed; The Order (starring Jude Law, directed by Justin Kurzel (Snowtown; that Kelly-gang joint); it may turn up on a U.S. streamer by year's end, though) — Sarah D. Bunting, co-EIC of B.E., proprietrix of Exhibit B. Books
SCAMANDA, the docu-series based on Apple's most shared podcast of 2023, was bumped from this year til January 30th 2025. It digs into the scheming Amanda Riley, who claimed to have stage 3 blood cancer to attract attention and sympathy.— Sarah Carradine, co-host of the Crime Seen podcast
I'm sure that there will be some sociologically interesting historical true crime property coming out that I'm going to love, but right now, I'm looking forward to something on the other side of the spectrum: Killer Story: The Truth Behind True Crime Television by Claire St. Amant. St. Amant is a former producer at 48 Hours and 60 Minutes, and assumably other shows with units of time in the title, promises to dish on how those shows, and other true crime TV turns the worst days of someone's life into primetime entertainment, and promises to name names. Give me that Erin Moriarty gossip! — Dan Cassino, Professor of Government and Politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University
I'm sure there are many great projects to come! One I'll definitely watch is Independent Lens's The Strike, about how incarcerated people changed California's unlimited solitary confinement, following some of the people who made that possible. — Andy Dehnart, founder of reality blurred
WHACK JOB by Rachel McCarthy James — Elon Green, author of The Man Nobody Killed: Life, Death, and Art in Michael Stewart’s New York (coming on March 11, 2025)