The Best True Crime Documentaries and Series to Watch in 2025

Stories about scammers, murder, and political intrigue are out now and coming soon.

gabby petito looking at a game device outside of her van smiling in a still from the american murder documentary
(Image credit: Netflix)

Nowadays, you can’t blink without a brand-new true crime story premiering on your streamer of choice. The true crime boom doesn’t show any sign of slowing down in 2025, but amid the high-profile serial killer stories, audiences can look forward to learning about some lesser-known criminal cases.

Whether you prefer to learn about scammers or historical murders, true crime has something for everyone in the new year, whether they be star-studded Netflix shows or incisive new documentaries slated to play at prestigious film festivals. To prepare you for a new year of the genre, here are the best true crime documentaries and scripted series of 2025, including what’s coming soon and on the horizon. (If you’re looking for something to binge now, check out our round-up of the best true-crime docs and shows of 2024.)

'Lockerbie: A Search for Truth'

colin firth holds up a piece of paper to a window in a still from lockerbie

(Image credit: Peacock/Graeme Hunter/SKY/Carnival)

Release date: January 2

Jim Swire’s 2021 true-crime book and memoir, The Lockerbie Bombing: A Father's Search for Justice, is getting adapted for the screen (and it's sure to be a tearjerker). Colin Firth will play Swire as he sets out to discover the truth behind a bombing aboard a transatlantic flight, just over 30 minutes after takeoff, that killed his daughter and 242 other passengers, as well as 16 crew members. The December 1988 incident that took place over Lockerbie, Scotland remains the largest terrorist in U.K. history.

WATCH IT ON PEACOCK

'Sons of Ecstasy'

sammy gravano smoking a cigarette in a still from the true crime doc sons of ecstacy

(Image credit: Max)

Release date: January 9

If mob stories are your thing, you'll want to check out Sons of Ecstasy. The documentary marks the first time members of the notorious New York crime family the Gravanos are telling their side of the story about their involvement in the ecstasy drug trade at the peak of its popularity in the '90s. They'll share inside accounts of what went on and how the trade culminated into a dangerous rivalry between them and Shaun Attwood, an English stockbroker, another major ecstasy kingpin.

WATCH IT ON MAX

'An Update on Our Family'

an illustration of a little kid playing soccer outside of a house in a still from the documentary an update to our family

(Image credit: HBO)

Release date: January 15

Family vloggers Myka and James Stauffer's shocking, controversial story, in which they re-homed their adopted son on the autism spectrum, was one that many of us couldn't look away from in 2024. The incident then became the catalyst to question the ethics behind YouTubers/TikTokers who make (often monetized) content featuring their children. All that and more, including just how unregulated this booming online industry is, is the focus of this three-part HBO doc.

WATCH IT ON MAX

'Scam Goddess'

laci mosley wearing a teal suit and white cowboy hat walking down the street in the tv show scam goddess

(Image credit: Freeform)

Release date: January 15

With Laci Mosley’s sense of humor and dedication to finding the wildest stories about scammers, we’ll tune into anything she produces. Based on her podcast and book of the same name, this Freeform series looks into bonkers cases of cons and frauds, from a man posing as a prince to a fake Silicon Valley tech star.

WATCH IT ON HULU

'Apple Cider Vinegar'

kaitlyn dever as belle sitting on a bed and looking nervously at her laptop in a still from netflix's apple cider vinegar

(Image credit: Netflix)

Release date: February 6

In 2022, there was an era where streamers really wanted you to care about scammer stories, whether they be “SoHo grifter” Anna Delvey or Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Netflix is betting you’re still riveted enough by pesky con artists to tune into Apple Cider Vinegar, their latest entry into the scammer subgenre. Kaitlyn Dever stars here as Australian wellness influencer Belle Gibson, who falsely claimed to have cured herself of cancer using alternative medicine.

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX

'American Murder: Gabby Petito'

Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie sitting in a tent in American Murder: Gabby Petito

(Image credit: Netflix)

Release date: February 17

The tragic story of travel vlogger Gabby Petitio took social media by storm as it unfolded in real time in 2021. At the time, her followers and family started to suspect something was wrong when her and fiancé Brian Christopher Laundrie’s coverage of their four-month-long stint living and road-tripping out of a van wasn’t going as planned. If you followed along to the rampant coverage of this domestic abuse case, little new information is presented in this three-parter, though it does offer added context and serves as a harrowing warning.

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX

'Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke'

shari fanke sitting down for a talking head interview in the devil in the family documentary

(Image credit: Disney/Kai Pfaffenbach)

Release date: February 27

Devil in the Family is another recent docuseries about the ethics of parent-child vlogging—and how much can be left offscreen of sunny YouTube videos. In the case of mother Ruby Franke, who ran a channel called 8 Passengers about her six children, her, and her husband in Utah, she took to extremist forms of punishment and eventually child abuse when she brought parenting counselor Jodi Hildebrandt into their home. This three-part miniseries details the case and sees the eldest children, Shari and Chad, speak out for the first time, along with their father and Ruby’s ex-husband.

WATCH IT ON HULU

'Toxic Town'

Toby Eden, Jodie Whittaker, and Matthew James Hinchliffe as a son and mother being interviewed by a reporter on a street in the show toxic town

(Image credit: Ben Blackall/Netflix)

Release date: February 27

There’s plenty of true crime across the pond, too. Doctor Who alum Jodie Whittaker leads the cast of Netflix’s Toxic Town. The forthcoming series dramatizes the Corby toxic waste case, in which the Corby Borough Council was found guilty of allowing toxic atmospheric waste from a nearby steel manufacturer to impact local townspeople, leading to more than 30 cases of birth defects. The show’s star-studded British cast also includes The White Lotus’s Aimee Lou Wood and Bridgerton’s Claudia Jessie.

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX

'Good American Family'

the barnetts as they meet natalia grace for the first time in a still from good american family

(Image credit: Disney/Ser Baffo)

Release date: March 19

The case of Natalia Grace is one of the most mindboggling in recent memory, considering it sounds like it’s stripped from the horror movie Orphan. In reality, the now-21-year-old was in fact a child adopted from Ukraine, but her mental and physical health concerns led her adoptive mother, Kristine Barnett, to suspect she was older than she said she was, resulting in child abuse and abandonment. Hulu’s Good American Family dramatizes the story, with Ellen Pompeo as Barnett, in her first leading role since Grey’s Anatomy, and newcomer Imogen Faith Reid playing Natalia Grace.

WATCH IT ON HULU

'Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer'

a woman sits at a desktop computer in a still from gone girls the long island serial killer documentayr

(Image credit: Netflix)

Release date: March 31

For her latest subject, the renowned documentarian Liz Garbus (What Happened, Miss Simone?, I'll Be Gone in the Dark) pieced together an exhaustive look at the Gilgo Beach serial killings. The three-episode docuseries follows Lost Girls, a feature Garbus made about the case in 2020 before the killer was caught and arrested. With her knowledge and sensitive lens, Garbus pointedly centers the story on the victims’s families and their stories.

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX

'Spy High'

a teenager speaking at a press conference in a still from the documentary spy high

(Image credit: Unrealistic Ideas/Prime Video)

Release date: April 8

Some of the most gripping documentaries make us believe something entirely different about their subjects by the end. That’s the case of Spy High, which first presents Blake Robbins as an obnoxious suburbanite cliche but comes to empathize with his story. In 2010, then-high-schooler Robbins was accused in 2010 by his Philadelphia area school of selling drugs—all because of a video the administration surveilled of him at home from his district-possessed laptop. With its wild cast of characters and sweeping ethical questions, it’s an entertaining look at private information and the surveillance state (and another reminder to cover your webcam).

WATCH IT ON PRIME VIDEO

'Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing'

a group of preteens known as the squad pose together in a still from bad influence documentary

(Image credit: Netflix)

Release date: April 9

Can’t get enough of the harrowing, true stories about influencers? Watch (and be devastated by) Bad Influence. This Netflix three-parter focuses on Piper Rockelle and her YouTuber circle The Squad, who began making videos at 8-years-old. The entire operation amassed millions and was allegedly orchestrated by Piper’s mom, Tiffany, in an abusive environment.

WATCH IT ON NETFLIX

'Death By Lightning'

Release date: TBA on Netflix

Contrary to how it might feel these days, deranged political intrigue is nothing new in America. Case in point: Mike Makowsky’s upcoming Netflix historical drama Death By Lightning, which follows lesser-known U.S. president James A. Garfield (Michael Shannon) and his eventual assassin, his admirer-turned-adversary Charles Guiteau (Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen). Here’s hoping Macfadyen brings peak “Tom Wambsgans throwing water bottles” energy to his performance!

'Firebug'

Release date: TBD

Taron Egerton and Jurnee Smollett lead this Apple TV+ miniseries inspired by true events. They play an arson investigator and a rising detective who team up to try to solve a series of arson cases in the Pacific Northwest. If you’re dying to learn more about the case, a podcast about it was released in 2021.

'The Perfect Neighbor'

police body camera footage of a woman standing outside her home and fence in the documentary the perfect neighbor

(Image credit: Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival)

Release date: TBA; Premiered at Sundance Film Festival and SXSW

Under Florida’s “stand your ground” law, residents can use deadly force in self-defense without initially trying to retreat from the situation. That law played a role in an unexpected criminal case in which a local “Karen’s” dispute with her neighbor unexpectedly turned deadly. In The Perfect Neighbor, director Geeta Gandbhir uses police body cam footage to question how lax state gun laws can turn neighbors into life-threatening forces and whether justice will be served.

'Predators'

a still from the documentary predators of a man being arrested and a camera crew filming it

(Image credit: Courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival)

Release date: TBA; Premiered at Sundance Film Festival

True crime is enticing, but at what point does our fascination with headline-making perpetrators and their victims’ stories cross the line into exploitation? In an attempt to answer that question, David Osit’s documentary Predators casts an eye back to one of the genre’s earlier entries: NBC’s early aughts reality TV hit To Catch A Predator. In each episode, child predators were lured to a film set, interviewed, and eventually arrested. By examining the series’ legacy, Osit asks viewers to consider their relationship to the contemporary true crime boom and how we can avoid being complicit in the pain that lesser entries into the genre can bring upon real people.

Contributing Culture Writer

Abby Monteil is a Chicago-based writer and editor. Her reporting and cultural criticism can be found at Them, Rolling Stone, The Daily Beast, Elite Daily, and more. You can find her across all socials @abbyemonteil.

With contributions from