Docu-mania has taken over online streaming services, pushing filmmakers to give insight into nation-gripping criminal cases and uncover new details in infamous cases in what may be the golden age of the true-crime genre. These four documentaries, all released in 2024, may not be for the faint of heart, but they will have you at the edge of your seat.
1. ‘Fall of the House of Murdaugh: From Egg to Z’
Two jurors at the center of jury-tampering allegations in the Alex Murdaugh murder trial, including one who was famously dismissed, spoke out publicly for the first time about the case in a Fox Nation documentary. Murdaugh, 56, is serving a life sentence for fatally shooting his wife, Maggie, and his youngest son, Paul, in June 2021 on their family’s hunting estate in Colleton County, South Carolina.
2. ‘Menendez Brothers: Victims or Villains’
This docuseries rehashes Lyle and Erik Menendez’s infamous 1989 murder of their parents in their Beverly Hills mansion and gives voice to both the brothers’ pleas for clemency and the horrific brutality of the killings. The brothers’ highly anticipated resentencing hearing, requested on the grounds that new evidence proves the pair’s claims, was moved from early December to January 30.
3. ‘The Life & Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson’
The family and friends of Nicole Brown Simpson, whose husband O.J. Simpson was infamously accused of killing her, spoke out for the first time in this four-part Lifetime series. Nicole’s sisters Denise, Tanya Brown, and Dominique Brown are joined by starlets such as Kris Jenner and Faye Resnick and a number of the slain woman’s friends and law enforcement officers who interacted with Nicole in an effort to portray the woman beyond her death and relationship with the embattled football player.
4. ‘American Murder: Laci Peterson’
Scott Peterson, who has always maintained his innocence despite a conviction at trial and two decades of failed appeals, is still hoping he can convince a court he didn’t kill his wife, 27-year-old Laci Peterson. She was eight months pregnant with their son Conner when she went missing on Christmas Day 2002.
5. ‘Making Manson’
Serial killer and cult leader Charles Manson confessed to more murders from beyond the grave in a newly released Peacock docuseries. “Making Manson” delves into more than two decades of previously unreleased conversations with the infamous cult figurehead, offering a more in-depth look at his childhood and life of crime before forming the “Manson Family” and during his time as a cult leader.
