It was the era of the television PSA that intoned: “It’s 10 p.m. In the 1970s and Eighties, a real-life boogeyman was snatching young Black boys from poor neighborhoods one after another, and brutally murdering them. Atlanta Monsterįollowing the success of Tenderfoot TV’s flagship series Up and Vanished, host Payne Lindsey brought renewed attention to the underreported case of Atlanta’s child murders with Atlanta Monster. “Maybe this time, if I came in with two white journalists, they’d actually listen to me,” she says. On this visit, she has Invisible Institute reporters with her. In one memorable scene, Wells returns to the police station to try once again to get answers. In another, however, it demonstrates the power of the format and the privilege of many true-crime creators. The seven-part series was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist for “a dogged and searing investigation of the murder of a young Black man in Chicago and the institutional indifference surrounding it.” The podcast is in one sense a compelling investigation into an unsolved killing. Wells re-interviews witnesses, gathers security-camera footage from the scene of Copeland’s death, and collects any documentation she can from the day’s events. Partnering with the Intercept and the Invisible Institute, she got to work documenting her search for answers, as well as her efforts to grieve as a mother. Wells knew then that there was more to the story of her son’s death than police were telling her. When Wells picked up his hospital records, however, a note from the EMTs described Copeland as “violent” and “combative” and said he’d been in handcuffs when he arrived at the hospital. Chicago police said he got out of his car near a precinct and flagged down an officer for help before collapsing. In 2016, Shapearl Wells’ 22-year-old son, Courtney Copeland, was shot through the window of his beloved BMW while he was driving. In Somebody, a Black mother leverages the popularity of true crime podcasts to search for answers about her son’s killing. Season Four, out now, investigates the unsolved 2003 murder of 17-year-old John Welles, who’d been working on his family’s farm in Florida before being found dead in a creek. Over the course of 20 bingeable 20-minute episodes, D’Ambra raised doubt about the conviction of the slain couple’s teenage son for the shootings. Season Three covered the brutal 1989 murder of four members of the Pelley Family in Indiana. She re-creates witness timelines and reads the details of case files, turning up clues detectives overlooked and calling out bungled procedures that may have compromised evidence. Dogged and savvy, she interviews law-enforcement officers but doesn’t take them at their word for anything. CounterClockįans of procedurals will bond with former broadcast journalist Delia D’Ambra’s approach to investigating murders. Perhaps equally important, they’re all great listening, promising the kind of captivating intrigue that continues to draw generation after generation to true crime: tragedy, mystery, a search for answers, and always the hunger for justice. Some focus on bringing publicity to cold cases in underrepresented communities, and some changed the way we think about crime storytelling altogether. Some are the results of deep investigative journalism others are by amateur sleuths trying to help families find answers. Whether they cover a new case each episode or present a story over the course of a season, these picks each shaped the genre in their own way. To rank the best, we polled true-crime aficionados about their favorite shows, then sifted through the top choices. Now, they’re an integral part of the media landscape, and none more so than those about true crime. Ten years ago, most people hadn’t even heard of a podcast.
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