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'
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.
'Sons of Ecstasy'
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.
'An Update on Our Family'
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.
'Scam Goddess'
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.
'Apple Cider Vinegar'
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.
'American Murder: Gabby Petito'
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.
'Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke'
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.
'Toxic Town'
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.
'Good American Family'
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.
'Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer'
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.
'Spy High'
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).
'Bad Influence: The Dark Side of Kidfluencing'
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.
'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'
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'
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.
