True crime documentaries once again dominated streaming services in 2024 — in fact, there were so many compelling series, even die-hard fans could feel overwhelmed by all the new debuts.
If you’re getting some down time over the holidays, here are five exceptional offerings from the last year that are worth catching up on. All are on Netflix, which should make them easy to find whether you’re home or traveling. The stories they tell are heart-wrenching and harrowing, so “sit back and relax” may not be quite the right turn of phrase — but you will find yourself fully engrossed in each twist and turn.
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When Cathy Terkanian received a letter from an adoption agency in 2010, she expected good news — that the baby girl she’d placed for adoption as a 16-year-old in 1974 was finally trying to contact her.
Instead, she learned that the girl, whom she’d named Alexis, had gone missing 21 years earlier, when she was a teen herself. Even worse: Police were requesting Terkanian’s DNA in the hopes of identifying a body found near a cornfield.
However, the agency refused to share any more information about her daughter and the family who adopted her, because it had been a closed adoption.
“Into the Fire” unfolds like a murder mystery, as Terkanian becomes an amateur detective enlisting the help of online sleuths and social media in her relentless pursuit to discover what really happened to Alexis.
The body investigators found was not Alexis’, but it didn’t take long for Terkanian to find her daughter’s identity: She and her husband entered Alexis’ birthdate into a missing persons database and learned that her new name was Aundria Michelle Bowman. She was 14 when her parents, Brenda and Dennis Bowman, told authorities she had run away from home in Hamilton, Michigan.
Terkanian launched a Facebook page called “Find Aundria M. Bowman” in the hopes of finding more clues. The details she uncovered ― including studying years of Google Earth snapshots — convinced her that Dennis Bowman had killed her and buried her body in the backyard.
Terkanian’s relentless amateur detective work converged with law enforcement investigations into Dennis Bowman, which uncovered sinister details from his past — and more than one victim. By following her “mother’s instinct” and using gumshoe detective work (and some unsanctioned guerilla tactics), Terkanian found the answers she needed, but never wanted, to know about her daughter’s fate.
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Finally, a documentary that shines the spotlight on Laci Peterson rather than her headline-hungry killer. Her husband, Scott Peterson, was convicted in 2004 of murdering Laci and their unborn child over Christmas 2002 in Modesto, California, while he was secretly dating another woman.
Despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence that he plotted to kill his pregnant wife, including the fact that he said he went fishing in the same area where her remains later washed up, Scott Peterson has been the subject of numerous documentaries and podcasts trying to prove his innocence.
“American Murder” flips the script and focuses on Laci when she was alive, with numerous home movies showing her gregarious and sometimes goofy personality, and her constant smile. The documentary — from the iconic true crime filmmaker Skye Borgman (“Girl in the Picture,” “Abducted in Plain Sight”) — also includes heart-wrenching interviews with her family and closest friends, reminiscing about the happy times they shared together and the absence they still feel decades later with her loss.
“American Murder: Laci Peterson” dropped at almost the same time as Peacock’s “Face to Face With Scott Peterson,” an eye-rolling three-parter featuring “exclusive interviews” with the convicted killer in prison. That docuseries caters to sympathizers who acknowledge that while Scott Peterson was a first-class asshole, he was no killer. Yet much of the “new evidence” presented in “Face to Face” and recent court filings has already been debunked, discounted and rejected by the courts. While Scott Peterson continues to hog the limelight, “American Murder: Laci Peterson” is an essential reminder of who the real victims were and are in this case.
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