2020’s BEST TRUE CRIME

BY: Ramona Duoba

Ever since the success of Netflix’s Making a Murderer, true crime documentaries are a standard viewing option across all streaming platforms. If there’s a murder, abduction, or heinous crime, solved or unsolved, it is likely to end up in production. Provokr’s list of True Crime 2020 takes viewers down a path they will probably never follow and gives them a glimpse into the dark and twisted side of humanity.

Killer Inside: The Mind of Aaron Hernandez (Netflix)

The three-part docuseries attempts to uncover the downfall of New England Patriots football star Aaron Hernandez to a convicted murderer. In 2015, Hernandez was found guilty of murdering Odin Lloyd, a semi-professional football player who was the boyfriend of Hernandez’s fiancée’s sister. Details included news footage, interviews with friends and former teammates, and phone calls that Hernandez made from prison. The documentary explores the various factors that contributed to the football player’s erratic and volatile behavior. Factors like his troubled home life, his father’s death (an oppressive and homophobic man), and the pressure Hernandez was under to conceal he was gay. Hernandez hanged himself in his prison cell shortly after he was acquitted on a separate double homicide. Following his death, his brain’s study revealed an advanced case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).

Murder on Middle Beach (HBO)

The new four-part docuseries explores the life and murder of Barbara Beach Hamburg, who was found dead outside of her Connecticut home in 2010. Madison Hamburg, the 29-year-old son of the victim, directs the project. Hamburg gains new insight into his mother’s life, including her troubled relationship with his father, her ex-husband, Jeffrey Hamburg. He also works to eliminate several of his family members as potential suspects in the murder. For eight years, Hamburg interviewed his family members and many others to learn more about his mother’s life and gather evidence to solve her murder. Along the way, he uncovers a web of family and community secrets, connections to shadowy figures, and years-old resentments in his deceptively serene hometown. The murder remains unsolved to this day.

I’ll be Gone in the Dark (HBO)

The six-part documentary series is based on the same name book, I’ll Be Gone In The Dark. It explores writer Michelle McNamara’s investigation into the dark world of a violent predator she dubbed “The Golden State Killer.” He terrorized California in the 1970s and 80s and is responsible for fifty home-invasion rapes and twelve murders. McNamara, a true-crime journalist, created the popular website TrueCrimeDiary.com, which describes the crimes and examines clues to uncover his identity. Knowing all of this, and with each chilling description, McNamara’s obsession begins to become our own. She believed that the “Golden State Killer” would still be alive today. But McNamara, at the age of 46, suddenly died before she finished her book. The novel was released nearly two years after her death and two months before the arrest of Joseph DeAngelo. The docu-series premiered on June 28th.

Tiger King (Netflix)

Just as Covid-19 consumed everyone’s lives this year, so did the true-crime docuseries, Tiger King. The primary subject is Joe Exotic, the G.W. Zoo owner in Wynnewood, Oklahoma. It focuses on his bitter feud with Carole Baskin, CEO of Big Cat Rescue in Tampa, Florida. As the series explores the world of prominent cat collectors, Exotic claims Baskin is a rival zookeeper who will do anything to eliminate her competition. He even goes so far as to allege she murdered her husband, who has been missing since 1997. Exotic’s personal life spices things up. He has a three-way same-sex marriage. In 2016, he ran for President of the United States and mounted a 2018 run for Oklahoma’s governor. The series records the events leading up to Joe Exotic’s conviction for a murder-for-hire-hit on Baskin. He is now serving a 22-year federal prison sentence.

Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer (Amazon)

This five-part docuseries premiered in January. It reframes the infamous serial killer Ted Bundy’s crimes from a female perspective. It uncovers the disturbing and profound way his psychological hatred of women collided with the feminist movement and the culture wars of the 1970s. After years of silence, Ted Bundy’s long-term girlfriend Elizabeth Kendall, her daughter Molly and other survivors came forward for the first time. Trish Wood, director of the series, told USA Today, “I would say that everybody knows Ted’s name, and few people could name any of the women. I thought it was time for them to have their moment.” Before his execution in 1989, Bundy confessed to 30 homicides.