An Almanac of Infamy

It seems like everyone is tackling true crime and for good reason. It's a very lucrative and very addictive genre guaranteed to draw in viewers, listeners, and readers. Nora Zimmett , who serves as the Senior Vice President of Content and Programming for The Weather Channel, admits to being a huge true crime fan. That's just one reason that the network will be launching its own true-crime series, "Storm of Suspicion", on October 7. The show will feature cases where weather played an important role and will also feature forensic meteorologist Elizabeth Austin. Zimmett hopes that the series will give viewers a motivation to tune into the network when there isn't a severe weather event to cover. While The Weather Channel may be a new kid on the true crime block, one network that isn't is Oxygen. That network is launching the 24th season of its wildly popular true crime series "Snapped" with a review of the Amy Fisher case, the 25th anniversary of whi...

ICYMI Vulture has published some great pieces this week highlighting the true crime wave that is currently sweeping the nation. One that I found particularly interesting takes a look at how true crime networks choose which cases to cover. Television producers and audiences alike favor cases that have several twists and turns and personal betrayals. Well-known cases like that of Ted Bundy tend to pay off as well because documentarians are always finding new perspectives from which to tell the story. Fun fact: The 2012 Lifetime movie Drew Peterson: Untouchable starring Rob Lowe as the titular killer is still the network's highest-rated film. If you want to turn off the tube and pick up a book, who better to recommend a true crime read than a true crime author? I've added several books from this article to my reading list. Two books mentioned that I highly recommend are Strange Piece of Paradise and The People Who Eat Darkness . And speaking of books, I'm sure you...

Big true crime news from Netflix! The streaming service recently announced that Ava DuVernay is set to write and direct a new narrative series about the Central Park Five case. The series's opening episode will take place in the spring of 1989 when five teenagers of color were coerced into confessing to the rape of a Central Park jogger and will cover the events that led to their conviction and eventual exoneration in 2014. Michael K. Williams (from The Wire ), Vera Farmiga (star of Bates Motel and The Conjuring ) and John Leguizamo are lined up to star in the series, which unfortunately we'll have to wait until next year to watch. Something we don't have to wait that long for is Investigation Discovery's new summer lineup. New shows include Dark Waters: Murder In The Deep , which will explore maritime crimes and Someone You Thought You Knew , which will explore murders committed by the people you'd least suspect. Fan favorites like Fatal Vows and Homicide Hun...

Hello, readers! It's been quite some time since my last True Crime Tidbits column, but now that I'm finally getting over an awful summer cold, it's time to dive back in. This week's biggest news, of course, involves the Netflix docuseries Unsolved: The Murders of Tupac and the Notorious B.I.G . The series creator has called for the arrest of a former gangster who confessed on camera to his involvement in the murder of Tupac Shakur. Kyle Long says it's outrageous that Keffe D, who also spoke about his role in the Shakur murder in the Death Row Chronicles , is not sitting in prison. Many believe that Keffe D's nephew, Orlando Anderson, was the main shooter in the murder along with Keffe D and several other accomplices. KTNV , a Las Vegas news outlet, is reporting that an arrest in the case is imminent. Fans of Chris Pine will be pleased to know that he is teaming up again with Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins, this time for a project with true crime roots. T...

Mark your calendars, true crime buffs, because on July 24, Investigation Discovery premieres its new documentary, Bad Henry . This will be the first time that the case of serial killer Henry Louis Wallace has been discussed at length on television. In the early '90s, Wallace murdered 10 young African-American women and many believe the status of his victims led the Charlotte, North Carolina, police department and the media to ignore the murders as they were being committed. At the time, the city was heavily divided by racial tensions. Over at Buzzfeed , Pier Dominguez takes a look at our obsession with moms who murder and compares the cases of Casey Anthony and Darlie Routier. And while it's not a true story, I think many of us, especially those of us who grew up in the 1980s, will be interested in a new movie coming out in August called Summer of '84 . The movie takes place in a small Oregon town where a serial killer is preying on teenaged boys. A group of teens dec...

Most true crime fans are familiar with the case of infamous female serial killer Rose West and many consider her to one of the worst serial killers in the U.K. However, according to criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee , one woman stands above West and other female killers in terms of cruelty and brutality. In his new book, Love of Blood , Berry-Dee claims that Joanna Dennehy, who he exchanged several letters with, is the worst female serial killer in Great Britain because she murdered three men on her own, while other female killers usually work with a (usually male) partner. And unlike West, she had a solid middle-class upbringing with nothing in her past to indicate that she would eventually stab three men to death and attempt to murder two more. Berry-Dee says, “I have interviewed many one-off female killers and even the notorious American serial killer, Aileen Wuornos, and none of them hold a candle to the fiend that still exists in Joanna Dennehy. In my opinion, she will kill agai...

Dr. Donald Grant , a former government psychiatrist turned true crime writer, has been referred to the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission by Queensland Health. The hospital has concerns about possible patient confidentiality breaches in Grant's newly published book Killer Instinct . In the book, Grant recounts the murderers he examined in a professional capacity. One such murderer was Rhys Austin. In 2010, Austin throttled his girlfriend Bianca Girven and left her for dead in a van. She died of her injuries the next day in the hospital. Austin was sent to a psychiatric hospital after being found by the courts to be of unsound mind and that's where he came in contact with Dr. Grant. He revealed to Grant several intimate details of Girven's last moments, including her last words. These details ended up in Grant's book and he was recently confronted by Bianca Girven's mother Sonia Anderson at a book reading. She expressed her outrage over the fact that she neve...

Director and screenwriter Deborah S. Esquenazi has launched her own production company, Myth of Monsters, to address stories and myths about women of color and the LGBTQ community. One project of particular interest to true crime fans is a planned adaptation of her documentary Southwest of Salem: The Story of the San Antonio Four . The 2016 doc tells the story of four women who were wrongfully convicted of rape in the "Satanic Panic" era and it helped to exonerate its subjects. Speaking of adaptations, here's a list of true crimes that would benefit from the Netflix treatment. And here's what it's like to be a re-enactor on one of those true crime shows that we all love.