The 9 Best True-Crime Podcasts to Listen to Now

True crime set off the great longform podcast boom—from Serial to S-Town—and in 2022, it continues to be the most addictive podcast genre; bringing all the mystery, drama, and primal fear of a Law & Order episode directly into our ears. While there’s no shortage of true crime series on TV, there is something particularly riveting about a suspenseful whodunit unfolding in audio form, like a modern-day ghost story. Whether you’re already an obsessive or just wading into the world of cold cases and red herrings, here are Vogue’s picks for the best true-crime podcasts to try now.

My Favorite Murder

True-crime junkies who don’t take themselves too seriously should start here. MFM is a biweekly safe space for comedians/hosts Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark to break down the cases that keep them up at night, from the Golden State Killer to Black Dahlia and the Zodiac murders. The show’s devoted listeners, also known as “murderinos,” have made it one of the podcast world’s biggest hits, spawning a live show and a book: Stay Sexy & Don’t Get Murdered.

Welcome to Your Fantasy

Murder meets G-strings in historian Natalia Petrzela’s eight-episode dive into the sordid, largely unknown story “behind the powerful mullets, oiled pecs, and non-stop parties” of the Chippendales dancers. The twisted tale tracks how mastermind Steve Banerjee built the male revue into a phenomenon—and how drugs, greed and crime tore it all down.

Suspect

This 2021 podcast follows the classic format of examining a specific cold case with painstaking detail. Here, it’s the unsolved murder of 24-year-old Arpana Jinaga, who was found strangled in her Washington State apartment in 2008 after a Halloween party in her building. Journalists Matthew Shaer and Eric Benson take listeners back to the night in question and through a trial, poring over the issues embedded in the case—from the misuse of DNA to the broken relationship between race and policing.

Tom Brown’s Body

The tiny city of Canadian, Texas is the backdrop for this narrative podcast—hosted by Skip Hollandsworth of the award-winning Texas Monthly magazine—about the 2016 disappearance of a popular high school senior. When Brown’s remains are found two years later, everyone in the Panhandle community is a suspect (as the true-crime cliché goes), including Brown’s own family. 

LISK: Long Island Serial Killer 

For two decades until 2010, an unidentified suspect murdered nearly a dozen people, mostly female sex workers, and left their bodies along a secluded stretch of Long Island’s Ocean Parkway. This podcast, inspired by the bestseller Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, recalls the gruesome case with unheard interviews from family members, police, and more. 

Morbid: A True Crime Podcast

Best friends Alaina Urquhart and Ashleigh Kelley have range: In addition to serial killers and mysterious deaths, they tackle other true-crime subgenres such as spooky myths, creepy history, and haunted places. 

True Crime Obsessed

Consuming too much true crime can leave you desperately in need of a comedic pick-me-up. That’s where the hilarious, theater-loving duo Patrick Hinds and Gillian Pensavalle come in. Without ever making fun of the actual crime, the cohosts recap popular true-crime documentaries, from Tiger King to Making a Murderer, with a much-needed lighthearted, sassy twist. Listen to their take on I.D.’s The Atlanta Child Murders, which covers the nearly 30 Black children who disappeared or were murdered in Atlanta during the early ’80s.

Down the Hill: The Delphi Murders

On Valentine’s Day in 2017, two teens, Liberty German, 14, and Abigail Williams, 13, were found murdered near a hiking trail in Delphi, Indiana, after they went missing the day before. When police released a short audio clip that’s believed to belong to the male suspect, it was only three words: “down the hill.” But the eerie voice, yet to be identified, was enough to make my hair stand on end. Here, this podcast breaks down the tragic story that continues to haunt Indiana today.

Crime Junkie

Just like the name suggests, hosts Ashley Flowers and Brit Prawat are obsessed with anything and everything related to true crime. Each week, they take a deep dive into some of the most compelling (and mysterious) cases, including stories from the 1940s and more recent convictions. Below, Flowers and Prawat discuss the murder of Loren Donn Leslie, whose remains were found along Canada’s Highway of Tears, a 450-mile stretch of road where dozens of women, most of whom were Indigenous, have been known to vanish or be found murdered.