Top True Crime Podcasts

The Vanished is a true crime podcast that explores the stories of those who have gone missing. The Vanished goes beyond conventional news reports to take a deep dive into the story of a different missing person each week. Host Marissa Jones brings you exclusive interviews with family members, friends, law enforcement and experts. What will The Vanished uncover next?

Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of The Vanished Podcast ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app.

Candace Rivera had it all: perfect hair, perfect house, perfect life. After a messy divorce, she launched multimillion-dollar businesses and a global nonprofit, all while maintaining a flawless image. To her many “besties,” Candace was a real-life unicorn. But one manic summer, the illusion shattered. Was she a visionary—or just a master of deception?

In this podcast from the creator of Scamanda, award-winning journalist Charlie Webster investigates Candace’s rise and fall, uncovering a mind-bending story where nothing is quite what it seems. 

Unicorn Girl is an Apple Original podcast produced by Seven Hills with additional services provided by FunMeter. Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

http://apple.co/UnicornGirl

Emily Simpson may bring the receipts on RHOC, but in her podcast “Legally Brunette” Emily and her attorney husband Shane bring the cold hard evidence. Backed by their respective law degrees, Emily and Shane pick apart the true crime stories you can’t get enough of!

Whether you believe the defense or the prosecution, they explain the charges, the counts, the plea deals, and the appeals! From high profile crimes to celebrity court cases, you are hereby sentenced to a front row seat in trials around the world, without all the legal fees and jail time!

So don’t call your next witness, call your bestie and tune into the podcast that takes you from Real Housewives to True Crime.

Court is now in session and this couple is nowhere near resting their case! 

For four seasons, investigative reporter Melissa Jeltsen has told the stories of women whose lives — and deaths — were shaped by the failures of the systems meant to protect them. Now she's widening her lens, with new episodes every week. In What Happened to Her, Melissa takes on the stories that won't let her go. Women whose deaths were too quickly ruled suicides. Women no one believed. Cases everyone else called closed. Some weeks, a mystery unfolds across multiple episodes. In others, Melissa sits down with fellow investigative journalists and podcast hosts to go behind the scenes on the cases — and the women — they just couldn't shake.

The Burden is a documentary series that takes listeners into the hidden places where justice is done (and undone). It dives deep into the lives of heroes and villains. And it focuses a spotlight on those who triumph even when the odds are against them. 

Season 7 - The Burden: Bad Cops

Baltimore, Maryland likes to call itself Charm City. But you have to wonder: Is the nickname ironic?  Consider one of the city's star cops, a sergeant so accomplished that he earned his own nickname, the Golden Boy.  But Golden Boy led a double life. Said one of those who encountered him in the street.  "I was robbed by the Baltimore City Police….with a gun … armed robbery."  No one believed the allegation. Then a GPS tracker was discovered where it shouldn't have been; next, a wiretap went up on a cop's phone. An FBI agent couldn't believe what she was hearing. Are these guys  gangsters? And then … an insider turned witness. "Like Rambo said, burn it down. And that's what I did."  Welcome to Charm City, where it was sometimes difficult to tell the protectors from the predators.

Season 6 - The Burden: Lives of Crime

Ever wondered what it’s like to live on the edge? 
To not follow the rules? 
To live outside of the law? 
On Lives of Crime you'll hear true stories from criminals themselves, narrating moments from their lives and expounding upon the crimes they’ve committed. This first person narrative podcast series creates an intimate connection between criminal and listener. It’s true crime without intermediaries. Presented without judgment, each episode features a single voice - a person with a criminal past - telling us the deeply personal details of their lives. We hear about their crimes, sure, but Lives of Crime goes beyond that. We hear the stories that shaped them, the moments that made them, the details that changed the direction of their lives for good or for ill.
True Crime Told by true criminals. 

Season 5 - The Burden: Death & Deceit in Alliance

On April Fools Day 1999, 26-year-old Yvonne Layne was found murdered in her Alliance, Ohio home. David Thorne, her ex-boyfriend and father of one of her children, was instantly a suspect. Another young man admitted to the murder,  and David breathed a sigh of relief, until the confessed murderer fingered David; “He paid me to do it.”  David was sentenced to life without parole. Two decades later, Pulitzer winner and podcast host, Maggie Freleng (Bone Valley Season 3: Graves County, Wrongful Conviction, Suave) launched a “live” investigation into David's conviction alongside Jason Baldwin (himself wrongfully convicted as a member of the West Memphis Three). Maggie had come to believe that the entire investigation of David was botched by the tiny local police department, or worse, covered up the real killer. Was Maggie correct? Was David’s claim of innocence credible? In Death and Deceit in Alliance, Maggie recounts the case that launched her career, and ultimately, “broke” her.” The results will shock the listener and reduce Maggie to tears and self-doubt. This is not your typical wrongful conviction story. In fact, it turns the genre on its head. It asks the question: What if our champions are foolish?

Season 4 - The Burden: Get the Money and Run

“Trying to murder my father, this was the thing that put me on the path.” That’s Joe Loya and that path was bank robbery. Bank, bank, bank, bank, bank. In season 4 of The Burden: Get the Money and Run, we hear from Joe who was once the most prolific bank robber in Southern California, and beyond. He used disguises, body doubles, proxies. He leaped over counters, grabbed the money and ran. Even as the FBI was closing in. It was a showdown between a daring bank robber, and a patient FBI agent. Joe was no ordinary bank robber. He was bright, articulate, charismatic, and driven by a dark rage that he summoned up at will. In seven episodes, Joe tells all: the what, the how… and the why. Including why he tried to murder his father. 

Season 3 - The Burden: Avenger

Miriam Lewin is one of Argentina’s leading journalists today. At 19 years old, she was kidnapped off the streets of Buenos Aires for her political activism and thrown into a concentration camp. Thousands of her fellow inmates were executed, tossed alive from a cargo plane into the ocean. Miriam, along with a handful of others, will survive the camp. Then as a journalist, she will wage a decades long campaign to bring her tormentors to justice. 

Avenger is about one woman’s triumphant battle against unbelievable odds to survive torture, claim justice for the crimes done against her and others like her, and change the future of her country.

Season 2 - The Burden: Empire on Blood 

Empire on Blood is set in the Bronx, NY, in the early 90s, when two young drug dealers ruled an intersection known as “The Corner on Blood.” The boss, Calvin Buari, lived large. He and a protege swore they would build an empire on blood. Then the relationship frayed and the protege accused Calvin of a double homicide which he claimed he didn’t do. But did he? Award-winning journalist Steve Fishman spent seven years to answer that question. 

This is the story of one man’s last chance to overturn his life sentence. He may prevail, but someone’s gotta pay. The Burden: Empire on Blood is the director’s cut of the true crime classic which reached #1 on the charts when it was first released half a dozen years ago.

Season 1 - The Burden 

In the 1990s, Detective Louis N. Scarcella was legendary. In a city overrun by violent crime, he cracked the toughest cases and put away the worst criminals. “The Hulk” was his nickname.

Then the story changed. Scarcella ran into a group of convicted murderers who all say they are innocent. They turned themselves into jailhouse-lawyers and in prison founded a lway firm. When they realized Scarcella helped put many of them away, they set their sights on taking him down. And with the help of a NY Times reporter they have a chance.

For years, Scarcella insisted he did nothing wrong. But that’s all he’d say. Until we tracked Scarcella to a sauna in a Russian bathhouse, where he started to talk..and talk and talk. “The guilty have gone free,” he whispered. And then agreed to take us into the belly of the beast. 

Welcome to The Burden.

Deep Cover is a show about people who lead double lives. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jake Halpern reveals webs of deception and dark underworlds, through interviews with federal agents and convicted criminals. 

Deep Cover: The Family Man: Elise and Marissa grew up in a seemingly normal house in the suburbs of St. Louis, but it was a house built on secrets. There were things their father never told them—like how he really made his money. One night, the police showed up, raided their house, and seized boxes of evidence. Hours later, the sisters turned on the TV and saw something surreal: their father’s car, in the aftermath of a police chase. The local news identified him as “The Boonie Hat Bandit.” The girls were stunned. They struggled to accept the truth: Dad had been living a double life. How long had he been lying to them? What had he done? And who, exactly, was their father? Deep Cover: The Family Man is a story about the way parents deceive their children and the crimes a desperate father will commit to save his family. It’s also a story about justice—and the question of what punishment these crimes deserve.

Deep Cover Presents: Snowball. A special limited series from the Unravel Podcast team at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Ollie Wards' family lost everything after their brush with a charming Californian con woman. As he embarks on a quest to find out how she did it, why she did it, and where she is now, he opens the door on a mystery that spans decades and across continents.

In the sixth season of Deep Cover: The Truth About Sarah, Jake Halpern and acclaimed investigative journalist Jess McHugh unravel an epic six-year deception that upended lives of countless people. Sarah Cavanaugh was many things: A decorated veteran. A Marine who saved her comrades. A young woman fighting cancer. She was stoic, humble, tough. In short: a hero. Sarah was everything people wanted her to be—until she wasn’t. Turns out, no one knew the real Sarah. Not her comrades. Not her wife. No one. Jake and Jess interview all of the key sources—including Sarah, herself—to tell this sprawling tale.

Season five covers the rise and fall of George Santos, the former Republican Congressman from New York, and the stories—many of which were not true—he told about his life and credentials.

Season four, The Nameless Man, tells the epic tale of two federal agents who investigate a rumor about a murder that supposedly took place 15 years prior. It is also the story of a family searching for answers about why their brother was killed. These two storylines collide in a courtroom in Philadelphia, where murder, memory, and morality go on trial.

Season three, Never Seen Again, tells the story of two women living on opposite sides of the country, who went missing in the summer of 1999. Seven years later, their stories collided when a small town detective got a tip and became convinced that if he could solve one mystery, he’d solve the other.

Season two, Mob Land, is about a high-rolling lawyer who joins forces with the feds to try to bring down one of the most powerful criminal syndicates in the country.

Season one, The Drug Wars, tells the story of an FBI agent who goes undercover with a biker gang, and follows a trail of clues that eventually leads to the US invasion of a foreign country.

Deep Cover drops on Mondays. To hear episodes early and ad-free, subscribe to Pushkin+ in Apple Podcasts or at pushkin.fm/plus.

iHeartMedia is the exclusive podcast partner of Pushkin Industries.