Five Places To Get Your Longform True-Crime Fix When ‘Serial’ Comes To An End

Are you, like the rest of the connected universe, devouring hit true crime podcast Serial every week? Due to Thanksgiving falling on the podcast’s regular Thursday release date, the show is taking a week off, which means it’s the perfect time to come to terms with the fact that sometime Serial will in fact end.

All is not lost however, as host Sarah Koenig has confirmed there will be a second series focusing on a different crime. But this doesn’t mean you have to stop getting your fill of these longform crime stories. Here are five alternatives for when Serial ends and you can’t help but chase that juicy thrill.

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The Staircase

Jean-Xavier de Lestrade is one of the finest documenters of true crime of the modern age. He even won an Academy Award for Murder on a Sunday Morning, a film which exposed the racially-motivated bias and damning ineptitude of Florida police that resulted in the arrest of a 15-year-old black man for the murder of a white tourist. Not one to rest on his laurels, de Lestrade followed up that directorial triumph with The Staircase — 360 minutes of utterly captivating murder investigations, secret betrayals, and courtroom action that, like the New York Times wrote in 2005, “you may come to wish were twice as long.”

In December of 2001, Michael Peterson called 911 saying his wife had fallen down the stairs, but responding officers were horrified at the gruesome, bloody scene that they found. De Lestrade’s film then follows the investigation and eventual murder charge and court case against Peterson.

Across its eight hour-long episodes it most shockingly reveals that a friend of Petersen died in similar circumstances — he and his wife even adopted the friend’s two children. Every facet of Peterson’s life is uncovered and examined by the camera, and, much like I suspect we’ll find with Serial, not every question of innocence or guilt are answered. The Staircase won a Peabody Award and is one of the greatest feats of filmmaking of the new century. It was followed up by a recent sequel, too, albeit not as long.

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The True Murder Podcast

Dan Zupansky has been publishing his acclaimed True Murder podcast every week for the last four years. There are 212 episodes so far, most of which are over an hour in length. In the series, he discusses serial killers with the authors that have written about them.

Unlike Serial, Zupansky’s podcast isn’t an unfolding mystery, but rather a frequently compelling up close and personal examination of the inner minds of these monsters, although some names do get multiple episodes due to various circumstances. Famous names like Charles Manson and Aileen Wournos rub shoulders so to speak with a host of other lesser-known names that you may just wish you’d never heard of.

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The West Memphis Three

The West Memphis Three were three teenagers from Arkansas that were tried and convicted for the murder of three boys. The prosecution asserted that the murders were part of a satanic ritual and, while two of the convicted were sentenced to life in prison, a third was sentenced to death. It later turned out that — oops — maybe they didn’t do it and 18 years later they were released. The case was documented over six-and-a-half hours by filmmakers Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky in their Paradise Lost trilogy, all of which are incredible and vital works of documentary filmmaking. The final film in the series, Paradise Lost: Purgatory, was even nominated for an Academy Award.

The story was further explored in another documentary, West of Memphis, by director Amy Berg who is known for Deliver Us from Evil and the upcoming An Open Secret about Hollywood sex abuse scandals. Reese Witherspoon and Colin Firth also starred in Devil’s Knot, a dramatization of the story, and there are also numerous books including a memoir by David Echols, the teenager sentenced for death. A startling insight can simply be found by searching it on YouTube — you’ll find all sorts of video shining a light on the shocking story.

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Longform.org

This website is dedicated to accumulating long form — 2000 words or more, but many of them are indeed more — reads from across the internet. And while they cover all sorts of topics from the arts to science to politics and business, it’s the true crime, mystery, and unsolved murder sections that will be of particular interest to Serial fans.

Stories like Mother Jones’ The NRA’s Murder Mystery and Philly Mag’s Who is the Boy in the Box are full of juicy intrigue and include original newspaper clippings and documents to make your macabre lunchtime reading much more interesting. Texas Monthly‘s ‘A Shooting on Spring Grove Avenue‘ is equally as great; it’s a story that shares many similarities to that of Adnan Syed. If you know how to cheat the system, the Longform: A Smart Reader app features exclusive stories too.

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Northwest Passage

There have been many great murder mysteries on TV, but none more so than Twin Peaks. If, unlike some Junkee writers, you’re excited about the return of David Lynch’s mysterious, surreal, darkly funny, primetime soap opera then you have no doubt already watched both of the series’ original seasons.

What you may not have seen, however, is Northwest Passage (the original title of the series before it was changed to the name we know and love). It’s a “fan edit” by somebody who goes by the name Q2 and it effectively excises everything from the Twin Peaks narrative that isn’t entirely related to the mystery of who killed Laura Palmer. It means entire characters are erased from the story as well as much of the second season’s latter half that replaced the then solved mystery with a new, much less effective one.

What was once 980 minutes is now 300 and has an allure all its own. Obviously if you’ve never seen the original 1990 series then do that first, but longtime fans may find themselves intrigued by this re-imagining. It can be hard to find, but it’s certainly worth the hunt.

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Glenn Dunks is a freelance writer from Melbourne who is currently based in New York City. His work has been seen online (Quickflix, Onya Magazine and his own website), in print (The Big Issue, Metro Magazine), on on the radio (Joy 94.9’s The Saturday Magazine). He also works as an editor and a film festival programmer while tweeting too much @glenndunks.