True crime has remained a cornerstone of the industry ever since the first season of “Serial” in 2014 ushered podcasts into the media mainstream, and the expansion of audio reporting has allowed for numerous cold cases and wrongful convictions to be re-examined. These five investigative podcasts all document failures within justice systems on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, caused by a combination of factors including racism, classism, law enforcement misconduct and bureaucratic incompetence.
‘The Great Post Office Trial’
The British postal service may not sound like an obvious setting for a real-life horror story, but that’s exactly what unfolds in this gripping BBC investigative series. Beginning in the early 2000s, a number of post offices across Britain began recording major, unexplained shortfalls in cash that often snowballed into thousands of pounds. Sub-postmasters in charge of the affected offices, most of them relatively small, were held personally responsible for the losses, forced to take on devastating personal debts to pay them back, and were prosecuted for financial fraud. It took a long time for the truth to emerge — the shortfalls were nonexistent, invented by a faulty new I.T. system — and by then, hundreds of lives had been destroyed. Over the course of 21 episodes, Nick Wallis chronicles what the country’s Criminal Case Review Commission called the “biggest single series of wrongful convictions in British legal history.” The Kafkaesque stories, told largely by the victims who lived through the ordeal, describe being swept up in an inexplicable, seemingly bottomless, spiral of debt toward false accusations on the part of a system too clunky to recognize its own flaws. On the way, each time they sought help or explanations, they were met with gaslighting. Although a public inquiry has now led to overturned convictions and millions of pounds in compensation, the nightmarish toll of this 20-year scandal (13 lives were lost to suicide) feels too vast to fully repair.
Starter episode: “The Imaginary Heist”
‘13 Alibis’
This absorbing series, which debuted in 2019, was the first podcast launched by “Dateline,” the long-running television newsmagazine on NBC. Hosted and produced by Dan Slepian, an NBC News journalist, “13 Alibis” explores the 1996 killing of a teenager in the Bronx, and the conviction of a local man, Richard Rosario, despite Rosario’s having 13 witnesses placing him in another state at the time of the murder. The series is an ideal binge listen — episodes are typically just 15 to 20 minutes long. But it doesn’t feel lightweight, packed as it is with interviews of Rosario, legal experts and detectives that help explain how so much exculpatory evidence was dismissed. There are also insights into systemic failures — the prosecution case leaned heavily on a witness who identified Rosario in a police lineup, a method which has come under intense scrutiny in recent years thanks to the potential for false positives.
Starter episode: “Behind Bars”
‘Bone Valley’
The phrase “it’s always the husband” has become a mantra among true crime fans (to the point where it’s the title of both a book and a podcast), referring to the fact that women are statistically most likely to be killed by a current or former partner. But this kind of confirmation bias can have devastating consequences if it’s given too much sway in an actual criminal investigation, as this immersive and moving podcast demonstrates. In 1987, Leo Schofield was charged with murder in the stabbing death of his wife, Michelle, 18, whose body was found in a drainage canal in Central Florida. Despite a lack of physical evidence, he was convicted and spent 36 years in prison. Even after Jeremy Scott repeatedly confessed to the crime, and his fingerprints were matched to a set found in Michelle’s abandoned car, Schofield remained behind bars and now, although he’s out on parole, his conviction remains intact. The two seasons of “Bone Valley,” however, are more about forgiveness and redemption than anger, exploring not just Schofield’s tireless fight to prove his innocence, but his startlingly nuanced relationship with Scott.
Starter episode: “God Help Us”
‘Wrongly Accused: The Annette Hewins Story’
Many podcasts about wrongful convictions offer some comfort: The wrongly accused person actually gets a voice in the narrative (literally) and in the best-case scenario receives justice (if belatedly). That’s not the case in this emotionally charged series from BBC Sounds, in which the accused in the title lost her life to a wrongful conviction. In 1995, Annette Hewins, then 31, was convicted of setting a fire that killed a mother and her two daughters in Wales. By the time her conviction was thrown out four years later, the damage had been done. “Wrongly Accused” is movingly narrated by Hewins’s now adult daughter Nicole, who recounts the extensive trauma inflicted on their family, Annette’s descent into substance use and mental illness after her trial, and the ways in which class dynamics and systemic failures contributed to a tragically mishandled investigation.
Starter episode: “Her Story Must Be Heard”
‘In The Dark: Season 2’
The first season of this American Public Media podcast, which delved into the haunting story of the 1989 disappearance of 11-year-old Jacob Wetterling, was a tough act to follow — not least because its release coincided with the case finally being solved. Madeleine Baran, an investigative journalist, and her team, wisely veered away from another cold case in the second season, instead delving into the equally disturbing story of Curtis Flowers, a Black man who was put on trial six times by a Mississippi prosecutor for the same quadruple homicide. Throughout 14 meticulously reported episodes, Baran unpacks how such a wildly flawed case was repeatedly retried, even after multiple mistrials and overturned convictions.
Starter episode: “July 16, 1996”
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