3 true-crime documentaries to watch this spooky season

As the leaves change and the weather becomes colder, everyone enjoys cuddling up to watch movies during a time that is commonly known as “spooky season.” This year, instead of watching the typical Halloween movies promoted on your television, such as those listed from Freeform’s “31 Nights of Halloween,” I suggest something a bit spookier.

The thrill of watching true-crime docuseries shares the same suspense, gore and fear as a typical horror film except the scariest aspect is–it’s not fiction. What is scarier than a real man being wrongfully framed by the FBI for a terrorist act he did not commit or the tale of a man dismembering, hiding and executing multiple of his close friends and getting away with it for decades? “Halloween” and “The Exorcist” are horrifying, but so is the real world.

“Manhunt: Deadly Games”

This series dives into the complex manhunt for the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Park bomber, Eric Robert Rudolph. At the Olympic Park bombing, one was killed and more than 100 people were injured. Richard Jewell, a security guard at the event, was a hero-turned terrorist by the media after the FBI reported he was a suspect of the crime. The series follows a sequence of connected bombings from the Olympic Park to a 1997 abortion clinic and then a gay nightclub all while highlighting the abuse endured by Jewell from the public. Despite being cleared by the FBI, Jewell’s life was never the same. Rudolph, one of the FBI’s Top Ten Fugitives at the time, evaded the police for up to five years until ultimately being found and arrested in the woods in 2003.

You can watch “Manhunt: Deadly Games” on Netflix.

“The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst”

Robert Durst, real-estate millionaire, has been a suspect in a sequence of mysterious crimes for decades. The 2015 docuseries describes the three offenses he is accused of, including the disappearance of his first wife Kathie McCormack in 1982, the death of his friend Susan Berman in 2000 and the death of his neighbor Morris Black in 2000. The highly popularized six-episode series ended with the finale gaining around one million views as Durst is seen confessing to the crime. Mumbling quietly to himself in a restroom, Durst is caught in the microphone saying, “What the hell did I do? Killed them all, of course.” Durst was finally convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the death of Berman this month.

Rotten Tomatoes gave the engrossing series a 95% rating. You can watch the series on HBO Max.

“The Staircase”

Michael Peterson, American author, was convicted of murdering his wife, Kathleen Peterson, in 2003. This 13-episode series shows the show he claimed that she drunkenly fell down the stairs however medical examinations showed that not only were her fingerprints not on any of the glasses, but her blood alcohol content also was low and that she had been battered to death. Large amounts of blood were also found at the top of the stairs. In the series there are uncovering lies, his true sexuality revealed and the viewers learn of connection to the death of Elizabeth Ratliff in 1985. In 2017, he entered an Alford Plea and maintained his innocence.

“The Staircase” is streaming on Netflix.