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New post is live, and this group is the first to know: 15 True Crime Episodes for a Killer Halloween, a verified watchlist with where to stream each pick. Featuring episodes from Dateline, Homicide for the Holidays, Cold Case Files, The Real Murders on Elm Street, and more.

Got one we missed that’s available to stream? Add it in the comments here or on the post and I’ll verify and update the list.

Read it here: https://www.thecrimescenesociety.com/post/15-true-crime-episodes-for-a-killer-halloween

Which episode are you queuing up tonight? 🎃

The October True Crime new release list has been compiled. Netflix, Hulu, HBO, ID, and a lot more. Fresh cases and familiar names are waiting in the lineup. Some will stretch into multi-episode deep dives, others are one-night autopsies of crime and consequence. Link is below.

Order Members, the file is open. Which of these drops are you moving to the top of your personal watchlist, and which look like reruns of the same tired evidence?

Stay sharp, Order. The Society awaits your testimony.

https://www.thecrimescenesociety.com/post/new-true-crime-documentary-releases-october-2025-edition

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted on here, I'm working on a new posting format. But you guys are the first to know that the October Surveillance Report is now LIVE (link). Here are all the new releases for this week.

Motive is never just “because money” or “because jealousy.” Before someone kills, something fractures inside: empathy erodes, thought twists, impulse falters.

This week’s Forensic Friday digs into the inner machinery of lethal violence, tracing how Bundy, Scott Peterson, and the Atlanta Child Murders expose both the power and the peril of motive analysis.

Read the full breakdown here.

Your Turn in the Interrogation Room

• How close can we ever get to the why behind a killing?

Some stories are stranger than fiction. The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker takes us from a roadside act of violence to viral stardom, and then down a far darker road. Netflix’s 2023 documentary shows how one bizarre moment turned Caleb “Kai” McGillvary into a folk legend, and how quickly the myth unraveled.

Full recommendation here.

• Do you think the documentary dug deeply enough into Kai’s background?

• How did the film’s focus on media coverage shape your view of the case?

He looked like a ghost in plain clothes: gray, forgettable, swallowed by Soviet streets. Yet Andrei Chikatilo, the “Butcher of Rostov,” turned that invisibility into his greatest disguise.

For over a decade he prowled train stations and bus depots, preying on the vulnerable while a state too proud to admit the truth looked the other way. His trial revealed not just a killer, but a system rotting from denial.

Full write-up here.

What do you think?

• How do you interpret the Soviet state’s refusal to acknowledge a serial killer in its midst?

Every voice carries patterns, subtle as fingerprints, waiting to be measured. Voiceprint and audio forensics turn whispers into evidence, peeling back edits, splices, and static to ask: is this testimony, or just the echo of suspicion?

From breakthroughs that sharpened truth to collapses that freed the guilty, the science of sound has always walked a razor’s edge between clarity and doubt.

Full write-up here.

Your Voice on the Record

• How does the fragility of a voice as evidence change your view of justice?

What happens when strength collides with fear and ambition? Killer Sally is not a typical crime story. It pulls you into a world where muscle is currency and control is contested on and off the stage.

The Case in Brief

This three-part Netflix series follows Sally McNeil, a former Marine and bodybuilder whose life veered into chaos under the bright lights of competition and the shadows of her personal world. The series uses home videos, archival footage, and rare firsthand accounts to reveal how image and reality can fracture in ways the tabloids never managed to capture.

Why It Stands Out

Killer Sally takes viewers somewhere unusual, inside the closed world of bodybuilding, where power and vulnerability are always on display. Interviews feel raw, the production choices cut deeper than surface spectacle, and the story is framed with context rather than clichés.

The Lure of the Death House Landlady

What if your next landlord turned out to be your undoing? Dorothea Helen Puente, born 1929 in Redlands, California, and later dubbed the Death House Landlady, pulled off just that.

She presented herself as a benign matron running a cozy Sacramento boarding house for the elderly, mentally ill, and addicted... until the bodies started surfacing in her yard, buried like secrets waiting to rot. Her crimes unfolded throughout the 1980s, culminating in her arrest in November 1988 and fading into her death in prison in 2011.

The Making of a Predator

Puente’s childhood reads like a tragedy. Her father, a cotton picker plagued by tuberculosis, was abusive and often threatened to kill himself in front of his children. He never carried it out; the disease claimed him when she was eight. Her mother died soon after in a car crash, and the siblings…