True Crime To Stream and Read, From Moral Panics to Stolen Children

Tired: True crime adaptations.

Wired: True crime documentaries that you can stream, paired with true crime books that are related in topic.

Learn about stolen children in Georgia and Argentina; follow femicide cases in Mexico; uncover the harsh injustice of the American prison industrial complex; and witness the origin of the moral panics of the ’80s and ’90s in these true crime documentaries and books.

Stolen Children (HBO Max)

After her mother died, investigative journalist Tamuna Museridze discovered that she was adopted. While searching for her biological parents, she uncovers a horrific crime dating back to the ‘70s in Georgia. Women were told the babies they’d delivered a few days before in the hospital had died, but in fact, the babies were sold on a black market. The documentary also follows Ano and Amy, who didn’t know they were adopted until they found each other and discovered they were sisters. You can stream Martyna Wojciechowska and Jowita Baraniecka’s documentary on HBO Max and watch the trailer here.

A Flower Traveled in My Blood by Haley Cohen Gilliland

During a brutal military dictatorship in Argentina from 1976 to 1983, the government tortured, murdered, and disappeared thousands of citizens. Among them were pregnant women, including Rosa Tarlovsky de Roisinblit’s daughter, Patricia. Journalist Haley Cohen Gilliland tells the story of Rosa and other abuelas who formed las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo as they sought justice and searched to find the stolen children.

The Prosecutor (Netflix)

The three-part docuseries follows Mexico City’s first prosecutor tasked with femicide cases. The documentary focuses on the many gender-biased murder case leads Sayuri Herrera and her team get a day. Not only do they work these cases, they do so while giving respect and voice to the victims. You can stream The Prosecutor (la fiscal) on Netflix, where you can also see the trailer with English subtitles. Here is the Spanish trailer.

Liliana’s Invincible Summer by Cristina Rivera Garza

Cristina Rivera Garza’s true crime memoir won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Memoir or Autobiography. Twenty-nine years after Cristina’s sister Liliana, a 20-year-old student of architecture, was murdered, Cristina decided to demand the files from the case and follow the investigation. Liliana’s diary entries are added throughout, showing how a teenage relationship led to her murder years later.

The Alabama Solution (HBO Max)

My Midnight Years: Surviving Jon Burge’s Police Torture Ring and Death Row by Ronald Kitchen, Thai Jones, Logan M. McBride

In his true crime memoir, Ronald Kitchen recounts how he was beaten by police to confess to a crime he didn’t commit and how the “justice” system failed him at every turn, landing him on death row. While on death row, he discovered that he was not the only Black man sentenced to death after being tortured into confessing to something they didn’t do because of police commander Jon Burge and his crew of detectives. Kitchen studied law while in prison and, in 2009, won his freedom.

Satan Wants You (Tubi and Amazon Prime)

Using controversial recovered-memory therapy, psychiatrist Larry Pazder claimed to have unlocked his patient Michelle Smith’s abuse at the hands of Satanists who were stealing babies. The book he wrote, Michelle Remembers, is what ignited the Satanic Panic of the ’80s and ’90s, which may sound like a ridiculous and funny thing to anyone who didn’t live through it (or has since learned about the reality), but it led to many arrests and court cases accusing people of abusing children in Satanic rituals, many of whom were daycare workers. The documentary, streaming on Tubi and Amazon Prime, dives into how the book ignited a moral panic and how it’s still impacting society today. You can watch the trailer here.

Unmask Alice: LSD, Satanic Panic, and the Imposter Behind the World’s Most Notorious Diaries by Rick Emerson

Contrary to all the massive red flags about its 1971 publication, the book Go Ask Alice—a published diary about a teen suffering from drug addiction—became a hit and created a drug panic. Then, in 1979, a similar diary-formatted book, this time by a dead teenage “Satanist,” led to a witch hunt. Rick Emerson dives into the history of society at the time and the real author behind both of these “teen” diaries.