Dennis Nilsen

On April 3, 1985, Derek and Nancy Haysom were discovered slashed and stabbed to death in their Virginia home. Their 20-year-old daughter Elizabeth Haysom and her teenage boyfriend Jens Söring would become central to one of America's most shocking crimes—now examined in Netflix's documentary Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering & Haysom.

On August 13, 1996, in Moss Point, Mississippi, a debt collection visit turned into a horrific crime when grocery store butcher Gary Carl Simmons Jr. and accomplice Timothy Milano killed 21-year-old Jeffrey Wolfe, tortured and raped his girlfriend Charlene Brooks, and dismembered the body using butcher's knives.

When HBO's The Jinx premiered on February 8, 2015, few expected the documentary series about New York real estate heir Robert Durst would culminate in his arrest just hours before the finale aired. The six-part investigation, directed by Andrew Jarecki and produced by Marc Smerling, would ultimately help solve a two-decade-old murder and reshape how true crime documentaries intersect with active criminal investigations.

On February 8, 1983, a routine plumbing job in North London uncovered human remains that would lead to one of Britain's most disturbing serial murder cases. The discovery of Dennis Nilsen — and his confessed 15 victims — revealed critical gaps in how European police tracked predatory killers operating within urban anonymity.

Dennis Nilsen, a Scottish-born serial killer, murdered a minimum of 12 young men and boys in London between 1978 and 1983. His crimes went undetected for years until a plumber's discovery in February 1983 led to his arrest and eventual confession to one of Britain's most shocking killing sprees.