I love a good true crime documentary. The exploration of actual events adds a layer of authenticity to the story not usually found in fiction. The insight into the complex minds of human beings. The roller coaster of emotions felt deeply for someone you’ve never met. The way these stories stay with us compels us to reflect on themes of morality, justice, and society. True Crime Documentaries work any day, any time, to stimulate your mind, keep you captivated, and make your jaw drop.
From narratives on a child orchestrating the murder of her parents to polygamist religious cults, here are 7 True Crime Documentaries that are batshit crazy;
Bad Surgeon: Love Under The Knife
This documentary was extremely shocking and unsettling. It lingered in my thoughts for a long while after finishing it. I could be going about my day when I suddenly remember that in this world, there was a renowned and well-respected doctor named Paolo Macchiari who performed the world’s first synthetic organ transplant, replacing a patient’s trachea, or windpipe, with a plastic tube. The operation was going to revolutionize organ transplantation. Patients would no longer have to wait for a donor organ, only to risk biological rejection. Organs will be more available on demand. Except, this procedure didn’t work AT ALL. This man was just cutting people’s throats up and replacing their windpipes with plastic tubes, and he was very much aware that every single patient he operated on died quickly and painfully post-surgery. Yet, he continued massively performing the surgeries on innocent people.
Yulia Tulik was one of his victims whose story broke my heart. She was a young single mom and though her windpipe was injured, her condition was nowhere near critical. She met Paolo when she won some kind of medical lottery that earned her a sponsored surgery with Paolo who everyone believed was the best of the best. From real-life footage in the documentary, you can immediately tell that after the surgery, Yulia knew something wasn’t right. Later on, her mom will say that when Yulia passed, she was coughing up skin from her throat. How horrible.
The Fraud, Paolo, while negligently killing people was unlawfully married to 3 women at once— keeping secret families as well as secret girlfriends. All these women genuinely believed that Paolo was their God-sent one true man because he pretended to be exactly that. He even moved to the mother of one of his victims (who died on his surgery table) and got married to her. They even had a baby together. Chile. Just go and watch it.
The Indrani Mukerjea Story: Buried Truth
This story delves into the chilling and complex case of Indrani Mukerjea, a high-profile Indian media executive who’s accused of killing her daughter, Sheena Bora. The documentary is a maze of deception, secrets, lies, and betrayal that will keep you on your toes.
In its beginning, Sheena is introduced to viewers as Indrani’s sister, later on, we discover that Indrani is actually Sheena’s mom—she didn’t want people to know because, to her, Sheena was from what she considered a former life. Your jaw will drop as you watch and learn the utterly despairing past of Sheena.
While a buried skeleton identified as Sheena’s has been found and confirmed as having a 100% DNA match with Indrani, Indrani is convinced that Sheena is still alive and has gone off-grid as a way to frame and punish her.
With this documentary, it’s literally, the more you see, the less you know. Till today, I still cannot decide whether or not Indrani orchestrated the murder of Sheena. This documentary is a must-watch if you enjoy playing detective!
Tinder Swindler
Romance scams always leave me baffled because ain’t no man in this whole wide world tricking me out of my hard-earned money. I’m always surprised to learn that many women do be sending money they can’t afford to lose, to men that they barely know. Girl, STAND UP!
Tinder Swindler follows the shocking story of a con artist, Simon Leviev who used the dating app, Tinder, to scam multiple women out of substantial sums of money—I’m talking hundreds of thousands of dollars. Simon posed as a wealthy diamond mogul and charmed his victims into a false sense of security and romance. Once he gained their trust, he manipulated these women into loaning him large amounts of money under various pretences, such as needing funds for urgent business matters or to escape dangerous situations.
The saddest thing about everything is that Simon is a free man while his victims live each day wondering how they can repay the debts they accumulated to get Simon the money he requested.
What Jennifer Did
In the 2000s, in Ontario, Canada, Jennifer Pan called 911 to report that her parents had been shot while they were together at home. After this, an investigation into why someone would attack this seemingly nice family in their suburban neighborhood was launched.
Spoiler alert: Jennifer hired people to murder her elderly parents under the guise of a home break-in. She claims she did it because she was under intense pressure from her parents to be perfect. Meanwhile, all they wanted Jennifer to do was to take her piano lessons, dump her loser boyfriend, and finish university.
Jennifer had the heart to orchestrate her parent’s murder, but she didn’t have the balls to chest and respond to questioning from the police. Therefore, the web of lies she had designed to deceive the police was weakening. Unfortunately for her, Jennifer’s dad, after a long coma, woke up and survived the gunshot. Let’s just say, he had a lot of missing details from that day to get off his chest.
Keep Sweet Pray and Obey
I’ve watched so many cult documentaries, that in real life, whenever I see a group, doesn’t matter if it’s large or small, and a man is occupying a position with a significant concentration of power, I wonder how the young girls in that group are faring.
Keep Sweet Pray and Obey is a documentary series on Netflix that explores the dark and disturbing world of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS), led by Warren Jeffs. The series provides a harrowing look into the lives of FLDS members, focusing on the strict and oppressive rules they had to follow, particularly those imposed on women and children.
Warren Jeffs even at 85 years old had a special handshake for girls who would become his wife—a triple squeeze meant you must marry him. He had approximately 78 wives. Jeffs preached that men were expected to have at least three wives. To the families of these girls, underage marriage was a massive honour. In fact, it was normal for women as young as 15 to be married off to male congregants 30 years and older under the guise of religion. Warren will tell them “You give yourself unto God, by giving yourself to your husband”. Girls weren’t allowed to work or go to school, their sole purpose was to adore Warren Jeffs, pray, and be obedient. As a viewer, you watch the brainwashing in real time and I guarantee you will be enraged.
Bad Vegan
Imagine being an attractive, rich, and successful dog mom and you meet a man who you find attractive, but only lock it down with him when you seriously believe he can fulfil his promise to bestow immortality on you and your dog.
Well, Sarma Melngailis took Anthony way too seriously and completely destroyed her life to keep up with his bizarre demands. For her, it ended with a criminal charge of fraud, severed relationships, and a ruined reputation.
At a point in Bad Vegan, I felt that Sarma wanted out of the relationship, but that meant she had to confront the truth that all she had used her hands to lose and destroy, was all for nothing. That alone could make anyone run mad, so, she chose to continue in her path of delusion and destruction to avoid confronting reality. While watching this documentary, I kept thinking, that if this happened in Naija, people would say it is Jazz. The plot of Sarma’s life had me shocked to my bone marrow.
Disciples: The Cult of TB Joshua
TB Joshua took more than a page from Warren Jeff, put a spin on it, and applied it at home here in Lagos, Nigeria. The TB Joshua film which can be viewed on YouTube, chronicles the atrocious acts and sexual offenses perpetrated by the infamous Pastor Temitope Balogun Joshua (TB. Joshua), leader and founder of Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN). I find it so horrifying when terrible deeds are committed by men who position themselves as holy religious people. But at this point, this pretence is now a plague in society. What upsets me even more is how girls and women are usually the objects of such men’s wickedness and atrocities.
TB Joshua preferred his disciples to call him ‘Daddy’. He would encourage his congregants to willingly abandon friends and family, and then seize their passports, phones, and so on. I am literally watching this and screaming to these disciples “Girl, get out. You are being prepped for abuse, get out now!!”. Disciples didn’t have access to personal mail, passports, or their cell phones. He had underage girls stopping by his office for permission to use the bathroom. Children were running on a maximum of 4 hours of sleep, you can see the dark circles under their eyes.
In the second episode of this 3 part documentary, there is plenty of footage of TB Joshua exorcising women from the spirit of lust, accusing them of having a flirting spirit and shaming them as immoral. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, this foul man was asking for virgins to sleep with. The scenes where his survivors describe how he raped them are utterly heartbreaking. Jessica, an ex-member of SCOAN, recounts how TB Joshua first molested her, “I was screaming and he told me to better shut up and stop acting like a baby”. “You want people to hear?” He would say to her.
Can you imagine how heinous TB Joshua must have been, with all the wealth he had acquired to give the girls he raped and impregnated a concoction to sicken them or the insertion of metal pieces in their vaginas as abortion care? One of such girls who underwent 3 abortions within the synagogue said, “Sometimes you find yourself singing on stage at church and people will think you are crying because the Holy Spirit is there, but in fact, you are dead inside.”
This documentary is not for the faint-hearted. The story was scary and bone-chilling, I literally had goosebumps all over.
