Kim Kardashian’s ‘The System’ and Five More Riveting True Crime Podcasts

Pat Saperstein
·3 min read
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The world of podcasting is always expanding, but it’s not always easy to find out what’s new in your preferred genre. Sometimes it takes months for a new series to gather steam and become a word of mouth hit, and meanwhile, you’re sitting on the freeway with nothing new to listen to. But “The System,” the recent podcast release from Kim Kardashian, gained instant notoriety as its host is one of the most famous women in the world, who has a strong interest in criminal justice, as she demonstrated on her Oxygen show “The Justice Project.”

Uncovering stories of the wrongly convicted as Kardashian does in “The System” is one of the most popular sub-genres of true crime, a category which has exploded in the past few years.

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If you’re looking for a brand-new story to obsess over, here are six recent series that tell fascinating tales of people, places and crime, from a Mormon community in Mexico to a hippie commune in West Virginia.

‘The System’

Kim Kardashian looks at the case of Kevin Keith, who was convicted by an all-white jury in a 1994 triple murder case. Kardashian and producer Lori Rothschild Ansaldi look into investigation tapes, news briefings and interviews with Keith, his family members and officials involved in the case, to find out why everything doesn’t seem to add up around Keith’s conviction. The eight-episode series has already drawn some controversy around whether Kardashian’s team reached out to the victims of the brutal crimes.

‘Deliver Us From Ervil’

In the vein of “Under the Banner of Heaven,” the 15-episode series looks at a group of Mormons who moved to Mexico in the 1940s. When the founder’s son, Ervil LeBaron, began trying to gain power in the community, he unleashed a multi-generational crimewave that continues to affect the tight-knit village. Journalist Jesse Hyde makes use of his family’s Mormon background to help him investigate and understand the factors that ultimately led to theft, kidnappings and murders.

‘I Was Never There’

A mother and daughter investigative team delve into the mystery of Marsha “Mudd” Ferber: a West Virginia hippie, entrepreneur and commune leader who vanished one day in 1988 after getting entangled in drug dealing and financial problems. Karen Zelermyer was in Ferber’s circle of counter-culture friends who always wondered what happened to their free-spirited companion, and she enlists her daughter Jamie to help tell the story of the tumultuous times that led to her disappearance.

‘Death of an Artist’

The prominent sculptor Carl Andre came under suspicion when his artist wife, the Cuban refugee Ana Mendieta, died after falling out the window of their apartment just a few months after they were married. More than 35 years later, host Helen Molesworth revisits her death, the murder trial of her husband and the controversy that swept the art world.

‘Bone Valley’

When an 18-year-old woman is found dead in a Florida phosphate pit in 1987, her husband is eventually convicted of murdering her. But 15 years later, new evidence points to a violent teenaged neighbor, who has since confessed. Host Gilbert King, the author of Pulitzer-Prize winning “Devil in the Grove,” uncovers why her husband is still behind bars and what else the teenager was responsible for.

Le Monstre
Le Monstre

‘Le Monstre’

One of Europe’s most notorious criminals in the 1980s and ’90s, though not as well known in the U.S., was Marc Dutroux — a serial killer, pedophile and kidnapper. More than 300,000 Belgians protested the mishandling of his case, which led to a total overhaul of the country’s criminal justice system. The brutal crimes against young girls, and their bungled aftermath, were known as The Dutroux Affair.

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