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Eammon Jacobs
- "Baby Reindeer" tells the real-life story of an aspiring comedian who is stalked by an older woman.
- The show became a pop culture phenomenon after fans hunted for the person the stalker was based on.
- Here are some other bizarre true crime shows and documentaries to watch after "Baby Reindeer."
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Netflix has turned the true crime genre into a goldmine in the last decade, with "Baby Reindeer" its latest huge success.
It follows the story of Donny Dunn, an aspiring comedian who is stalked by an older woman after giving her a free drink in the pub where he works.
The series, which is based on the real-life experiences of its writer and lead actor, Richard Gadd, grew in popularity after armchair detectives tried to find his real-life stalker.
Fiona Harvey came forward to confirm that the character was based on her — but denied stalking Gadd in a lengthy interview with Piers Morgan.
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Regardless of the drama surrounding "Baby Reindeer," the show itself is an impressive dramatization thanks to the bizarre nature of what Gadd went through.
Here are a handful of other strange true crime shows and documentaries that you should watch next.
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1. "Can I Tell You a Secret?"
"Baby Reindeer" highlighted the trauma that can be inflicted by stalking, but Netflix's "Can I Tell You a Secret" explored how difficult it is for victims to get justice for what they've been through.
The three-part docuseries examines Britain's most prolific cyberstalker, Matthew Hardy, who used a horde of fake social media accounts to hound his victims across the country.
It also spotlights police officer Kevin Anderson, who details the hours of hard work that went into catching Hardy.
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2. "The Pillowcase Murders"
True crime fans will get plenty out of "The Pillowcase Murders" on Paramount Plus thanks to the sprawling crimes of convicted murderer Billy Chemirmir.
The authorities reexamined 700 cases after catching Chemirmir and later accused him of killing 22 elderly women in Texas retirement homes between 2016 and 2018. He was found guilty of two murders.
He posed as a maintenance man to gain entry into care facilities before smothering his victims and stealing their belongings, prosecutors alleged.
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3. "Under the Bridge"
Hulu's limited series, "Under the Bridge," dramatizes the 1997 murder of Canadian teenager Reena Virk by two teenagers in Saanich, British Columbia, Canada.
It's based on Rebecca Godfrey's 2005 book of the same name about the incident. Riley Keough plays the author in the show opposite "Killers of the Flower Moon" star Lily Gladstone as Officer Cam Bentland.
Fun fact: Although Godfrey investigates Virk's death in "Under the Bridge," she didn't assist the authorities in real life.
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4. "Who Killed Jill Dando?"
British TV presenter Jill Dando was killed outside her London home in 1999, which sparked off a huge manhunt to find her killer.
The three-part Netflix docuseries takes audiences through the various theories that detectives considered for the motive behind her assassination.
The most interesting part of the series is that Barry George — the man who was convicted and acquitted of Dando's murder — appears in the docuseries to explain what it was like for him when he was originally found guilty of killing the presenter.
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5. "The Asunta Case"
Another true crime dramatization that is a must-watch on Netflix is "The Asunta Case," based on the murder of 12-year-old Asunta Basterra in 2013 in Spain.
Her parents, Alfonso Basterra and Rosario Porto, went to prison in 2015 for killing their daughter.
The series follows the couple as investigators question them about the murder. At the same time, the detectives involved with the case also try to reckon with their feelings about the shocking nature of Asunta's death.
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6. "Love & Death"
In 1980, Candy Montgomery was accused of murdering her lover's wife, Betty Gore, by hitting her 41 times with an ax. She claimed it was in self-defense and was acquitted of the crime in a trial later that year.
While the story has been told before in a 1990 TV movie, "A Killing in a Small Town," and 2022's "Candy" miniseries, HBO Max's takes audiences further into Montgomery's life thanks to Elizabeth Olsen's engaging performance.
The show paints a broader picture of why Montgomery killed Gore, as well as focusing on the specific reasons behind her affair with Allan Gore in the first place.
Last year, Olsen said that filming the "Love & Death" ax murder scene was so "scary" that she asked a stunt double to take over instead.
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7. "American Nightmare"
The 2015 kidnapping of Denise Huskins from her boyfriend's home in Vallejo, California, was dubbed by the press as the "Gone Girl" case because her disappearance and subsequent reappearance bore some striking similarities to the David Fincher movie.
However, the truth was far stranger than fiction, as Huskins was forced into a horrific ordeal by a disbarred lawyer, Matthew Muller.
Miller was convicted on federal kidnapping charges and was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Huskins and her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, explain every harrowing detail of the case in Netflix's "American Nightmare," including how the media treated them as criminals.
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8. "Under the Banner of Heaven"
Andrew Garfield plays a Mormon police detective who's tasked with finding out who murdered a young mother, Brenda Lafferty (Daisy Edgar-Jones), and her baby daughter in FX's "Under the Banner of Heaven."
Garfield and Edgar-Jones are also joined by Wyatt Russell, who plays Brenda's brother-in-law, Dan Lafferty.
The series is based on John Krakauer's book, "Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith," which examined the dangers of fundamentalist Mormonism through the lens of Brenda's murder.
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