With the recent release of Carmel: Who Killed María Marta?, I’m reminded how many excellent international true crime documentaries have popped up on Netflix in the past year.
There’s reading required, but these shows will draw you into some of the most famous unsolved murder cases from Germany, Spain, Argentina and more.
The Alcàsser Murders
This five-part series explores the gruesome deaths of Miriam Garcia, Antonia Gomez and Desiree Hernandez, three teenage girls who were abducted, raped, tortured and murdered in a small Spanish town in 1992. More accurately, the series details the media circus that relentlessly covered the story from every absurd angle, despite the ethical consequences.
Who Killed Little Gregory?
Here’s another terrifying small town murder that makes you wonder if you can ever really know your neighbors.
The 1984 murder of four-year-old Grégory Villemin remains unsolved, but because he was abducted from his home in a tiny French town, the list of suspects was small and suspicion fell heavily on his parents. The case became a media spectacle in France, and it’s a pretty wild story with plenty of twists and turns.
Nisman: The Prosecutor, the President, and the Spy
This series, which caused a political firestorm in Argentina earlier this year with its release, provides a fascinating look into the 2015 death of Alberto Nisman, a well-known prosecutor who investigated the Argentinian government’s alleged cover-up of the country’s most devastating terror attack, the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires.
Days before his death, Nisman accused then-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of obstructing justice in a complicated conspiracy involving Iranian terrorists. When his body was discovered in his apartment a day before he was scheduled to testify before Congress, with a single bullet in his head, the theory that he committed suicide seemed equally plausible and awfully naive.
A Perfect Crime
In the aftermath of Germany’s reunification, politician Detlev Karsten Rohwedder was tasked with an unenviable responsibility: to break up and sell off East Germany’s state-owned companies and prepare the formerly communist country to rejoin the market economy. As detailed by this documentary series, the cure he proscribed was akin to breaking a bone in order to reset it, and it appeared that the political tension boiled over when Rohwedder was assassinated at his home in Düsseldorf in 1991. His death remains unsolved, in part because the number of potential suspects is almost endless.
A few others I’ve covered before:
Killer Ratings
Shadow of Truth
Out of Thin Air
i only like murder 