generation why

What’s it like to watch 24 hours of true crime?

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by: Maddie Rowley

Yes, you read that right! 24 hours of true crime documentaries! In late May I learned that Hunt A Killer was chosen to complete MagellanTV’s #TrueCrimeDreamJob challenge and I obviously accepted. Watching true crime is one of my all-time favorite ways to relax and I was excited to share the experience with our social media followers (many of whom are also true crime aficionados). 

If MagellanTV doesn’t sound like a familiar true crime doc outlet, let me introduce you! MagellanTV is an entertainment company founded by documentary filmmakers that curates awesome documentaries from around the world into one website and app. One of the things that struck me the most about the documentaries was the diverse selection they offered. I watched shows from Ireland, England, India, the U.S., Asia and more!

The #TrueCrimeDreamJob Challenge Parameters:

I would watch 24 hours of a predetermined, set list of MagellenTV’s true crime documentaries and would share my thoughts on social media along the way. I was allowed to split the 24 hours into two working days (12 hours one day and 12 hours the next) and could start at any time. 

Oh, and did I mention I was in the middle of a cross-country move? The true crime challenge took precedence, though, and the late night spent wrapping up my challenge on the second day was well worth it!

Here’s what I watched in order:

  1. Manson’s Missing Victims (48 min)

  2. The Family - Inside the Manson Cult (91 min)

  3. Tortured to Death - Murdering the Nanny (44 min)

  4. Murder on the Internet (2 episodes, 86 min total)

  5. Women on Death Row (53 min)

  6. Killer in the Family (45 min)

  7. The Columbine Massacre - In the Killer’s Mind (51 min)

  8. Last Confessions of the Cannibal - The Strange Story of Alexander Pearce (58 min) 

  9. Behind Bars: The World’s Toughest Prisons (6 episodes, 287 min total)

  10. Parachute Murder Plot (46 min)

  11. Art Trafficking - A Grey Market (53 min)

  12. Crimes that Made History (5 episodes, (126 min total) 

  13. Jonestown: Paradise Lost (100 min)

  14. Undercover Asia: Black Markets and Slave Trades (3 episodes, 133 min total)

  15. Trafficking Pills (54 min)

  16. Delhi Cops (2 episodes, 93 min total)

You can see the range of subjects peppered throughout their watch list: historical crimes, art crimes, prisons, Charles Manson, Jonestown, and more. This kept me on my toes throughout my time in front of the TV because the documentaries always covered something new. 

My Favorites: 

I had three distinct documentaries that stood out to me as favorites: Tortured to Death: Murdering the Nanny, Parachute Murder Plot, and Art Trafficking: A Grey Market and okay a fourth one called Killer in the Family.

I was surprised that I hadn’t already heard of the story surrounding Tortured to Death: Murdering the Nanny before I started watching it. The documentary covers the September 2017 murder of 21-year-old au pair, Sophie Lionnet by her crazed employers, Sabrina Kouider, 35, and Ouissem Medouni, 40. Kouider believed Lionnet was having an affair with her ex-boyfriend and former boy band member of “Boyzone,” Mark Walton, and that she was also working as a spy for him. These claims were completely false, but Kouider and Medouni proceeded to starve, torture, and verbally abuse the young French nanny, who was originally hired to watch Kouider’s children that she shared with her ex, Walton. The details in this one were grim, and the interviews provided more detail than I could find in most articles that I read about the case after I finished. 

I had actually heard about the Parachute Murder Plot story on a Generation Why podcast episode a few months ago, but it was interesting to watch the case unfold and put faces to names. I don’t want to give too much away (because it’s such an insane story) but basically it involves a woman named Victoria Cilliers who was an avid skydiver. Her husband gifted her a skydiving trip after she gave birth to their son, but during the dive her parachute never deployed and she hit the ground… HARD. Who messed with her parachute and why? The puzzling investigation unfolds from there. I bet I can give you ONE guess as to who it was though…

Least Favorites:

I used to watch a lot of “Locked Up Abroad” growing up and I think I sort of overdid it, so in my opinion, I could have gone without “Behind Bars: The World’s Toughest Prisons.” Also, while interesting, The Columbine Killer: In the Killer’s Mind just seemed a little too exploitative for me, and I thought it was strange that the documentary was done by a French crew who didn’t seem to know enough about American high schools. 

Other than those two, though I really enjoyed the documentaries and I feel like some of them were educational in that I learned about things I never knew or even thought about before (Delhi Cops and Killer in the Family were really eye-opening) as well as the “Blood Jade” episode in Undercover Asia: Black Markets and Slave Trades which covers the dangerous jade mining black market in Myanmar. I ended up going down a wormhole of research after watching that one!


If you want to check out these MagellanTV documentaries, you can sign up for a free trial here, or catch some of them streaming on Amazon, iOS, Roku, and more.