Captive For 18 Years: The Jaycee Lee Story Is Your Next Netflix True-Crime Watch

If you’re one of the millions of people who found themselves in equal parts captivated and horrified by The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann on Netflix, there’s another show you might want to check out.

Captive For 18 Years: The Jaycee Lee Story is a one off-documentary that follows the story of 11-year-old school girl Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was abducted by convicted sex offender Phillip Garrido, whose wife, Nancy, shocked the girl with a stun gun.

Amazingly, not only did Jaycee survive the horrifying ordeal, she was found alive - 18 years later. The documentary shows Jaycee as she describes, in her own words, the terrible abuse she suffered during the years she had been held captive.

If you’re struggling to find your next binge watch (or four) Netflix has released a list of what it considers to be its best true-crime documentaries.

What are the best true crime series on Netflix?

If you’re the type of person who obsesses over owl theories, police conspiracies or strange new-age cults then the chances are there’ll be something for you in this lot.

Netflix has been dominating the true crime game seemingly since Making A Murderer hit the streaming service back in 2015. It became the stand out show of the year, giving rise to an army of armchair theorists and amateur detectives determined to uncover injustice and solve the unsolvable.

So, if that type of thing is very much your cup of tea, Netflix have also recommended Shadow of Truth, Casting Jonbenet, Evil Genius, The Confession Tapes, The Keepers (an incredibly dark tale) Wild Wild Country, and Abducted in Plain Sight - which many viewers described as one of the ‘most twisted pieces of television they’d ever seen’.

The bizarre programme tells the true story of Robert Berchtold, who kidnapped his friends’ 12-year-old daughter and fled to Mexico where he tried to brainwash her into believing she was an alien, and that her ‘mission’ was to conceive a child with him by her 16th birthday in order to ‘save the alien planet’.

I would also add The Jinx to this list, a 2015 documentary miniseries about New York real estate heir Robert Durst, an accused murderer followed by controversy his whole life. The story is brilliantly told with first-hand interviews featuring Durst himself and an unbelievable reveal in the final episode…

What other streaming services have good true crime documentaries?

Disney+ has a pretty good True Crime category which includes a variety of different films, series and specials inspired by True Crime Stories - and it just so happens that TOTUM members can save over 15% with a 12 month Disney+ subscription.

If you haven't seen it, 'The Dropout' is a dramatisation of the frankly unbelievable tale of alleged fraud committed by the disgraced biotechnology company Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes, played by Amanda Seyfried.

The level of investment she gained, and not to mention the high-profile of some of the people Holmes persuaded to buy into her vision to provide blood screening to patients in the US is mind-blowing...

If you're looking for more of a real-life documentary - look no further than Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story.

The three-part Hulu original looks at the mysterious disappearance of a seven-year-old boy, Steven Stayner, in 1972. Miraculously, nearly 10 years later, the teenager reappears, but as one joyous brother returns home, another brother within the same family charts a path for himself that turns into pure and utter disbelief.

The Russo Brothers ('Avengers: Endgame', 'The Gray Man') are executive producers on this one.

Amazon Prime - which TOTUM members can get a six-month FREE trial of - also has a decent selection for any true-crime aficionados out there.

Notable titles include Truth And Lies: The Menendez Brothers, which examines the 1989 killing of their parents by brothers Lyle and Erik Menendez, The House of Suh - a spine-chilling look at a real-life murder within a seemingly perfect midwestern Korean immigrant household, and for any Mafia obsessives, The Making of the Mob is an unmissable docu-series that sheds light on the history of organised crime groups that operated in New York and Chicago between 1900 and the 1950s. 

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