Best Cold Case Podcasts: Unsolved Crimes Worth Your Time
Cold case podcasts at their best are genuine investigative journalism that reopens forgotten crimes and sometimes solves them. These are the best in the genre — rated honestly.
ListenTrueCrime Editorial
Cold case podcasts live or die on one thing: are they actually investigating, or are they just reading a Wikipedia page into a microphone?
The best ones in the genre are genuine contributions to investigative journalism. They contact witnesses who've never spoken publicly, file Freedom of Information requests, commission forensic analysis, and occasionally — remarkably — help solve crimes that have sat unsolved for decades.
These are the cold case podcasts that earn their place.
Your Own Backyard: The Gold Standard
Your Own Backyard by Chris Lambert is the most important cold case podcast ever made.
Lambert began investigating the 1996 disappearance of Kristin Smart, a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo student who vanished after a fraternity party when she was 19. The case had gone cold for decades when Lambert started producing episodes in 2019. His investigation — which involved tracking down witnesses, reviewing thousands of pages of documents, and making connections that law enforcement had missed — contributed directly to the 2021 arrest of Paul Flores.
Flores was convicted in 2022. His father Ruben Flores was convicted as an accessory. Kristin Smart received justice 25 years after her disappearance.
This is what podcasting can do at its best. Lambert didn't have a journalism degree or a media company behind him. He had a conviction that a wrong hadn't been righted and the patience to keep investigating when it would have been easier to stop.
Rating: 10/10 — The best cold case podcast ever made
The Coldest Case in Laramie: NYT/Serial Quality
The New York Times partnered with Serial Productions (the company behind the Serial podcast) to investigate the 1985 murder of Shelli Wiley on the University of Wyoming campus. The case was officially closed — a conviction was secured — but journalist Kim Barker believed the full story hadn't been told.
The resulting podcast is meticulous, patient, and ultimately troubling about the original investigation. It belongs in the same category as Serial — the kind of audio journalism that makes you reconsider everything you thought you knew about a case.
Rating: 8/10 — Essential for investigative journalism fans
Browse The Coldest Case in Laramie →
In the Red Clay: America's Most Baffling Disappearance
Nine-year-old Asha Degree walked out of her home in North Carolina at 4am on Valentine's Day 2000 in the middle of a thunderstorm and was never seen again. No witness heard anything. No security camera caught her. Her belongings were found buried in a bag two years later, 26 miles from her home.
Tenderfoot TV's In the Red Clay applies serious investigative journalism to one of America's most genuinely mysterious disappearances — and is honest about how much it doesn't know.
What makes it distinctive: the host doesn't pretend to know more than they do. The mystery of Asha Degree remains genuinely unsolved, and the podcast respects that uncertainty rather than papering over it with false certainty.
Rating: 7/10 — Outstanding for the quality of its uncertainty
The Trail Went Cold: Weekly Cold Case Coverage
Robin Warder covers a new cold case every week — missing persons, unsolved murders, mysterious deaths — with a level of research that most true crime podcasters simply don't match.
The Trail Went Cold is a sleeper hit: it has a fraction of the audience of Crime Junkie despite being comparably (and sometimes more) thorough. Warder covers cases that often get no coverage elsewhere, and his commitment to accuracy and victim respect is consistent.
For listeners who want a reliable weekly cold case companion, this is the best option in the genre.
Rating: 6/10 — Consistently underrated
Missing Maura Murray: A Community Investigation
Maura Murray disappeared in February 2004 after a minor car crash on a New Hampshire highway. She was 21, a nursing student at UMass Amherst. Despite a large initial search, no body was ever found. Her case has generated more sustained community interest than almost any missing persons case in America.
The Missing Maura Murray podcast has been part of that investigation, and has at times uncovered information that law enforcement appeared unaware of. The case remains open and unsolved.
Fair warning: the podcast is one of the best examples in the genre but can feel overwhelming if you don't know the case. Start with a summary of the basics, then dive in.
Rating: 7/10 — Essential for the Maura Murray community; gripping but complex for newcomers
The Delphi Murders: A Case That Had to Wait
In February 2017, Libby German and Abby Williams went hiking on a trail near Delphi, Indiana. Libby's phone captured audio and video of the man who would murder them both that afternoon. The resulting image — a heavyset man walking a bridge trail — became one of the most circulated wanted images in American history.
For five years, nobody was charged. The podcast documenting the investigation kept the case in public consciousness and contributed to the community pressure that eventually led to a 2022 arrest.
The Delphi Murders is a case study in how podcasts interact with active investigations — for better and sometimes for worse.
Rating: 7/10 — Important document of an important case
Cold Case Obsessed: Deep Dives Done Right
Cold Case Obsessed by Mike Morford and Mike Ferguson covers cold cases with a commitment to original research and victim advocacy. The two-host format gives it an energy that solo podcasts sometimes lack, and the case selection consistently focuses on stories that don't get enough attention elsewhere.
What distinguishes it: the hosts are clear about what they know versus what they're inferring, which is a rarer quality than you'd hope for in this genre.
Rating: 7/10 — Reliable and smart
What Makes Cold Cases Go Cold?
Understanding why investigations stall is part of what makes cold case podcasting valuable. The most common reasons:
Physical evidence degrades. DNA analysis technology has improved enormously since the 1980s and 1990s — cases that were impossible to prosecute then can now be solved with trace biological material. This is why so many old cold cases are being reopened.
Witnesses disappear or change. Memories fade. Witnesses move, die, or lose motivation to cooperate. Cold case investigators spend enormous time tracking down witnesses who've moved across the country or abroad.
Investigative resources are redirected. Police departments have finite resources. Active cases take priority. Cold cases fall to dedicated cold case units — which are often underfunded.
Initial investigation failures. Some cases go cold because the original investigation was conducted badly. Evidence was contaminated, witnesses were dismissed, or investigators focused on the wrong person. Cold case teams sometimes have to undo as much as they add.
The absence of motive, relationship, or geography. Cases without a clear suspect are harder to solve. The hardest cases are those with no known relationship between victim and perpetrator and no physical evidence — which describes a disturbingly large proportion of unsolved missing persons cases.
The Technology That's Reopening Cold Cases
Modern cold case investigations are increasingly driven by:
Genetic genealogy. The technique that identified the Golden State Killer uses DNA from crime scenes and compares it against genealogy databases to identify relatives of the unknown suspect. It has since been used to solve dozens of cold cases.
Updated CCTV and digital forensics. Cases from the 1990s and early 2000s often have CCTV footage that was too degraded to identify individuals. Modern enhancement software has changed that.
Social media and digital trails. People leave much more recoverable digital footprints than they did before smartphones. Cold cases involving victims from the pre-smartphone era often have digital evidence available once investigators know where to look.
Podcast listener tips. Multiple cold case podcasts have received tips from listeners who recognised details from their own communities — information that has led to arrests.
Summary
| Podcast | Case Type | Rating |
|---|---|---|
| Your Own Backyard | Single case investigation | 10/10 |
| The Coldest Case in Laramie | NYT investigation | 8/10 |
| Missing Maura Murray | Missing persons | 7/10 |
| The Delphi Murders | Active investigation | 7/10 |
| Cold Case Obsessed | Weekly cold cases | 7/10 |
| In the Red Clay | Missing child | 7/10 |
| The Trail Went Cold | Weekly cold cases | 6/10 |
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