Best True Crime Podcasts for Women: Shows That Take Victims Seriously

Women make up the majority of true crime's audience — estimates put the figure between 60% and 75% depending on the platform and survey methodology. This is not surprising. True crime about violence against women is consumed primarily by women, which reflects both the prevalence of that violence and the fact that understanding danger is practically useful information.

But the genre's most popular shows are not always the best for female listeners. Some shows use violence against women as entertainment without the framing that makes it meaningful. Some have hosts who treat female victims differently from male victims. Some replicate the media's historic bias toward certain types of victims (young, white, conventionally attractive) over others.

This list is for listeners who want shows that do better than that.

My Favorite Murder

The most significant feminist podcast in the genre. Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark built My Favorite Murder as explicitly feminist true crime — and the community that formed around it (the "Murderinos") is among the most engaged fanbases in podcasting.

What makes it feminist in practice: the hosts approach each case with awareness of how victims are discussed, how law enforcement often dismisses female victims, and how social systems enable violence against women. The catchphrase "Stay Sexy, Don't Get Murdered" is their version of refusing to frame safety as women's individual responsibility — a deliberate inversion of the "she shouldn't have been there" framing that characterises too much true crime commentary.

The humour is specific to this framework. People who find true crime comedy offensive sometimes miss that the humour here is directed at perpetrators, institutions, and toxic cultural patterns — not at victims.

Crime Junkie

Not explicitly feminist, but consistent about victim-centred framing. Ashley Flowers named the show "Crime Junkie" rather than "Killer Junkie" deliberately — the focus is on victims and their stories, not on perpetrators.

Flowers and Brit Prawat treat every victim with the same seriousness regardless of background. This is more meaningful than it sounds: many true crime shows, consciously or not, spend more time and more care on victims who fit certain demographic profiles. Crime Junkie doesn't.

The show also excels at covering female victims without making gender the entire story. Cases are about specific people, specific circumstances, and specific failures of justice — not about "women's vulnerability" as a category.

Morbid

Hosts Alaina Urquhart (a mortician) and Ash Kelley (a hairdresser) bring a warm, feminine dynamic to Morbid that feels distinctly different from male-hosted true crime shows. The background in forensic pathology means the crime content is more anatomically detailed than most, but the hosting dynamic is supportive and empathetic.

The show covers cases involving female victims with the same depth as any other — no "she was asking for it" subtext, no victim-blaming framing. For many female listeners, this consistency across different victim types is its own recommendation.

Teacher's Pet

Hedley Thomas's investigation of the 1982 disappearance of Lynette Dawson is specifically about domestic homicide — a husband who, according to the investigation, killed his wife to pursue a relationship with a teenage student. The case sat unsolved for four decades partly because of the status and connections of Chris Dawson and the systemic failures of law enforcement to properly investigate.

Teacher's Pet is thus a story about domestic violence, about the way systems protect perpetrators, and about the way women's disappearances are explained away rather than investigated. It's essential listening for female true crime fans, and it's one of the few podcasts in the genre that can be directly credited with a conviction.

Missing & Murdered: Finding Cleo

CBC journalist Connie Walker's investigation into Cleo Nicotine — an Indigenous child removed from her Saskatchewan family by Canadian authorities in the 1970s — is one of the most important true crime podcasts ever made.

It addresses: the crisis of murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls in Canada; the residential school system and forced adoption policies; and the way Indigenous women's disappearances receive a fraction of the media attention given to white victims. This last point is explicit and unsparing, and it contextualises what "taking victims seriously" actually means in practice.

If you listen to one show from this list that challenges how you think about the genre, make it this one.

In the Dark (Season 2)

APM Reports journalist Madeleine Baran's investigation into Curtis Flowers addresses race and gender in the justice system in ways that are uncomfortable for most true crime audiences. The show documents how a Black man in Mississippi was tried six times for the same crime by a prosecutor who — statistically documented — discriminated in jury selection.

The victims in the Flowers case were all women. The treatment of their deaths — and the failure of the justice system that followed — intersects with the show's core argument about how race shapes every aspect of criminal prosecution.

This is not a comfortable listen. It's not meant to be.

The Fall of Man

UK-produced podcast covering cases involving male violence against women, with particular attention to the failure of institutional systems — police, courts, social services — to prevent harm that was predictable. A more analytical, less entertainment-oriented show than most on this list, but essential for listeners who want to understand criminal justice failures specifically in the context of gendered violence.

The Problem With Most True Crime

The difficult truth about the true crime genre is that it often replicates the problems it purports to examine. Shows that spend 45 minutes on a murdered woman's appearance and background, and three minutes on the justice system failures that let her killer operate, are not actually taking victims seriously. They're using victims as content.

The shows on this list do better. They're not perfect — the genre is never perfect — but they approach female victims with the seriousness they deserve, and they're honest about the systemic factors that enable violence.

For female listeners, the best true crime content is content where you feel like the producer is on your side — not just curious about how crime happens, but genuinely concerned about why it's allowed to.

Browse all female-hosted podcasts →