Where Are 8 True-Crime TV Show Subjects Now? (PHOTOS)
Joyce Mitchell
Mitchell, portrayed by Patricia Arquette in Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora, was released on parole on February 6, four and a half years after helping two inmates escape from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, New York.
Terra Newell
Newell, played by Julia Garner in Bravo’s Dirty John, killed her mother’s husband in self-defense in August 2016. She now hosts the podcast TIme Out With Terra, which “covers life, love, mental wellness, business, family, and everything else in between.”
Gypsy Rose Blanchard
In July 2016, Blanchard was sentenced to 10 years in prison for second-degree murder in the stabbing death of her abusive mother a year prior. In April 2019, as Joey King’s portrayal of her streamed on Hulu’s The Act, Blanchard’s representative announced she had accepted a proposal from a man she met through her prison’s pen pal program.
Steven Avery
Avery, the subject of the Netflix docuseries Making a Murderer, is continuing to appeal his conviction and subsequent life imprisonment for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach, which followed a wrongful 1985 sexual assault conviction that kept him in prison for 18 years. In October 2019, Avery’s attorney appealed a series of decisions by a judge in Sheboygan County, Wisconsin.
Robert Durst
In March 2015, hours before the HBO docuseries The Jinx aired its finale, its subject was arrested and later charged with first-degree murder in the December 2000 killing of his friend Susan Berman. In December 2019, Durst’s trial was scheduled to begin this February.
Lorena Bobbitt
Bobbitt, the subject of the Amazon docuseries Lorena, made national headlines in June 1993 when she cut off her husband’s penis, later alleging that he had raped her. She now runs a foundation for domestic violence survivors, and she’s executive-producing this year’s Lifetime TV movie I Was Lorena Bobbitt.
Michael Peterson
As viewers of the Netflix docuseries The Staircase witnessed, the novelist was convicted of murder in the December 2001 death of his wife Kathleen Peterson. That conviction was later thrown out, and he was freed in February 2017 after taking an Alford plea, pleading guilty to manslaughter in exchange for a sentence of time served. He recently wrote a book about the case, titling it Behind the Staircase.
O.J. Simpson
The former NFL star’s arrest and acquittal for the June 1994 murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman were covered in both the ESPN docuseries O.J.: Made in America and the FX drama The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story. In a June 2019 interview with the Associated Press, Simpson said he lives on pensions in Las Vegas and plays golf nearly every day. “Life is fine,” he added.
True crime has become a blockbuster genre on television, both in scripted and unscripted fare.
TV dramas like Escape at Dannemora and The Act not only captivate millions of viewers but also earn rave reviews and glitzy awards. And on the documentary side, series like The Staircase and The Jinx revisit years-old cases with new insights.
But viewers’ curiosity about these cases doesn’t just end when the shows do, so we’re checking in with eight true-crime TV show subjects — victims, convicted criminals, and former suspects alike — starting with one who just walked out of prison on parole. Read the updates in the gallery above.
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