What Is Your Favorite "True Crime" Made For TV Movie....

[The Great Escape]

I love "Wife, Mother, Murderer starring Judith Light and David Ogden Stiers. Occasionally, you can catch it on Lifetime or Lifetime Movie Network. The Crime Library link tells the real story of this woman (Marie Hilley). It's a fascinating read.

http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/women/hilley/1.html?sect=11

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103258/

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/movie.html?v_id=129953

[montana_hazeleyes]

1. "The Deliberate Stranger"

It was about Ted Bundy with a remarkable performance by Mark Harmon.The whole movie was very good and told the story well.(for a movie,,where it's impossible to get the full story in.)
All the actors played their parts well and to this day I still get Bundy and Mark Harmon's likeness mixed up in my mind Harmon did such a good job and looked a lot like him. Also the music was great through-out.

It's replayed many times over the years.

[johnnie]

3. Every time I see Harmon

I think of Bundy. He did a great job, and they did a great job producing that movie.

[ralps]

2. "Helter Skelter" and "Citizen X"

Helter Skelter because I was around 14 at the time it happened and I guess it seemed pretty wacked out. Citizen X because I thought the movie was really well done and since I saw "Manhunter" (which was adapted from Thomas Harris's book "Red Dragon") I've been interested in serial killer movies. I know Thomas Harris's books are fictional but his books got me into True Crime stories
:hi:

[johnnie]

4. I liked

"To Catch a Killer" about John Gacy with Brian Dennehey. It was done well, especially from the investigation standpoint.
Another one I liked was "The Boston Strangler" with Tony Curtis, although I don't know if this was made for TV or a theater release, I would guess theater. It is done in almost a Alfred Hitchcock style.
And the original Helter Skelter is a classic. I saw that as a kid and it scared the crap out of me. I still catch it when they run it.

[XanaDUer]

5. The book(s) about the Hilley case are amazing, too.

I love all of those movies, and I try to catch Fatal Vision when it comes on, not too often , sadly.

Lifetime has a lot of cheesy movies, but they do play some of these TC films quite a bit.

[Lady President]

6. "Not Out Son"

I might be the only person who saw this one, but it was pretty decent....

The movie started Neil Patrick Harris (Doogie Howser, M.D.) as arsonist Paul Keller, who started fires that caused millions in damages and killed a couple elderly nursing home residents. Keller's family turned him into police.

[u4ic]

7. Not a murder case

but The Boys of St Vincent, based on the sexual abuse of boys at a Newfoundland Catholic orphanage. I highly recommend it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106473/

[XanaDUer]

8. "Echoes In the Darkness"

I even got the two-part videos. If it was on DVD, I'd get that.

I love pretty all TC films, and I wish they would play Fatal Vision more. I think they don't because MacDonald is so litigious.

[southlandshari]

9. In A Child's Name

I'm new here, hope newbies are welcome!

I don't know if "In a Child's Name" is really my favorite, but it is one of them, and it was just on Lifetime a day or two ago. That movie is one of the things that first got me interested in true crime - I was flipping channels several years ago, and landed on the end of the first half of the movie (it is a 4 hour movie) where the accused murderer's parents are startled while sleeping in his bedroom when Luminol used by the police earlier starts to glow eerily, showing massive blood traces all over the bedroom. Yikes!

Here's a blurb on the story, for those who haven't seen the movie or read the book:

In 1984 Ken Taylor, a dentist in Marion, Ind., cracked open the skull of his third wife, Teresa, with a dumbbell. Driving her body halfway across the country, he dumped it along a Pennsylvania road, then went to visit an ex-wife in Pittsburgh. Apprehended, Taylor, a calm, eerily confident wife-beater, philanderer and heavy user of marijuana and amphetamines, pleaded self-defense. He put forth a bizarre story that Teresa had been a drug addict and that he had caught her performing oral sex on their five-month-old son, Philip. In a taut, chilling voyage into the mind of a sociopath, Maas ( Serpico ) highlights the regional, religious and ethnic passions unleashed by a case that extended from the Midwestern Bible Belt to New Jersey, from Mexico to Staten Island, N.Y. As dramatic as the trial itself was the custody battle over Philip; his paternal grandparents temporarily adopted him after snatching him away from Teresa's sister, who had won custody. The grandparents' scheme, according to Maas, was directed by the convicted murderer from his cell.

[XanaDUer]

10. Newbies are always welcome!

Yes, that is one of my favorite movies, as well.

[The Great Escape]

15. That's a Great One....

what I found the most interesting aspect of this movie...was the "god fearing," Hoosiers belief (The Taylors) in their moral superiority...over the "evil" New Yorkers.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

11. I think it was for TV

Actually, this is probably about the only movie I've seen. I'm a big book reader. Anyhoo, it's called something like "The absolutely positively true adventures of the texas cheerleading murdering mom". It's with Holly Hunter & I howled.

I know I've added nothing to this thread, Sorry :)

[XanaDUer]

12. Did you see the Leslie Ann Warren version of the same story?

Cannot remember the name right now.

[wakemeupwhenitsover]

13. No, just the one w/ holly hunter

I think that's her name. She was in the Piano years ago & one of the Grisham movies; I think The Firm.

[Catchawave]

14. A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story

With Meredith Baxter.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105833/

[onager]

16. Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story

Whee-doggies! When Elizabeth Montgomery wiggles her nose in this one, her relatives and boyfriends wake up dead. DO NOT MISS IT!

This 1993 TV movie is the true story of a North Carolina Southern Belle (and devout Fundamentalist) who has a way of removing suddenly inconvenient men from her life.

When one lover buys her a new car, she explains to ANOTHER lover...a preacher, no less...that "he was just grateful because I brought him to Jesus."

As a bonus, you get one of the flat-out best character actors in the business, the great Bruce McGill, as a skeptical NC cop.

"People are startin' to call Pine Hill Cemetery 'the Blanche Moore Landfill...'"

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106423/