Vulture: This Week in True-Crime Podcasts
The Rock Star and the Nanny, Sinisterhood, and More
The true-crime podcast universe is ever-expanding. We’re here to make it a bit smaller and a bit more manageable. There are a lot of great shows, and each has a lot of great episodes, so we want to highlight the noteworthy and the exceptional. Each week, our crack team of podcast enthusiasts and specialists will pick their favorites.
Sinisterhood, “The New Jersey Watcher”
So a couple buys an enormous house in a wealthy suburb in New Jersey and before they even move in, they get a letter from someone referring to themselves as the Watcher, referencing specific details about their lives, including their children, who they call “the young blood.” Because they’re not sure what to make of it at first, they ask the previous owners if this situation seems familiar to them, and sure enough, they also got a letter from this character the day before they moved out. And then there’s another letter, and another, and another.
The Watcher case is deranged in a very particular way, so you need the right guides to walk you through it, and Sinisterhood’s hosts, Heather McKinney and Christie Wallace, are those guides. They will give you the details you need, but also ask important questions like, “What if you read the letters in a not-scary voice? They sound great!,” and understand that the baby doll–style shirts of the ’90s were no one’s friend. You will be entranced by how weird this story is, confounded by the many theories people have about it (including the one where the letter writer is the ghost of John List) and perhaps, at the end of the episode, inexplicably craving Costco meatballs. —Chanel Dubofsky