True crime interviews
Robbery, revenge and the long aftermath, told by the people who were actually standing there when it happened.
True crime without the narrator
Most true crime is assembled after the fact by people who were not present. A script writer decides on a motive, an actor stands in for a victim, and a musical cue tells you when to feel something.
These interviews skip all of that. The person who was in the room talks. What they remember clearly they say clearly, and what they do not remember stays missing rather than getting filled in by somebody else.
Crime as a decision, not a plot
In first-hand accounts, the crime is almost never the interesting part. The interesting part is the ordinary decision in the hours before it: a shortcut taken, a favour accepted, an assumption that the money was unattended.
The gangster case file in this archive turns on exactly that. He thought nobody was watching the cash. Somebody was, and it was precisely the person you would not want watching.
What happens after the system finishes
A large share of these stories begin where the official process ends. Charges are dropped, a sentence is served, a file is closed, and the people involved are left holding whatever the outcome did not resolve.
Revenge cases sit in that space. They are rarely dramatic and almost never satisfying, which is the part reconstructions tend to remove.
How these interviews are recorded
Long-form, one sitting where possible, with minimal editing. Names and details are withheld only where withholding them is a condition of the account existing at all.
Nothing here is dramatised. If a claim cannot be corroborated, it is presented as the person's account rather than as established fact.
True crime case files
Stealing A Gangster's Money (It Didn't Go Well)
He thought the cash was unattended. It wasn't unattended. It was being watched by exactly the person you don't want watching.
A Father's Revenge
What a man does after the system has finished with his family, condensed into the shortest case file in the archive.
Bali's Secret Black Magic Island
An island the tourist maps skip, where practitioners still do work the neighbouring villages refuse to name out loud.
Questions people are asking
- Are these true crime stories verified?
- Where documentation exists it is referenced. Where it does not, the account is presented as first-hand testimony rather than as a settled record of events.
- Do you interview offenders as well as victims?
- Both. Some case files are told by the person who committed the act, some by the person it happened to, and a few by people who were standing close enough to see it happen.
- Why is there no narrator or reenactment?
- A narrator decides what a story meant before you get a chance to. Leaving the account unnarrated keeps the ambiguity that was actually there.
- Where can I watch the full interviews?
- Every case file plays here on the site, or on the Bent Planet YouTube channel.