True crime programs on all media, from legacy television to streaming and podcast media, attract large audiences. Examining the question of why they are so popular is the objective of this chapter. The programs can be seen as part of the ongoing collapse of the boundary line between fiction and reality, brought about by the fact that the true crime stories mirror in their narrative and thematic structure the fictional crime stories that emerged in the nineteenth century—a collapse that can be explained in terms of simulacrum theory, the view that in current culture reality has been replaced with simulations, leading to a state of mind where the distinction between reality and its representation is blurred or nonexistent. There are three main types of true crime shows discussed in this chapter—scripted, unscripted, and investigative. The first type refers to shows in which a true crime case is transformed into a storyline that has all the characteristics of a crime novel. The second refers to programs that take audiences directly into an investigation-in-progress of an actual crime, allowing viewers to witness firsthand how detectives use forensic evidence, lookouts, interviews, and other investigative techniques to solve a crime. The third type refers to a program that investigates a real crime by revisiting it or else which carries out its own investigation of an unsolved crime. In all three types, there is an underlying narrative structure, explicit or implicit, which turns a criminal case into a mystery story.