# Catching Killers (2021)

> Former detectives and prosecutors revisit infamous serial killer cases, recounting the investigations in harrowing detail.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/113148

## Facts

- Seasons: 3
- Episodes: 12
- Episode runtime: 40 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: documentary, crime
- Created by: Simon Dekker
- Network: Netflix
- Cast: Jim McIntyre, Tom Jensen, Mike Joyner, Dana Gouge, Tim Relph, Clark Schwartzkopf, Kevin Robinson, Debbie Harris
- TMDB rating: 7.2/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15723914/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: graphic
- Tone: harrowing, chilling, sober, tense, melancholic

## What critics say

Viewers rate the series positively overall, with the third season standing out as its strongest installment.

## Synopsis

Catching Killers (2021-2023) is a American true crime docuseries created by Simon Dekker for Netflix. Across three seasons and twelve episodes of roughly forty minutes each, it gathers the investigators who worked infamous serial murder cases, among them a former deputy district attorney Jim McIntyre, former Green River Task Force detective Tom Jensen, and BTK task force homicide detectives Dana Gouge and Tim Relph, who recount their work in their own words. Each episode is built from their testimony, interview footage and dramatic reenactments of crime scenes, interrogations and the long hunt for a killer who kept eluding them. The engine is the slow patient accumulation of evidence, the dead ends and the pressure of cases that stretched for years across jurisdictions from Phoenix to Multnomah County. Each season takes up a different killer and set of investigators, so the format is self-contained case by case rather than one continuing story. The tone is sober, harrowing and chilling, with the detectives' weariness and sense of unfinished justice foregrounded. Fans of Mindhunter, The Jinx and The Confession Tapes will find resonance in its blend of real investigators, procedural detail and the unsettling intimacy of killers' crimes.

## Shows like Catching Killers

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- [Gone Girls: The Long Island Serial Killer (2025)](https://ember.film/tv/190919)
- [Cold Justice (2013)](https://ember.film/tv/52620)
- [Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer (2021)](https://ember.film/tv/116404)
- [The Keepers (2017)](https://ember.film/tv/24040)
- [The First 48 (2004)](https://ember.film/tv/4885)
- [Cold Case Files (1999)](https://ember.film/tv/11436)
- [Homicide Hunter: Lt Joe Kenda (2011)](https://ember.film/tv/55336)
- [American Justice (1992)](https://ember.film/tv/12169)
- [The Confession Tapes (2017)](https://ember.film/tv/64206)

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