Christopher & Eric Podcast: True Crime Episodes Featuring Dateline

All our episodes featuring episodes of Dateline, the true crime granddaddy of ’em all.

• Ep. 325 – Special Guest, Dateline’s JOSH MANKIEWICZ
  March is Birthday Month for Christopher and Eric and so we’re spending this month of episodes serving up the things they love most — Dirty Sexy Money. Not necessarily in that order, but usually in combination. What better way to kick off a birthday celebration than with a surprise visit from one of their favorite TV hosts of all time? After hearing their salacious True Crime TV Club serving of his true crime confection THE PRINCE, THE WHIZ KID AND THE MILLIONAIRE on Episode 317, famed DATELINE host Josh Mankiewicz reached out and asked to visit the Dinner Partners studio in West Hollywood so he could discuss this unforgettable real life tale of gay con men, murderers and chain smoking Palm Springs gossip columnists. He agrees — it’s the Gayest Dateline Ever! After forcing him to endure strict security protocols to ensure that he was, indeed, Josh Mankiewicz, your hosts were overjoyed to welcome him. Not only do they discuss the very colorful cast of characters on the DATELINE episode in question, they talk about what goes into making the most well-known and highly regarded true crime television series on the planet. And yes, they remembered to take a picture with him.
• Ep. 320 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: Even the Devil Went To Church”
  Let’s just say this is the deepest of the deep fried episodes of DATELINE you’ll ever find, and Christopher and Eric can think of no more fitting an end to Hot Dateline Month than this grease-poppin’, wife-hoppin’ installment. (Trigger warning. Given their own illustrious ancestries, your hosts will be using the term “white trash” as much as they damn well feel like, thank you very much ) There are extramarital shenanigans inside of an exterminator’s truck in the courthouse parking lot. Also, a pivotal piece of evidence involves French fries. Hot ones. Need we say more? Welcome to Morris, Alabama where we’re told everything is about church. Sure, Morris.
• Ep. 319 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: Sex, Lies and Murder”
  Hot Dateline Month has delivered sultry swaying palms and bleak Montana highways. Now it’s time to head to an affluent Midwestern suburb where  — wait for it! — a seemingly idyllic marriage is not all it’s cracked up to be. You know it’s going to be a doozy when the narration begins by describing the episode as “One of the strangest stories we’ve ever had on DATELINE.” Enter episode 4 of season 29, entitled “Sex, Lies And Murder” where you’ll meet Jane and Bob Bashara, the couple who has it all — including a semi-secret BDSM dungeon Bob keeps in the basement of one of his rental properties. And does this case hinge on the ick-factor-disapproval of suburban sensibilities? On this particular question, Christopher and Eric aren’t sure they agree.
• Ep. 318 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: On A Dark, Deserted Highway”
  Hot Dateline Month continues with this breakneck chase down the long dark highway of mental illness. Episode 16 of season 31, entitled “On A Dark, Deserted Highway”, begins decades before the terrifying police pursuit that gives this episode its name. It’s the dark saga of a tormented man whose twisted actions towards his wives and loved ones should have resulted in his confinement and treatment years before he went on a deadly shooting spree and high speed chase on a peaceful Montana night. How does one man end up turning against the very system that allowed his crimes to go unchecked for years?  That’s the question Christopher and Eric wrestle with in this truly disturbing installment of one of their favorite true crime shows.
• Ep. 317 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: The Prince, The Whiz Kid and the Millionaire”
  Welcome to Hot Dateline Month in which your hosts Christopher and Eric celebrate the iconic, storied and always reliable true crime phenomenon that started their obsession with the genre. And what better way to kick off this tribute than with the GAYEST DATELINE EVER. (That’s not what NBC called it, of course.) Impeccably dressed fine arts dealers and terribly twinky con men collide under the scorching Palm Springs sun in the 3,675th episode of the 329th season of DATELINE. (Just kidding. It’s actually episode 3 of season 34, so we’re not that far off.) “The Prince, The Whiz Kid and the Millionaire” has all the ingredients of a novel written by your hosts poolside after one box of bon bons too many.
• Ep. 294 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “DATELINE: Siren Song”
  Look, Christopher and Eric love DATELINE as much as the next true crime junkie. But sometimes the show’s rush to get an episode on the air can lead to a rush to judgment. That’s their concern with a recent episode entitled “Siren Song”, the seventieth episode of their thirtieth – that’s right, thirtieth! – season. TV show detectives love to say it’s always, always, always the husband. Or boyfriend. Or fiancé. But is that really the case in the strange disappearance of Sarm Heslop, who vanished from her boyfriend’s luxury catamaran off the coast of the US Virgin Islands in the hours before dawn? COVID kept her friends and loved ones from joining the search and now they fear the local authorities let the most likely suspect slip through their fingers.
• Ep. 235 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: Dangerous Secret”
  Sometimes LGBT equality means the freedom to make the same crappy choices straight people do. Your hosts travel to the beautiful Ohio River Valley to meet an out and proud hairdresser turned coal mine foreman with questionable taste in men and home decor. In episode 8 of season 32 of venerable true crime classic DATELINE, entitled “Dangerous Secret”, the unflappable Dennis Murphy narrates this twisty, soapy tale of bedroom antics turned deadly.  Meanwhile, Christopher and Eric play a speedy game of who can spot the guilty party the quickest. It’s usually Eric, but this time it might be a draw.
• Ep 227 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: The Last Walk”
  The only thing a true crime aficionado loves more than justice is when beloved Dateline host Keith Morrison calls BS on a lying criminal. To their face! You’ll get plenty of the later and some of the former in this Spring Broke installment of Christopher and Eric’s True Crime TV Club. Keith even asks the FBI some hard questions. In 2009, the disappearance of teenager Brittanee Drexel from a crowded Myrtle Beach sidewalk made headlines around the world. In episode 12 of season 31 of DATELINE, entitled “The Last Walk”, we travel the years of false leads, dramatic twists and outrageous lies that led from that rowdy Spring break evening to a jail cell in rural South Carolina and a confession that feels half-baked at best. Plenty of people failed to prevent this awful tragedy, and Christopher and Eric have plenty to say about all of them — but maybe not as much as Keith!
• Ep. 121 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime Redux featuring “Dateline: Dark Valley” vs. “The Perfect Murder: Jump Shot”  
  The mysterious disappearance of handsome Hollywood film executive Gavin Smith gets stranger and stranger… depending on who’s telling the story. In their first ever True Crime TV Club Redux, Christopher and Eric pit two dueling true crime shows– each covering the same crime–against each other to find out which one told the truth and which one stretched the facts to breaking. It’s Episode 47, season 25 of DATELINE, entitled Dark Valley, vs THE PERFECT MURDER, Season 5, Episode 9, a show already guilty of straight-washing the murder of a closeted gay man (See “TDPS Presents Christopher & Eric” Episode 69). May the best true crime story teller win!
• Ep. 119 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves up “Dateline: Murder in the House of Gucci”
  It’s the first in an Oscar season “true crime pairing” and possibly Christopher and Eric’s most fashionable True Crime TV Club to date! In advance of our discussion of the controversial Lady GaGa film based on the same shocking case, Christopher and Eric serve up DATELINE episode 10, season 30, entitled “Murder In The House of Gucci”. So much more than just the facts, ma’am.
• Ep. 117 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: Family Affair”
  Christopher just released SAPPHIRE SUNSET, the first book in his steamy and emotional Sapphire Cove series. Since the novel’s set at a luxury resort, Eric thought that in honor of Christopher’s new work and achievement, this week’s True Crime TV Club should be hospitality-themed, so we bring you DATELINE Season 21, episode 3, entitled “Family Affair”, a tale of murder, brutality and millions among the family behind one of Miami Beach’s most storied hotels – a riveting choice even if there was no hotel in his wonderful new book.
• Ep. 70 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime Special Edition Delivers “Dateline: The Widower”
  #TrueCrimeTVClub gets super-sized with this #TrueCrimeSpecialEdition delivering all three episodes in the new Dateline NBC series, THE WIDOWER. Sit back and strap yourselves in as Christopher and Eric take you on a cross-country, generation-hopping saga of murder and deception that asks the question: Is the most dangerous place for a woman on Thomas Randolph’s arm? It’s a tale so complex you might want to take notes. (Christopher didn’t, and he paid the price.) And you thought black widows were the deadliest spiders! (This episode was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic, which might explain slight variations in sound quality.)
• Ep. 28 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: Before Daylight”
  It’s a real-life story that reads like one of Christopher and Eric’s novels, a tale of double lives, secret sexuality, crimes of passion and betrayal. In this installment of Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club, Christopher and Eric return to one of their favorite true-crime TV series. DATELINE “Before Daylight”, Season 28, Ep. 27, goes all in on the vicious murder of twenty-three-year-old Missouri college student Jesse Valencia. The crime was swift and brutal, and in the end, a popular young gay man was left to bleed to death on a grassy lawn outside his apartment. Eric and Christopher get passionate as they serve up their competing theories of what really happened to Jesse Valencia during his last terrifying minutes. More importantly, they tackle the case’s enduring question – did justice ensnare the one who was actually guilty, or just the one who had the most to hide? (If this episode sounds different from our others, that’s because it was recorded remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. We hope to be back in our usual studio space as soon as public health advisories allow.)
• Ep. 6 – Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club Serves Up “Dateline: The Thing About Pam”
  It’s the Dateline episode everyone’s talking about, and Christopher and Eric have plenty to say about this astonishing story as well. Some of it they’re going to yell because this case is just that crazy. What happens when a Dateline producer becomes implicated in the very crimes she’s been sent to cover? To find the answer, travel with your hosts to the St. Louis suburbs where you’ll meet a woman of such diabolical confidence you might not believe her if Christopher and Eric made her a character in one of their novels. Not even the dulcet tones of Dateline’s Keith Morrison can keep your hosts from losing their minds over the unbelievable twists and turns in this latest installment of “Christopher & Eric’s True Crime TV Club”.