48 Hours, Cold Justice, CrimeCon, Dateline NBC, Erin Moriarty, fan events, Indianapolis, Josh Mankiewicz, Kelly Siegler, Nancy Grace, NBCUniversal, Oxygen, Red Seat Ventures, true crime, TV
June 1, 2017
by Carla Hay
Fans of true-crime stories now have a new convention to gather and meet other fans and famous names in the business. The inaugural CrimeCon is set to take place at the JW Marriott Indianapolis in Indianapolis, Indiana, on June 9 to June 11, 2017.
The guest speakers include:
- Nancy Grace: former prosecutor; author; former HLN and Court TV host; Oxygen host; founder of Crime Online
- Erin Moriarty: correspondent for “48 Hours”
- Josh Mankiewicz: correspondent for “Dateline NBC”
- Kelly Siegler: former prosecutor; host of “Cold Justice”
- Beth Karas: attorney; former Court TV correspondent
- Aphrodite Jones: author; former Investigation Discovery host
- Jim Clemente: former prosecutor; former FBI profiler; podcaster; TV host; “Criminal Minds” writer/producer
- Dr. Laura Pettler: forensic criminologist
- Cathy Scott: author
Several of the guest speakers will be doing meet-and-greet sessions with CrimeCon attendees.
NBCUniversal, one of the event’s main sponsors, will be showcasing some of the new programs on the company’s Oxygen network, which is revamping as a 24-hour true-crime network in 2017. “Cold Justice,” which originally began on TNT, is one of the shows on Oxygen’s new true-crime lineup. Grace (who used to host true-crime shows on HLN and Court TV) is developing show called “Retried” that she will star in at Oxygen. NBCUniversal’s “Dateline NBC” (which launched in 1992) is the longest-running true-crime TV series in the United States, and is sending longtime correspondent Mankiewicz to represent the show’s on-air talent. There will also be a screening of the Oxygen special “Snapped Notorious: Drew Peterson.”
In addition to panels about famous crime cases (such as Scott Peterson, Steven Avery, the Golden State Killer and the Long Island Serial Killer), CrimeCon will be a highly interactive event, with escape-room experiences, murder-mystery dinners and a session called “CSI: Indianapolis” in which participants will play investigators at a mock crime scene.
Click here for a complete schedule of events.
CrimeCon, which is produced by Red Seat Ventures, comes one year after the debut of IDCon, an annual one-day convention in New York City for fans of Investigation Discovery (ID), the true-crime network that debuted in 2008 from Discovery Networks. Unlike CrimeCon, which takes place over multiple days and has programming from various media outlets, IDCon focuses only on programming from one network: Investigation Discovery.
Now that Oxygen is poised to become ID’s biggest TV competitor, it’s likely that NBCUniversal will continue to align itself with CrimeCon, which is IDCon’s biggest rival. CrimeCon will take place in a different city every year, while IDCon is expected to remain in New York City.