A city-by-city true-crime documentary, from Detroit's Kwame Kilpatrick scandal to mob confessions.
Crimetown treats crime as a city story, not just a case file. Its Detroit episodes follow Kwame Kilpatrick’s rise, imprisonment, family fallout, and public debate through archival tape, reporting, and blunt local voices.
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Crimetown is a serialized narrative documentary podcast, not an interview or panel show — each season is a multi-episode deep dive into one city's relationship with crime, corruption, and power. It was created by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier; the Detroit season sampled here is narrated by producer John White, with senior producer Drew Nellis and local reporter Charlie LaDuff serving as on-the-ground guides. The Detroit season centers on former mayor Kwame Kilpatrick's perjury and later federal corruption convictions, using his case as a lens on race, policing, restitution, and mass incarceration, and closes by weighing Detroit's downtown revival under mayor Mike Duggan against continued decline in majority-Black neighborhoods. Recurring subject matter includes organized crime and mafia operations, political and civic corruption, federal investigations, and the racial dimensions of sentencing and urban policy. Guests and voices are drawn from participants in the events themselves (family members, political operatives, former officials) alongside journalists who covered the story. The feed also carries trailers and crossover episodes for other true-crime podcasts under Gimlet, Spotify, and partner networks like Tenderfoot TV, covering mafia confessions and hitman stories from other cities. Production leans on archival news audio, original local music, and location reporting rather than studio conversation. Listeners who follow one season through to its finale get a fuller arc than those sampling single episodes, since later episodes depend on earlier scene-setting. The show suits listeners interested in true crime framed as urban history and institutional critique rather than case-of-the-week mystery, and those curious about how organized crime and political corruption intersect with race and civic decline in specific American cities.
Made for: True-crime listeners interested in long-form documentary storytelling about political corruption and organized crime in specific American cities, rather than case-of-the-week formats.
What sets it apart: Devotes a full narrative season to one city's crime and corruption history, rather than covering a new case or guest each episode.
Welcome to Crimetown, a series produced by Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier in partnership with Gimlet Media. Each season, we investigate the culture of crime in a different city. In Season 2, Crimetown heads to the heart of the Rust Belt: Detroit, Michigan. From its heyday as Motor City to its rebirth as the Brooklyn of the Midwest, Detroit’s history reflects a series of issues that strike at the heart of American identity: race, poverty, policing, loss of industry, the war on drugs, and our universal desire for a savior. Detroit’s a tough town, and its residents are even toug...
Based on 4 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Crimetown connects crime, political power, race, and punishment through layered testimony that preserves disagreement instead of flattening it.
Crimetown treats crime as a force running through public life, family relationships, race, punishment, and political power. In "From the Ashes" and "Surrendered," the account of Kwame Kilpatrick moves between his own perspective, relatives' memories, public debate, archival…
A Detroit mayor watches Obama win from jail, and your easy verdict starts getting complicated.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
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Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick watched Barack Obama's 2008 election victory from a Wayne County jail cell, a contrast that opens this episode of Crimetown's Detroit season.