True Crime Podcasters Named Winners At CrimeCon’s CLUE Awards.

Winners of the 2023 CrimeCon CLUE Awards were announced over the weekend and the annual event honored podcasters alongside TV producers and filmmakers. Freeway Phantom was selected as Outstanding Podcast Docuseries. The show, produced by Tenderfoot TV, iHeartPodcasts, and Black Bar Mitzvah, was released in May. The Celeste Headlee-hosted podcast tells the story of six Black girls who went missing in the Washington, DC area in 1971 and 1972, and whose killer was never found.

“We're so proud of the team, those who have never stopped searching for answers, and our listeners who have helped share each girl's story,” said Tenderfoot TV in a social media post about their win.

Another CLUE Award for podcasting went to Dateline NBC’s Missing in America series, who received the prize for Outstanding Episodic Series. Released in June, the original series hosted by correspondents Josh Mankiewicz, Andrea Canning and Keith Morrison reports on perplexing missing person cases brought to Dateline’s attention by social media followers. Each episode focuses on one person’s story, as told by those left behind.

During a ceremony hosted by ABC News Legal Analyst Matt Murphy, the CLUE Awards also featured a new award this year. The fan-chosen People's Choice: Creator of the Year honor, was awarded to Alice LaCour and Brett Talley, cohosts of the podcast The Prosecutors. Each week on the show, the pair brings their unique perspective to the most notorious cases of all time.

CLUE's Crimefighter of the Year honor went to the Gabby Petito Foundation. And CLUE's first-ever America's Greatest Detective recipient was Cynthia Garza, Special Bureau Chief of the Conviction Integrity Unit in Dallas County, TX whose work has led to 32 exonerations encompassing 522 years of prison time wrongfully spent since the Conviction Integrity Unit was founded in 2007.

CLUE winners were determined by CrimeCon's selection committee, comprised of producers, network and streaming executives, and other creatives and industry leaders, representing all sectors of the true crime genre. This year’s judges include executives from Wondery, Simon & Schuster, Anonymous Content, Campfire Studios, Oxygen True Crime, Access Hollywood and many others.

Held this year in Orlando, CrimeCon is an annual conference for true crime content creators, industry professionals and fans. This year’s event had a Podcast Row which featured live tapings of several of the biggest true crime shows including Bone Valley, Generation Why, Small Town Dicks, Criminology, Murderish, Crime Weekly, and Crawlspace, among others.