Oxygen’s latest true-crime series delves into Atlanta murder cases
Following a year when the city of Atlanta had its most homicides since 1996, Oxygen recently debuted a new true-crime series dubbed “The Real Murders of Atlanta.”
“We were really riffing off the Bravo brand filter,” said Stephanie Drachkovitch, co-founder of 44 Blue Productions, which also created “The Real Murders of Orange County.” “The city appealed to us given its rich tapestry and history. There’s sports and hip-hop, the tech industry and aviation. There’s the immigration patterns in recent decades.”
The series, now airing Sundays, will have 10 episodes in its first season.
Oxygen, once home to reality shows like “Bad Girls Club” and “Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood,” switched entirely to true crime in 2017, a genre so strong that multiple cable networks now focus on it, including ID, HLN and the True Crime Network.
The formula for many of these types of shows is well-worn but enduring: a narrator threading the story together, talking heads providing texture, reenactments of the moments leading up to the crime and the crime itself, photos of the victim shown a dozen different ways and no shortage of ominous background music. “The Real Murders of Atlanta” includes all those elements.
The first episode, which recently aired, focused on the 1996 murder of 41-year-old Black tech entrepreneur and computer consultant Lance Herndon. Just days after the Olympics had ended, Herndon’s mother found her son bludgeoned to death in his water bed at his 6,000-square-foot home, blood splattered all over the walls. There were no fingerprints at the crime scene, no found weapon and no witnesses.
“He was young, he loved to entertain, and he was also really smart,” said co-executive producer Alleathea Carter-Perkins. “He was a major contributor to the tech boom. It’s a perfect combination of what was happening at the time and a classic true crime story.”
The producers talked to Herndon’s son, a close tech friend, a former Roswell police officer and the eventual prosecutor Clint Rucker. (The episode is available for free on Oxygen TV’s YouTube page through Feb. 2.)
Rucker, 57, retired as an executive district attorney from the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office in March after 26 years. He handled about 150 homicide cases during that time.
“I can provide historical context and a little educational value, things I might not have been able to talk (about) when the case was happening,” Rucker said in an interview.
After every criminal case was complete, Rucker would keep a personal file in case there was an appeal. He appears in three episodes this season, and in each, he was able to go back to those files to refresh his memory.
“These cases never entirely leave you,” he said. “Certain details allow my brain to open up and remember specific things about that trial.”
Among the cases featured this season are the 2012 murder of an up-and-coming rapper who went by Lil Phat that involves a Russian mobster and the 1996 murder of Judge Josephine Holmes Cook in her home. Another episode hones in on businessman David Coffin who was murdered in 1996, then had his house set ablaze. A more recent case features Mitchell Jones Jr., who was stabbed to death in 2018 by a gay lover.
Drachkovitch said they sought to make sure there was a good variety of cases: “Many of the victims in these episodes are people of color. We wanted to bring more of them to light and show there was diversity among victims as well as perpetrators.”
Carter-Perkins said in terms of storytelling, “we tried to focus on the victims and why it happened as much as how it happened. Hopefully there is a takeaway in each episode.”