Which Real-Life Cases Are Featured in Oxygen's New True Crime Series 'Final Moments'?
Published March 28 2022, 10:30 p.m. ET
Warning: This article contains spoilers for all Season 1 episodes of Oxygen's Final Moments.
On April 3, Oxygen debuts its latest true crime series entitled Final Moments. The show is another reality TV production from Dick Wolf (yes, that Dick Wolf of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit and Chicago P.D. fame), and the hook is that each case is solved — or not — based on what the victims were doing in the moments leading up to their murders.
Each episode features a different investigation, with some of them dating back to 2004. But which cases will true crime fans get to see in the first season? Are they the same old stories that viewers have seen on other shows before? Or are they brand-new mysteries? Here are all the details about Final Moments before it premieres.
"Final Moments" executive producer Dick Wolf
What is Oxygen's new series 'Final Moments' about?
As the title indicates, Final Moments focuses on victims right before their murders. The show promises to tell their stories "through the lens of real footage, pictures, and the social media of our victims, giving viewers direct insight into their last moments alive," according to the network press release. That can include everything from text messages and phone records to surveillance camera footage.
The show will be using at least some reenactments with actors playing the victim, suspects, and other people in the victims' lives, as a casting call for one episode was posted on Backstage in February 2022.
The series is the latest collaboration between Oxygen and Dick Wolf, whose Wolf Entertainment has also produced the Oxygen series Cold Justice, Criminal Confessions, and Murder for Hire. Oxygen, of course, is the sister network to NBC, which airs Wolf's Law & Order and One Chicago franchises.
What real-life cases are featured on Oxygen's 'Final Moments'?
The Final Moments series premiere, "Where's Dad?", centers on the New York City disappearance of Charles Butler, who vanished after a night on the town with his new girlfriend in 2012. Confusing texts sent to Butler's children led police to the girlfriend's ex-boyfriend, who was impersonating Butler after killing him and driving his body off a cliff.
The second episode, "Death of an Influencer," follows the 2013 case of teenage social media sensation Alexis Murphy in Virginia, in which police tried to use her tweets to identify her killer. Surveillance footage from a local gas station also helped identify the man who abducted and murdered her.
Other installments are the Tennessee rape and murder of Heather Maples from 2015 ("What You Can't Unsee"), the 2007 death of Kelsey Smith, who appeared to be followed after buying a gift for her boyfriend in 2007 ("A Fatal Shopping Trip"), the 2014 vanishing of Danielle Locklear in North Carolina ("Murder at the Creek"), and the South Carolina slaying of convenience store clerk Willard Grandstaff in 2004 ("A Convenient Crime").
Final Moments will also include the 2013 investigation into the Connecticut disappearance of Alyssiah Wiley ("She Never Showed") and the 2018 murder of aspiring basketball star Lamont Adair Jr., who was shot in broad daylight in Maryland after a social media post upset the wrong person ("The Streets Are Talking"). That means Season 1 will focus on older crimes that happened on and around the East Coast.
Final Moments premieres on Sunday, April 3 at 7 p.m. EST on Oxygen.
