Berlinger returns to true crime for ID

Joe Berlinger, the award-winning director behind the Paradise Lost trilogy, is working on another true crime doc for Investigation Discovery about another apparent miscarriage of justice.

Joe Berlinger

Killing Richard Glossip will premiere on ID in the US on consecutive nights beginning on Sunday March 5.

The show, produced by RadicalMedia in association with Third Eye Motion Picture Company, focuses on the 1997 killing of Barry Van Treese at a motel he owned in Oklahoma City.

Motel manager Richard Glossip, a man with no prior convictions, has always maintained his innocence in the case and yet sits on death row having been convicted.

Justin Sneed, who admitted killing the victim and whose finger prints were found in the room, cut a deal to get a life sentence instead of the death penalty by telling police Glossip hired him to do it.

Berlinger has dedicated his career to exposing abuses in the criminal justice system and his Paradise Lost trilogy of docs helped release one man from death row and two others from life in prison in Memphis.

The doc was the headline commission announced at Discovery’s TCA presentation in the US last week.

Also unveiled was a second-season commission for TLC series Long Lost Family, and a spin-off titled Long Lost Family: What Happened Next, from producer Shed Media.

Discovery Channel, meanwhile, will premiere Cooper’s Treasure in April, focusing on the story of pioneering astronaut Gordon Cooper who put together a map of underwater shipwrecks while in space which he felt would bring untold riches from the bottom of the sea. Ample and Amblin Television are producing.