Five Netflix documentaries to watch if you loved ‘Death of the Pastor’s Wife’
Netflix decided to peel back the layers on the high-profile 2024 death of Mica Miller in Death of the Pastor’s Wife before pulling the curtains on August, and it’s safe to say that viewers are sat.
The true-crime documentary details the death of 30-year-old Miller, whose body was found at a North Carolina state park on April 27th, which was promptly ruled a suicide. Despite that, the case took the media by storm as evidence suggested Mica, the wife of John-Paul Miller, the pastor of her family’s church in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, was allegedly a victim of a stalking plot, psychological control, and emotional abuse.
Co-directed by Julia Willoughby Nason and Michael Gasparro, the three-part documentary explores the events leading up to Mica’s mysterious death, highlighting the battle for truth which continues to date.
While the streamer has a massive collection of titles examining similar themes of high-control environments, suspicious deaths, and toxic relationships within religious or tight-knit communities, here are five Netflix documentaries to watch once you’re done with Death of the Pastor’s Wife.
Five documentaries to stream after Death of the Pastor’s Wife:
House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths (2021)
Similar to Death of the Pastor’s Wife, House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths focuses on a family viewed by their community as pillars of respectability. But behind closed doors, both situations involve heavy psychological pressure, control, manipulation, and hidden turmoil that outsiders were completely blind to until tragedy struck. The 2021 true-crime documentary tells the shocking story of the Chundawat (Bhatia) family, whose eleven members were found dead in their two-story house in Burari, Delhi.
House of Secrets: The Burari Deaths investigates the tragic mass deaths of the Burari family, unpacking a harrowing mix of shared psychological delusion, occult practices, questionable authorities, and hidden familial trauma against the backdrop of an intensely high-control environment. Like Death of the Pastor’s Wife, the Indian docu-series centres on a case that sparked immediate public scepticism, where the public refused to take the initial surface-level explanations at face value.
Escaping Twin Flames (2023)
Charismatic control, psychological manipulation, and abusive power dynamics can manifest in distinctly different settings, whether within a high-profile religious marriage like the one at the centre of Death of the Pastor’s Wife, or inside an online spiritual cult like the one explored in Escaping Twin Flames. Directed by Cecilia Peck, the three-part Netflix documentary exposes the dark, disturbing reality of the Twin Flames Universe, an online community and coaching group run by Jeff and Shaleia Divinne.
Escaping Twin Flames explores how the founders claimed to help single people find their ultimate soulmate or “twin flame,” ultimately dictating who belongs with whom, assigning partners, and using pressure tactics and psychological abuse. The docu-series features interviews with former members and leaked footage to unmask how the community functions as a high-control cult, whose members are systematically isolated from friends and family who question the group.
Girl in the Picture (2022)
Death of the Pastor’s Wife and Girl in the Picture explore true-crime stories centred on extremely toxic, controlling relationships that thrived on power imbalance and erosion of agency, despite the different settings. Directed by Skye Borgman and based on Matt Birkbeck’s books A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon, the Netflix documentary revolves around the chilling true story of Sharon Marshall, who was abducted by Franklin Delano Floyd when she was an infant.
Floyd raised her as his daughter under several aliases, including Sharon Marshall, subjecting her to horrific emotional, psychological, and sexual abuse and eventually forcing her to marry him. She was found dead in a hit-and-run accident in 1990, resulting in a multi-decade investigation to piece together a stolen identity, a missing child, and a string of murders. Girl in the Picture details the unravelling mysteries around the young victim who died under a false identity.
Lover, Stalker, Killer (2024)
Death of the Pastor’s Wife brings a fuller understanding of what abuse can look like, shedding light on a scenario where an authoritative figure views a partner’s autonomy and desire as a threat, reacting with intense psychological resistance and alleged harassment through cyberstalking plots. Lover, Stalker, Killer adds to the idea of how abusers can resort to calculated tactics to intimidate and subdue their targets, sparking the need to dig past webs of digital deception and societal reputation.
Lover, Stalker, Killer essentially explores the 2012-2017 of Nebraska auto mechanic Dave Kroupa, whose attempts at online dating on Plenty of Fish turned him into a victim of a multi-year digital stalking trap and a murder plot involving one of the two women he had casually dated after he moved to Omaha. Despite the relationship’s declared non-exclusive nature, the inability to accept boundaries resulted in a horrific fate.
American Murder: Gabby Petito (2025)
The dangerous gap between a curated public life and a dark private reality is heavily explored in Death of the Pastor’s Wife, as it is in the co-creator’s 2025 true-crime documentary American Murder: Gabby Petito. Although the stories may differ in their settings, both cases highlight individuals who publicly appeared to live an idyllic life, hiding a starkly different reality defined by mounting psychological pressure, strain, and escalating control.
American Murder: Gabby Petito recounts the 2021 disappearance of travel blogger Gabby Petito, who was eventually found murdered by her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. The true-crime documentary examines reactive abuse and how victims minimise trauma to prevent public and familial scrutiny, detailing the events leading up to her disappearance and the massive search that ultimately led authorities to the disastrous discovery.