Bill Keveney

USA TODAY

True-crime devotees are getting their own festival of felonies: IDCon.

Investigation Discovery Tuesday announced the first-time free event will be held June 11 in New York. It will feature the cable network’s hosts, panel discussions and "immersive attractions" including a virtual reality experience and a mock forensic lab.

Fans can register to attend the “Comic-Con of crime,” as ID chief Henry Schleiff calls it, at https://idcon.eventbrite,com.

“As ID started to grow, one thing we noticed was the extraordinary passion that our fans had for the network,” which features true-crime mystery and suspense programming, Schleiff says. “We asked, ‘How do we reward this passion?’ And we said, ‘Let’s take a page out of Comic-Con.’ ”

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Schleiff says interest in true-crime genre has grown even more with “the perfect storm” of three recent non-ID projects that have drawn broad media attention: the Serial podcast, HBO’s The Jinx, and Netflix’s Making a Murderer.

At IDCon, fans will get to see network hosts, including On the Case’s Paula Zahn, Homicide Hunter’s Joe Kenda, Hate in America’s Tony Harris, Killer Instinct’s Chris Hansen, Mind of a Murderer’s Michelle Ward and Deadly Women’s Candice Long.

New network faces and exclusive clips from upcoming programs will be featured and fans will have the chance to win walk-on roles on new ID series.

ID will conduct a nationwide sweepstakes offering one fan a trip for two to IDCon (www.investigationdiscovery.com/fan). For those who can’t make it to New York, panels will live-stream on ID’s Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/InvestigationDiscovery).

“This is the kind of thing our fans would quote-unquote almost kill to attend,” Schleiff says. Technically speaking, that would be attempted murder, crime fans.