This week, we debate delicious/awful* seasonal food (*dependent on your preference), we review the film, Lost Girls, and the podcast, Obsessed with Abducted in Plain Sight. We finish up with a weird crime time involving plastic eggs.
Lost Girls
Liz Garbus directs a new Netflix movie, Lost Girls. Based on true events and the book of the same name by Robert Kolker, the story focusses on the fight of one mother to find her missing daughter – this search opens up a bigger and more expansive set of crimes.
In the movie, we follow Mari, who is the mother of Shannan Gilbert, and her relentless pushing on law enforcement to investigate her daughter’s disappearance which leads to the discovery of ten bodies in 2010. Mari refuses to take no for an answer, even when the police and the public dismiss her and, more importantly, dismiss the victims due to the fact many were working class women who engaged in escorting, stripping and sex work.
In the movie, we learn that Shannan’s death is classified as an accidental drawing and she is unconnected to the Long Island Serial Killer (LISK) deaths, even though her body was found in the same area and the victim profile matches the other victims. The Police were very adamant that it was connected and Mari and her two other daughters (Sherre and Sarra), refuse to accept this and many now believe that Shannan was a victim of LISK.
At the end of the movie, we are given an update on where the real Mari and her family are. We were all caught off guard with the news that Mari was killed by her daughter, Sarra, who was suffering from schizophrenia, in 2016. Despite her very well documented history of mental illness and that she had gone off her medication, Sarra was found guilty of murder and sentenced to 25 years. The end of the movie also notes that Mari’s other daughter, Sherre, continues to fight for justice for Shannan – she created a facebook page and is active in running it.
The LISK remains unidentified and is suspected of murdering 10 to 16 people over a period of twenty years. most of their victims were women associated with being sex workers and the bodies were found on the South Shore of Long Island, New York. There has been a handful of suspects over the years but nothing has ever really come from it. The film does sort of touch on a suspect but there is nothing concrete.
Obsessed with Abducted in Plain Sight
A 4-part podcast from Patrick Hinds, co-host of True Crime Obsessed podcast, and Skye Borgman, director of Abducted in Plain Sight which invites you to “Go behind the scenes of the most controversial podcast of 2019 to hear new interviews and deleted scenes, outrageous plot lines that did not make it into the film, and never before heard audio journals recovered by the FBI of the kidnapper himself”.
IMBD.com called the documentary “The twisting, turning, stranger than fiction true story of the Brobergs, a naïve, church going Idaho family that fell under the spell of sociopathic neighbour with designs on their 12-year-old daughter”. We all agreed that the documentary was a hit last year and we discussed it in our Best of 2019 episode, so we were really interested in this podcast which offered us exclusive interviews, updates and information which didn’t make the initial cut.
In the first episode we are introduced to Skye Borgman, who directed and produced the film. We also hear how Jan is doing since the film has been released.
They share more of the Bob Berchtold audio journals. We also hear that before he kidnapped Jan the first time, Berchtold went to Mexico and tried to adopt a young girl and bring her back. And from what we now know, we can only assume it was to abuse her. He was stopped at the border and was not allowed to take the girl in the end.
We also learn that Berchtold wrote a manuscript n response to Jan’s book but the film makers could never get a copy of the book. However, Jan shared an excerpt that Berchtold had emailed to her in an apparent threat against Jan releasing her book. The excerpt described an encounter with Jan’s mother in which Berchtold made it seem that he was repulsed by Jan’s mother and was doing it to get closer to Jan.
Skye Borgman lets us know that she did try to get more input from the Berchtold family, but they did not want to cooperate. Only his brother, who is in the film, would speak to them.
The parents obviously received major backlash from viewers. Skye tells us that the family wanted to share the story to help others and they don’t regret sharing it with the world now. Bob Broberg has since passed away, and he died before the movie was released on Netflix.
We hear from the editor of the film, James Cude, who talked us through how they ultimately put the film together and the though process on what they decided to leave out and what to focus on.
Sources
Screenrant.com – https://screenrant.com/lost-girls-netflix-mari-gilbert-daughters-after-movie/
IMDB – https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3444312/
The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/apr/11/crime-falls-sharply-in-even-the-most-violent-us-cities
The Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/26/coronavirus-crisis-leads-to-precipitous-drop-in-recorded
BNN News – https://bnn-news.com/europol-warns-about-rapid-crime-rate-increase-during-coronavirus-pandemic-211828
Oxygen – https://www.oxygen.com/crime-news/abril-cestoni-accused-of-distributing-porn-filled-easter-eggs
