Why Did You Kill Me? is Netflix’s latest true-crime documentary, and it’s got a doozy of a hook: A mother uses fake MySpace accounts to fish for her daughter’s killer. The story behind the 2006 murder of Crystal Theobald, a 24-year-old mother of two, sounds fascinating already, assuming this doc goes beyond the sensational gimmick and presents some insight into the ever-complicated human condition. (Review spoiler alert: it does.)
The Gist: We see a MySpace chat screen, and a disclaimer that all online conversations depicted in the film are recreations derived from interviews. A woman named Angel chats with a man whose username is Jokes. “Do you love me?” she types. “Ha u know I do” he replies. “Then why did you kill me?” she asks.
Are you hooked yet? On Feb. 24, 2006, Crystal Theobald was in a car with her brother and boyfriend, driving through their neighborhood in Riverside, California. They pulled up to a street corner when a young man drew his pistol and fired into the car. She was struck in the back of the head and killed. Her mother, Belinda Lane, happened to be in a car behind them, and witnessed the entire horrifying scene. We see security-cam footage of the car pulling up to a nearby grocery store and her brother, Justin, pulling her from her seat and cradling her lifeless body. Using the words of her relatives — “She’d play baby dolls with me… she really opened up my imagination,” her younger cousin Jaimie says, her voice quivering with grief — the film paints a portrait of Crystal as a wonderful, loving woman, and for a moment or two, we wonder if it’s a setup to pull the rug out from under us and reveal some dark secrets.
Rest assured: it’s not. It has other, stranger things to reveal. The detective on the case, Rick Wheeler, says he wondered why Belinda didn’t seem to be cooperative with the investigation. “If I had an issue, it wasn’t the police I called,” she says. She was certain the perp was affiliated with the notorious 5150 gang who had a significant presence in the area, and helped Det. Wheeler identify a suspect, but it was the wrong guy. We soon learn that she and her sons had some struggles with the law (“My boys — they’re boys,” she shrugs); she says she began using meth to keep her moving while working two jobs and raising five kids on her own, and became hooked. But the detective kept hitting dead ends.
It’s Jaimie who came up with an ingenious idea: Create a fake MySpace account pretending to be an attractive young woman, connect with 5150 members and see if she can sniff out any leads. It worked — sort of. She flirted with the men but didn’t get much in the way of helpful info. So she took it a step further and created another phony profile using a real photo of Crystal, with the name Angel. Crystal was someone who was easy to fall in love with, Jaimie says, so she channeled her cousin’s personality into her communiques with the 5150 guys. She started getting somewhere, but found the experience too upsetting, and gave the account password to Belinda, who had been telling her sons to heel, to not handle things on their own, and let the investigation play out. Belinda got bold and used “Angel” to stir shit among gang members, and “here’s where the story gets even trippier,” she says.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: The modern-tech angle on true crime we see in Why Did You Kill Me? is similar to Netflix’s American Murder: The Family Next Door and HBO’s I Love You, Now Die, both of which featured revealing text messages. You might not think seeing typing and text bubbles on screen would be particularly suspenseful or compelling, but all three films will make you reconsider that assertion.
Performance Worth Watching: The story’s pathos hinges on two broken hearts: Jaimie, the open and emotionally raw young woman who grounds the film with her sensible and honest voice. And Belinda, a true character and the narrative’s major player, only openly discusses her flaws, but shows how her life’s biggest tragedy truly changed her.
Memorable Dialogue: Jaimie: “Making someone fall in love with someone who’s dead is not a good feeling inside.”
Belinda, during the film’s climactic moment: “I did the right thing for the first time in my life. I did the right thing.”
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Why Did You Kill Me? is a taut, gripping chronicle of tragedy that takes an enlightening and poignant turn in its final act. Outside the social-media component, the details of the case aren’t far outside the norm of detectives following leads and interviewing suspects. But director Fredrick Munk conducts revealing interviews with former 5150 gang members and their families, weaves in footage from police interrogation rooms and turns the film into a profile of sorts of Belinda Lane, who openly shares the unsettling stuff that her grief prompted her to consider — and the stuff that gives us a little bit of hope for humanity, even when it’s clouded by despair.
Munk sometimes struggles to clarify the narrative when the details get convoluted and tricky (there’s a subplot about two lookalike SUVs that confuses detectives, and also us). But he also takes pains to humanize the villains of this story, some of whom were indoctrinated into gangs at very young ages, gangs that acted like family when their blood relatives failed them. Contrast that with the many drug-related offenses of Belinda and her children, who have to learn to trust law enforcement, and you have an across-the-board portrait of struggle in one of the famously troubled suburbs of Los Angeles. This isn’t a lurid or overly profound story, but it’s absolutely one worth telling.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Why Did You Kill Me? is a well-constructed and insightful doc that’ll surely scratch the itches of true-crime aficionados.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.
Stream Why Did You Kill Me? on Netflix