Netflix's 'Unbelievable' is based scene for scene on the true story of how a serial rapist escapes while his victim suffers
Netflix is all set to unleash a new series called 'Unbelievable' that revolves around a tragic real-life story of a teenager named Marie who suffered sexual assault at the hands of a stranger and no one believed her tale. While she was charged with filing a false report, two female detectives — Detective Stacy Galbraith and Edna Hendershot — tried to unravel the mystery behind the eerie incident.
The show is based on T. Christian Miler and Kem Armstrong’s story, called 'An Unbelievable Story of Rape,' which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize. The events in the series are a scene for scene adaptation of an explosive article by ProPublica and the Marshall Project. The true story follows the story of an 18-year-old from Lynnwood, Washington.
In 2008, she claimed that an intruder came into her bedroom, blindfolded her and raped her at knifepoint. Kaitlyn Dever plays the role of Marie in the series. In a scene, explaining to the officers, she confesses, "He tied my hands. He said if I screamed, he'd kill me."
Since there was no real proof of the incident, there was much doubt surrounding the harrowing experience. From the detectives to her foster parents and her ex-boyfriend, everyone around raised suspicions and it led her to a lack of conviction in herself. Did the traumatic event occur in reality or was it just a nightmare? "If the truth is inconvenient, they don’t believe it," a dialogue in the 2.44-minute trailer goes.
After meeting with the police, Marie’s was forced to recant her story. In a shocking twist, the police charged Marie with filing a false report. She eventually took a plea deal and paid $500 for having filed a false report. The police had written Marie’s allegations off, and left her to deal with the aftermath.
A concurrently-published This American Life radio episode about the same case, 'Anatomy of Doubt,' brings the same incident to light. When Marie's efforts went futile, a similar rape case was reported by a 26-year-old woman in Golden, Colorado in 2011. "Detective Galbraith says the victim remembered an unusual number of details about the guy, way more than any other rape victim she'd talked to before. The victim had basically chatted her up, and he told her things like he spoke four different languages," the transcript reads.
In the series, the detectives are named Grace Rasmussen (played by Toni Collette) and Karen Duvall (played by Merritt Wever) however pursue the case relentlessly. The case was complicated as there were no traces of DNA. With great difficulty, the detectives found tiny specimens of DNA to track down the perpetrator.
Unbelievable depicts the heartbreaking, yet gratifying, moment these parallel stories finally intersected and the perpetrator was caught.
Ultimately, what’s “unbelievable” is that the rapist was able to go scot-free for so long was because the police refused to believe the victim in the first place. A story of unspeakable trauma, unwavering tenacity, and astounding resilience, it chronicles how inactivity by the cops botched up the life of the young girl.
Co-created by Susannah Grant, Ayelet Waldman, and Michael Chabon, the eight-episode miniseries is all set to premiere on the streaming service on September 13, 2019.
