A TOWN’S CONVICTIONS
‘Mind Over Murder’ docuseries details the crime and punishments that still divide Beatrice, Nebraska
Of all the true-crime documentary series we’ve inhaled over the last few years and all the times we’ve been perplexed and baffled and gobsmacked by the actions and words of certain individuals involved in various murders or kidnappings or heists or cons, the events of “Mind Over Murder” might just be the most mind-blowing of all.
The background. In 1985, in the small town of Beatrice, Nebraska, a beloved 68-year-old mother and grandmother named Helen Wilson was sexually assaulted and murdered in her small apartment. A total of six people eventually confessed to the murder and served a collective 77 years in prison for the heinous crime — only to be exonerated in 2009 when DNA evidence proved none of them was even in the apartment, let alone responsible for the attack. Ten years later, in a civil case, the county was ordered to pay a total of $28 million to the wrongly convicted individuals.
Yet to this day, many in the town believe those six people were indeed the killers — and at least one of the wrongly convicted individuals still has doubts about whether or not they were involved.
Premiering Monday on HBO and HBO Max, this six-part series from the brilliantly innovative, Peabody Award-winning director Nanfu Wang is a journalistically impactful deep-dive into the crime and the ripple effect that resonates through Beatrice to this day — and a sobering examination of the reliability (or lack thereof ) in relying on confessions and memories when suspects feel pressured, threatened and overwhelmed.
Wang draws insights from investigators and attorneys who were involved in the case, talks to the grown grandchildren of Helen Wilson and interviews four of the five surviving members of “The Beatrice Six.” She also employs a provocative and controversial technique I’m sure I’ve never seen in any documentary, i.e., staging a play about the case in Beatrice, with reallife residents portraying the real-life suspects, cops, attorneys, etc.
In the wrong hands, this could have come across as crass and exploitative, but Wang is a sensitive, intuitive, empathetic filmmaker, and we can feel how many in the community come to trust her through the making of the documentary and the production of the play-within-the-movie.
It’s complex. Everything about this case is complex.
Locals audition for the play and talk about their lives in Beatrice, calling it “your basic small town in the Midwest of America,” “one of those towns that everybody’s got a friendly hand,” etc. But then we hear someone else, off camera, saying, “They’re crazy down there, they’re psychotic in a way that Stephen King would write about” — and we’re hooked.
Cut to news footage of the Beatrice Six being exonerated in 2009, followed by a moment when an off-camera Wang asks Wilson’s grandson, Shane Wilson, “What happened to your grandmother?” and he replies, “To be honest, not everyone believes the same story.” Talk about an understatement. In 1989, Deputy Burt Searcy of the Gage County Sheriff ’s Department took over the investigation and seemingly cracked the case wide open, as Searcy began rounding up suspects and extracting confessions from a number of them. We see grainy video footage of Searcy interrogating these unsophisticated, often troubled individuals — feeding them information about the case and then asking them to essentially confirm what he has told them.
One suspect eventually confesses to second-degree murder to avoid the death penalty. Another says, “I just told them what they wanted to hear. … There’s so much s--- in this case that I can’t remember at all.” Another suspect is implicated because someone had a dream about them being in the apartment.
Maren Chaloupka, the civil attorney for one of the defendants, says, “A lot of my work is in the intersection of mental illness, law enforcement, jail and prison, [and this case] was the worst of all worlds. You had law enforcement close a case off the backs of people they see as disposable.”
By the conclusion of the sixepisode run, not all of the loose ends have been tied together and not everyone is capable of accepting the Beatrice Six were innocent. Still, at least some of the key figures in this decadeslong nightmare seem to have reached some measure of closure, though just about everyone is still haunted by the events of 1985.