Kind of a brat tbh.

Vera Jo Reigle (24) was brutally murdered on the night of March 26th, 2011. Her naked body was beaten and covered in stab wounds and left on the train tracks in Findlay, Ohio.

The crime was the conclusion to one of the most heartbreaking and infuriating stories I’ve heard about in the last few years. Vera was disabled and had the mental capacity of an 8 year old. Her father raped her when she was 11, and she never got along with her mother.

When she was 19, she started a relationship with Zachary Brooks, who was 13 at the time. A year and a half before her death, they had a child, so Vera went to live with her boyfriend’s family. 

The Brooks are a well known crime family in the area. Their leader is Cheri Brooks, mother of 9, a really frightening woman who is also wheelchair bound. Five of her kids were taken away at some point because of sexual abuse and neglect. One of them, Michael, actually compares their family to Charles Manson’s, so you can get an idea.

When the Brooks took Vera in, they basically turned her into a house slave and cashed her disability checks. Vera was often tortured and beaten. Two months before her murder, police showed up at the house and found Vera covered in bruises and with a broken nose. But she didn’t know better, so she accepted her horrible living conditions.

The night she was killed, she was lured by Daniel Bixler, a cousin, and his 17 year old girlfriend Nicole Peters. Daniel had recently got out of jail and was staying at the Brooks home. Police arrested them quickly, they confessed and were convicted. During sentencing, Bixler apologized for the crime and claimed he’d been under the influence of drugs and “others”, meaning the Brooks family.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Vera’s murder is a really complex crime allegedly orchestrated by Cheri. Many of the details came to light thanks to filmmaker J. David Miles, who went to school with Cheri and Vera’s father and made a documentary about this story called Goodnight, Sugar Babe. It’s a tragic, shocking and poignant look at the truth behind the lies. He managed to interview pretty much every member of the Brooks’ family, including Cheri herself. I recommend it to anyone who wants to see a really good true crime documentary.

I am a giant movie nerd, and I especially love documentaries. I have recommended a few of my favorite documentaries before, but I have recently been inspired to make a rather exhaustive list of my favorite crime documentaries that are available on Netflix. This list is for movies that are available on Netflix in the U.S. - I’m not sure which of them are available in other countries. Please reblog or comment on this post if you have recommendations!

*cracks knuckles* Alright…

1. Dreams of a Life (2011)

This documentary tells the story of Joyce Carol Vincent, whose body was found in January 2006, decomposing in her bed in Wood Green, North London. She apparently died unnoticed in December 2003, surrounded by unopened Christmas presents with her TV still turned on. The film interviews various friends, acquaintances, and former partners to try to tell the story of Joyce.

2. The Cheshire Murders (2013)

This film studies the murder-robbery case that occurred on July 23, 2007. Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her two daughters were raped and murdered, while her husband, Dr. William Petit, was injured during a home invasion in Cheshire, Connecticut. This case was referred to as “possibly the most widely publicized crime in the state’s history.”

3. Child of Rage (1992)

The film is based on the true story of Beth Thomas, who suffered from severe behavioral problems as a result of being sexually abused as a child. Beth was adopted after it was found that she was being sexually abused by a family member. During her stay with the family, she tried to kill her brother several times and even attempted to sexually abuse him. The film was shot in Vancouver, British Columbia. 

4. The Imposter (2012)

This documentary is about the 1997 case of the French confidence trickster Frédéric Bourdin, who impersonated Nicholas Barclay, a Texas boy who disappeared at the age of 13 in 1994. The film includes interviews with Bourdin and members of Barclay’s family, as well as actual television news footage

5. Cropsey (2009)   

This film initially begins as an examination of "Cropsey”, a boogeyman-like figure from the New York urban legend, before segueing into the story of Andre Rand, a convicted child kidnapper from Staten Island.

6. The Bridge (2006)

This film covers the depressing truth about the Golden Gate Bridge, capturing a large number of suicides during the documentary.The film also features interviews with family and friends of some of the identified people who had thrown themselves from the bridge that year. The Golden Gate Bridge, which first opened in May 1937, was the most popular suicide site in the world during the documentary’s filming, with approximately 1,200 deaths by 2003

7. There’s Something Wrong With Aunt Diane (2011)

This documentary discusses the traffic collision that occurred on July 26, 2009,  where eight people were killed when a minivan driven by 36-year-old Diane Schuler, after traveling 1.7 miles in the wrong direction on the parkway, collided head-on with an oncoming SUV. The deaths included Schuler, her daughter and three nieces, and the three passengers in the SUV. The crash was the worst fatal motor vehicle accident to occur in Westchester County, New York. 

8. Capturing the Friedmans (2003)

This film focuses on the 1980s investigation of Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse for child molestation of several of their students. They held computer classes in their home where many children attended. During police interviews, some of the children that the Friedman’s taught reported experiencing bizarre sex games during their computer classes. Arnold Friedman committed suicide in prison in 1995, leaving a $250,000 life insurance benefit to his son. Jesse Friedman was released from New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility in 2001 after serving 13 years of his sentence.

9. Night & Fog (1955)

This documentary depicts the cruel reality of the Nazi Concentration camps. The film features footage from the liberation of camps in 1945 where malnourished humans are seen emerging out of the camps, voicing the life left in their lungs on to the camera.

10. Brothers Keeper (1992)

This documentary follows the case of Delbert Ward, an illiterate 59-year-old dairy farmer who was accused of murdering his brother Bill, in the bed that they shared for 50 years. The Ward brothers were four bachelors ranging between 59-71 and living in extreme poverty. One theory suggests that the slain brother, Bill, suffered the consequence of a sexual act gone wrong. What’s more disturbing is the fact that he was later acquitted of the crime after it was found out that the New York State Police coerced a confession out of him as he was illiterate.

JESUS CAMP 

Jesus Camp follows several young children as they prepare to attend a summer camp where the kids will get their daily dose of evangelical Christianity. Are these children being brainwashed?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy_u4U7-cn8

SECRETS OF A WILD CHILD

This is a documentary about a girl, Genie,  who spent all her life locked in a bedroom - the wild child who grew up in total isolation with almost no human contact.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmdycJQi4QA

THE STORY OF 3 GIRLS, KIDNAPPED AND KEPT CAPTIVE FOR 10 YEARS

Documentary exploring the kidnapping - and recent release - of the three young women who were held captive in a cellar in suburban Cleveland, Ohio, for 11 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLObkZTi5TM

CHILDREN OF DARKNESS

Children of Darkness is an Oscar nominated 1983 documentary film. It explored the topic of juvenile psychiatry - an acute lack of mental health care in America for seriously emotionally disturbed youth. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTCSfx47R1w

CHILD OF RAGE 

A chilling documentary featuring an interview between a 6-year-old psychopath and her psychiatrist in which she describes in lurid detail the fantasies of wanting to murder her brother and parents.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2-Re_Fl_L4

JUST MELVIN, JUST EVIL

a 2000 American documentary by James Ronald Whitney about his grandfather, Melvin Just, and the devastating consequences of the sexual abuse Just inflicted on their family. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lY4eHaiVK9s

AOKIGAHARA (SUICIDE FOREST) 

The Aokigahara Forest is the most popular site for suicides in Japan. After the novel Kuroi Jukai was published, in which a young lover commits suicide in the forest, people started taking their own lives there at a rate of 50 to 100 deaths a year. The site holds so many bodies that the Yakuza pays homeless people to sneak into the forest and rob the corpses. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDSdg09df8

INTERVIEW WITH A CANNIBAL 

On the afternoon of June 13, 1981, a Japanese man named Issei Sagawa walked to the Bois de Boulogne, a park on the outskirts of Paris, carrying two suitcases. The contents of those suitcases, to the lament of a nearby jogger, was the dismembered body of a fellow student – a Dutch woman named Renée Hartevelt, whom Sagawa had shot three days prior and had spent the days since eating various parts of her body. This documentary highlights his life after the incident. 

i say this with no hyperbole whatsoever

she literally worked for the nazis and benefitted from jewish shareholders in chanel being sent off to concentration camps when their share came into her possession

parisian consumers actually refused to buy a lot from her own ranges after 1940 because she was an infamous collaborator but british and american consumers kept on buying them and continue to glorify her