A Killer Story is a three-part HBO docuseries, directed by Matthew Galkin, about how Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Joe Sexton helped two citizen sleuths in Topeka, Kansas — Eileen Umbehr and her husband Keen — try to exonerate Dana Chandler. In 2012, Chandler was convicted and sentenced to two life terms for the 2002 murders of her ex-husband Mike Sisco and his girlfriend, Karen Harkness.
Opening Shot: New York City. An off-camera voice says, “So, tell me the story.” And Joe Sexton, sitting at his desk at ProPublica, says, “I’m sitting here at my desk, you know, fucking investigating voter suppression, when fuck if I don’t look in my inbox and there’s a tip that’s come in to our anonymous tip line.”
The Gist: Eileen and Keen Umbehr, true crime enthusiasts who lived in the same city as the victims but didn’t know them or Dana Chandler, felt that Chandler was convicted with no physical evidence and very little in the way of circumstantial evidence. Still, it took two years and thousands of mails from Eileen to Sexton — he nicknamed her “Pen Pal” because of her determination — for Sexton to take notice. That’s because Keen, a trashman-turned-attorney whose mission was to represent “the little guy,” managed to get Chandler’s conviction overturned in 2018. However, Chandler eventually stood trial three times for the murders; the second produced a hung jury and the third produced a conviction after Chandler decided to represent herself.
In the first episode — the series is narrated by Sexton, f-bombs and all — Chandler’s initial trial, where her two adult children testified against her and whose arrest and trial were featured on 48 Hours, is highlighted. It was a case that took years to bring to trial because Topeka’s DA at the time the murders occurred strongly felt that there wasn’t enough evidence that put Chandler, who lived in Denver, in Topeka the day the Sisco and Harkness were shot to death. But a more amenable DA got the ball rolling on her arrest, which happened in 2011, and trial.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A Killer Story has a similar tone to Welcome To The Family: The Murder Of Dan Markel.
Our Take: A Killer Story is a pretty fast-paced docuseries, with the three episodes all coming in at under 40 minutes; it could have been released as a two-hour movie. While the show gets into the murder trials of Dana Chandler, the story that Galkin presents is more about how Sexton, who sits at his desk with an unlit cigarette hanging out of his mouth and drops f-bombs at will, connected with the Umbehrs, a couple who are deeply religious and love watching true crime shows.
What we appreciated about the first episode is that it not only lays out just how flimsy the case against Chandler was during her initial trial — the prosecutor was admonished by the Kansas Supreme Court for misconduct — but that the Umbehrs were more than just average citizen sleuths. Eileen has a bulldog’s determination and Keen managed to appeal a freedom of speech case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995 — and won.
It’ll be interesting to see how the three of them look into exonerating Chandler, and how things ended up going so wrong that Chandler decided to go it alone during her third trial, to her detriment.
Parting Shot: As we see a shot of the Umbehrs, Sexton says, “They were pretty certain that not only was Dana Chandler innocent, but that they know who fuckin’ did it.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. A Killer Story is as much about the people investigating Dana Chandler’s case as it is about the case itself. It’s a refreshing docuseries that takes some interesting turns.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.