The Lifetime presentation How She Caught a Killer is a story temporally located at a juncture where DNA was not popular as the sole piece of evidence. Propagated as a story drawing from true events, this film follows a young investigator, Linda Murphy, who follows her father’s footsteps and is out to hunt down a serial killer at a time when even the term ‘serial killer’ was not in much use.
How She Caught A Killer (2023) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
In November 1987, Joyce Peterson, a working girl around Route 60 of the small town of Good Falls, is found severely tortured and dead. The night before the police discovered her body, Joyce told her father that she would hitchhike to get to her place of work. She then took a lift from a stranger with a van. In June 1988, after years of rigorous training, Linda Murphy is welcomed into the police force training academy. Before her promotion, Linda acted as a secretary to Detective David Goodman for years. Linda’s father, who also happened to be David’s friend and colleague, was in the police force. Linda’s mother is not very supportive of Linda getting into the police force.
It has been six months since Joyce’s death. Several women, mostly sex workers, go missing from the area between the diner and the old truck stop around Route 60. The investigation hits a roadblock due to lack of funds, which frustrates Joyce’s father, who threatens to take matters into his own hands. The next day, the body of Danielle Parish, yet another sex worker, is discovered. The common thread between all the dead women is how they are killed– multiple blows with a hammer have crushed their skulls. What is also found on Parish’s body are strands of blue fibers, perhaps from a blue carpet or a rug.
Goodman also finds a good possibility of the involvement of a van or a truck in the murders. On the other hand, Linda seems enthusiastic about joining Goodman to solve the murder cases, but the latter is not too keen to involve her. Subsequently, Neil Carter from the FBI visits Goodman. He tells Goodman that the FBI is not ready to classify and attribute the murders to any ‘serial killer.’
He also requests Goodman to stop sending further letters to the FBI asking to investigate this angle. When Goodman presents him with all the evidence and patterns, Carter, in turn, puts forth a condition– to ascribe the murders to a serial killer would require at least three murders. It is not too long before the third murder takes place. This time, a girl called Brenda is picked up, tortured, and left to die.
Linda pleads with Goodman to go undercover for the investigation, but Goodman remains adamant. Finally, with Carter’s support, Linda joins the team and works to put up her disguise. Goodman lays down three non-negotiable rules. First, she must not go anywhere without her gun. Second, she will be wearing a wire. It means she has to coax the men she bumps into for their information so that it gets passed onto Goodman and Carter, who would be hearing the from a car nearby. Most importantly, Linda should never get into any of the vehicles. Linda has to look for certain things– men aged between 35 and 45, driving a big car, working at a construction, and some connection with a blue carpet.
At night, Linda, who has taken up the name Tara, is out on her operation next to the diner where she meets Red. Red abuses Tara, but another girl, Shelley, comes to her rescue and backs her. Another week goes by, and Linda spots Crystal, another girl who stands at the diner stop with a bruised face. When she asks Crystal about it, Shelley tells her that Red did this to her. The girls, with no holds barred, rant about the apathy and ignorance of the police towards their plight.
Linda goes to Red’s Den
Eaten up with Shelley’s words the whole night, Linda decides to pay Red’s farm a visit. However, Red spots her and tries to strike her. Before leaving, Linda spots dead organs in jars full of chemicals stacked on one of the shelves at the farm. Linda calls David to inform everyone about a serial killer on the loose. But, this time too, David does not attach any value to Linda’s pleas. The next morning, David says that Red has reported a woman trespassing on his property and threatens to lay off Linda if she does not stop taking impulsive routes.
What happened to Linda’s father?
When Carter asks if Goodman is sure that it was Linda who broke into Red’s farm the night before, the latter narrates the story of Linda’s father, Freddy. Freddy was assigned to a case on a serial rapist decades ago. David was his partner. They pinned down a suspect. However, due to a dearth of evidence, Freddy became impatient and started following the guy. Despite the chief’s protestations, Freddy was fixated on following the guy. One night, after deducing Freddy’s moves, the guy started leading him around the town. Finally, the man stopped at a red light and blew his brains out when Freddy approached him. The incident took a heavy toll on Freddy, and he passed away a few years later.
The van arrives
The same night, Linda spots a blue van arriving. The blue van starts moving in circles, which scares Linda. She tries to strike up a conversation with the driver but fails. The van starts following her when she walks away from the main road. This time, Linda manages to gain some information from the driver. The driver asks Linda if she is a cop. When Linda manages to move past the question, she asks him to turn on the interior lights of the car.
The driver turns the light on and shows his face. His profile matches the description with which they started. He also tells Linda that he is an electrician. Linda spots the blue carpet in the vehicle and scrapes the fiber off with her fingernails to carry some evidence. Carter collects the fibers from her nails for DNA investigation. At night, Linda gets the nightmare of being bogged down in a tub full of blue fibers from the carpet. The owner of the car, Stanley Andrew Wilson, is an electrician who previously applied to the police academy. His profile acutely matches all the evidence collected hitherto.
How She Caught A Killer (2023) Movie Ending Explained:
Does Linda get hold of the serial killer?
Shelley finds out that Linda is a cop. This disheartens her, but Linda assures her that she is only here to help the girls. Linda warns Shelley to stay off the streets for a week. Linda and Carter watch Wilson from a distance as he dresses himself up in a bunny costume to entertain children. That night, Shelley, unbeknownst to Wilson’s identity, agrees to have a drink with him in his van. Much to Linda’s horrors, Shelley is found dead the next day. Carter says that a complaint of unpaid traffic violence might come in handy to bring Wilson in. They ceased the van for some time and put the wire under his steering wheel to keep tabs on him.
Linda starts following him, and Wilson leads her to a bar. Wilson recognizes Linda at the bar. Linda alerts Carter and Goodman, and they pick her up. The next day, the van is traced, and blood is found in the van. Carter informs Goodman and Linda about the trickiness of banking on DNA reports as a sole piece of evidence. Goodman decides to give Linda a break due to her burnout.
When she is out in the cafe, she spots Wilson picking up Crystal in a different car. She starts following him and alerts the others. Wilson abducts Crystal and ties her up inside the van. When he finally attempts to strike a blow, Linda arrives. She starts chasing Wilson, but after a point, she slips and loses control of the situation.
Wilson tells her that his point was never to kill the women. Linda soon gets hold of her gun and regains the situation. Wilson provokes her to shoot him, but she shoots in the air. Goodman and Carter arrive and rescue Linda. Wilson is taken into custody. Crystal, too, is saved. A week later, the three marked the file of the serial killer on Route 60 as closed. Goodman offers Linda to become his new partner. Carter, too, leaves for Virginia. The film ends with Linda looking over the flowers sent by the women of Route 60 with a note thanking her for saving their lives.
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