Murder in the Bayou

This no question was a tragedy. Very sad for every family involved. But my review is on the documentary alone. It was good but crikey it was way too long and too repetitive. How many times can you tell us the exact same thing? We get it and got it the first 3 times you told us. They could have done this in 2, maybe 3 at most episodes. 5 hours was way too long for this thing and it could have easily been done in half the time. Is it worth watching??? Yes it's worth watching if you like the slow burn documentary. But by the time it's over you will be saying the same thing as me. Good but too stinking long...

"Murder In the Bayou" (2019 release; 5 episodes of about 55 min. each) is a documentary TV series about the mysterious murders of a number of women in a small Louisiana town called Jennings. As Episode 1 "A Body In the Canal" opens, it is May 20, 2005, and a guy fishing in one of the local canals finds the body of a woman, later identified as Loretta, age 28, and mother to 2 young kids. Then we go to June 17, 2005 when, believe it or not, another body is recovered from another nearby canal, this time a woman named Ernestine, age 30. Who could've done this? Meanwhile we are introduced to the Jennings Daily News reporter who covered these stories for the local newspaper... At this point we are less than 15 min. into Episode 1 but to tell you more of the plot would spoil your viewing experience, you'll just have to see for yourself how it all plays out.

Couple of comments: this documentary series is produced and directed by veteran documentarian Matthew Galkin. Here he adapts for the screen the non-fiction book of the same name by Ethan Brown (who appears extensively in the second half of this TV series). I didn't know much about these cases when I started watching this, and I really don't want to give away any thing that might spoil your viewing experience. So let me just say that this series is like an onion: you peel away, only to discover that there is more than meets the eye. And then you peel away some more, and before you know it, by the time we are in Episode 4, we find ourselves miles away from what we could or might have anticipated. Some might say that the series is moving too slowly, and it's true that this series probably didn't need the full 275 min., but I didn't mind the slow pace at all. Galkin does a good job giving us a true sense of what this small community was like (with a stark difference between the well-off north part of town and the trashy south part of town, both sides neatly separated by railroad tracks. The other thing that is so striking is how this small town was overrun by drugs, literally from all sides.

Bottom line: I found this to be a compelling true crime documentary series, with some twists that will blow you away, I mean, you can't make this stuff up! Kudos to both Galkin and Brown for their painstaking work on this. This series premiered on Showtime in the Fall, 2019, and I caught it recently on SHO On Demand. If you like true crime documentaries, I'd readily suggest you check this out and draw your own conclusion.

This documentary is so sad. I was affected by it right off the bat. The hurt and pain that the family of these girls feel hits you right away. The sadness is followed by anger. How could this continue to happen in this small town!? Why isn't anyone doing anything!? If you are just looking for an easy watching crime story, this is not it. It's uncomfortable. It's raw. It's a look into the divide between the rich and poor at its most tragic point. I didn't enjoy it, but I felt I had to hear the stories of these women.

I saw the 6.8 rating and was so stunned at the low rating that I thought I'd do what I could to help the show and add my two cent.. I'll start by saying that I only started watching the show because I couldn't find anything else on and was looking for an hour to kill but after the first episode I was so hooked I needed to know more so I ended up watching the following three episodes.. I also see that the former sheriffs family member must've wrote a review because they rated it a 1/10 and said it "lacking of solid, critical thinking or the hard, neutral questioning that good investigations put forward" and called into question the credibility of the witnesses which is crazy because the people who were put in charge of protecting the people of Jenning's seemed way more crooked than any witnesses/suspects in the docuseries and the relationships that these deputies had with their "informants" were borderline criminal activities and that's not even mentioning the alleged drug use by members of the JPD or the "mishandling" of evidence by its members.. I'm soooo glad I watched the series because one thing I learned besides being born on the wrong side of the tracks isn't just a saying where I live I also learned that if I ever need to go to Houston I'll be sure to take the long way around and stay off the I-10 through Jennings, La.

This is a sad and compelling story more about corruption in a small southern town than a murder mystery. Almost completely comprised of interviews with locals and mothers of the victims who repeat the same things again and again it just gets old after awhile.

This would have been more powerful presented in a two hour film rather than a five hour series.