Lover, Stalker, Killer: L'ex de l'extrême

Rarely is there a documentary that will take you on the most unpredictable journey of a police investigation. The evolution of this case as detectives and forensics peel away the layers only to be thrown into a completely different direction is, for lack of a better word, simply "incredible."

A lonely man named Tony, looking for female company is bombarded, harassed and threatened via text messages from an ex-girlfriend. She knows his everything he does, where he goes, and who he's with every second of the day. The abuse is horrifying and relentless. The problem is, nobody knows where this woman is. Then the threats extend beyond Tony to his current girlfriend and her children. Vandalism. Arson. Threats, Murder? Tony is living a nightmare.

My one observation is that had the victim of stalking not been a man, and the perpetrator not been a woman, action by law enforcement (dare I say) would likely to have been taken a little more seriously at the beginning, and may had resulted in solving the case much earlier. It's as if poor Tony was left twisting in the wind. Stalking is a serious matter for anyone.

That being said, the investigators were deft and strategic. Applying both physical and digital technologies in forensics, as well as psychology, coding, and the laborious tasks of reviewing and revisiting the thousands of photos and IP addresses in evidence is a testament to these three men's endurance and patience. Their professional dedication in finding justice came at considerable personal cost.

If this were fiction, then there would be a Hollywood ending, tying off all the loose ends. This isn't a movie, and unfortunately, there are still stones left unturned and people still unavenged.

This is one of the rare exceptions where truth is not only stranger than fiction, fiction couldn't come close to this truth.

Highly Recommended!

I was quite engaged by this doco. It got more bizarre and crazy as time went on. I had my suspicious and felt I called it from the start. It was a simple case, nothing too complicated and the producers do well with the subject matter and make a decent production.

If anything, this really was a case of bad policework. Very poor detective work from the start led to this series of terrible events because the true story and some common sense was always there. If some basic things were actually looked into this would have not taken years. I thought it was complicated only to find out it was the obvious suspect. Overall not a bad doco and an easy watch.

A mechanic moves on from a relationship, and starts online dating, he meets a woman, and the pair hit it off, when he decides to move on, she takes to some pretty drastic and shocking revenge tactics.

Wow, this was one incredibly interesting and intriguing documentary, at times it almost felt quite difficult to believe that events here, were actually really life, had it been a thriller on the big screen, you'd say elements were far fetched.

Very well made and nicely edited, it's well paced, it benefits from the 90 minute running time.

You can only imagine what was going through Liz's mind, she must have spent ages trawling The web, and plotting, it makes you shudder to think who's out there, and worse, these people are in dating websites.

Poor Carrie, to have been caught up in this horrendous story.

It definitely shows the dangers of online dating, and interestingly it shows that it's not just the men that are bad out there.

8/10.

I was hooked from the start on this true crime documentary. It was different to the majority lover, stalker, killer documaries in that this time you saw the male subject being stalked by the female.

What it does also proove is that a woman scorned is not to be messed with as she is imaginative, dangerous and very cunning.

For true crime buffs this documentary will be above the rest as there are so many twists and turns due to the psychotic but very intelligent stalker.

But like all Netflix true crime docos the ending is always the same. The bad guy/girl gets caught no matter how smart they think that they are.

This is actually better than most Netflix crime documentaries.

For one it doesn't have several useless episodes with information that keeps on repeating in order to fill the time. It's a relatively zippy 1h30 and there is very little filler.

I've got three qualms about this that keeps me from giving it a higher rating.

1- If I could figure out within 15 minutes what was going on how come the first cops couldn't? There's no information about the cops' ineptitude in handling the initial case.

2- The prosecutor says this will be a hard case to prove, no slam dunk etc. And then the film makers spend all of two minutes on the actual court case. That's shoddy film making.

3- What was the perpetrators motives? The mindset etc. Nothing was explained or explored and that made for a less than compelling ending.

Netflix almost knocked it out of the park with this one.