Under the Bridge: True Story Behind Hulu Crime Drama

Warning: This put up accommodates spoilers for Under the Bridge.

On the night of Nov. 14, 1997, 14-year-old Reena Virk was invited to a celebration close to the Craigflower Bridge in Saanich, a suburb of Victoria, British Columbia. She by no means returned residence, and was later found to have been ruthlessly overwhelmed and killed by a bunch of her friends.

Primarily based on late creator Rebecca Godfrey’s best-selling 2005 ebook of the identical title, Hulu’s new true-crime miniseries Below the Bridge dramatizes the earlier than and after of Reena’s brutal homicide, which despatched shockwaves all through Canada. The primary two episodes, now streaming, leap backwards and forwards by means of time to depict the occasions that led as much as Reena’s (performed by Vritika Gupta) demise and the beginning of the investigation that adopted.

A lot of the present, created by Quinn Shephard, unfolds from the views of Godfrey (performed by Riley Keough), a journalist who grew up in Victoria and was working on a novel about teenage girls in her hometown on the time of the homicide, and police officer Cam Bentland (Lily Gladstone), a composite character representing the native authorities who investigated and solved the case.

In actual life, Godfrey didn’t assist within the investigation into Reena’s homicide as she does within the sequence. However she did spend six years interviewing the accused and attending court docket trials after the actual fact. “I went residence quickly after [the killing] and went into the jail,” Godfrey advised Interview Magazine in 2019 of returning to her hometown. “I used to be simply shocked as a result of the ladies all seemed like regular, cool, younger teenage ladies, not significantly like killers.”

This is what to know in regards to the true story behind Below the Bridge.

What occurred to Reena Virk?

In keeping with her father Manjit, who wrote a 2008 ebook about his daughter’s life and demise, Reena was bullied all through her childhood. She grew up feeling like an outsider and steadily rebelled in opposition to her Indian-Canadian mother and father—who had raised her as a Jehovah’s Witness within the custom of her mom Suman’s household. Previous to her demise, Reena had run away on a number of events and reportedly falsely accused her father of bodily, psychological, and sexual abuse in order that she might dwell in foster care, the place she believed she would have extra freedom. She later recanted her allegations of abuse and returned to dwell together with her mother and father.

When she was 14, Reena began hanging out with a bunch of teenagers whose ringleader, Nicole Cook dinner, has admitted to initiating the assault on Reena the evening she was killed by placing a cigarette out on her brow. Cook dinner’s counterpart within the Below the Bridge ebook and present is called Josephine Bell, a results of Godfrey fictionalizing the names of the eight teenagers concerned within the assault excluding the 2 who had been convicted of Reena’s homicide. Most of their actual names have come out in subsequent years.

On the evening of Reena’s demise, police arrived to interrupt up a big gathering of teenagers hanging out within the discipline behind Saanich’s Shoreline Faculty. A smaller contingent then moved to the Craigflower Bridge, the place Cook dinner—who reportedly needed to punish Reena for spreading rumors about her—and a bunch of seven others savagely beat Reena. After the remainder had dispersed, two of the attackers, Cook dinner’s finest good friend, 15-year-old Kelly Ellard, and a 16-year-old boy named Warren Glowatski, adopted Reena as she staggered away, continued to assault her, and finally drowned her within the close by Gorge Waterway.

Reena’s physique was discovered a little bit over per week in a while Nov. 22, 1997.

Learn Extra: Lily Gladstone, Riley Keough, and a Stellar Young Cast Make Under the Bridge More Than Just Another ‘Dead-Girl Show’

What occurred to the kids accountable?

In 1998, the six ladies—together with Cook dinner—who turned referred to as the “Shoreline Six” had been convicted of assault in juvenile court docket for his or her position within the preliminary assault that passed off. They acquired sentences starting from 60-day conditional sentences to at least one yr in jail.

The next yr, Glowatski was convicted of second-degree homicide in grownup legal court docket and sentenced to life in jail with an opportunity at parole after seven years served. He overtly expressed regret and took part in restorative justice applications, together with one wherein he apologized face-to-face to Reena’s mother and father. He was granted day parole in 2007 and full parole in 2010.

Ellard was additionally tried as an grownup and convicted of second-degree homicide in 2000. Her first conviction was overturned on enchantment, resulting in a second trial that resulted in a mistrial in 2004 because of a hung jury. Nonetheless, she was convicted once more in a 3rd trial in 2005 and acquired the identical sentence as Glowatski. Ellard, who has modified her title to Kerry Sim, was granted day parole in 2017 after giving start to her first youngster in jail and taking accountability for her position within the homicide for the primary time. She subsequently gave start to a second youngster whereas out on day parole in 2020 and reportedly rejected an opportunity for full parole in 2022, telling the Parole Board of Canada that she was “situationally” not prepared for freedom.

Within the months and years that adopted Reena’s homicide, the case sparked an intense media frenzy and created a widespread ethical panic over bullying and teenage violence in Canadian society. Twenty years on, Godfrey wrote in a 2017 article for Vice that the crime “continues to fascinate and disturb.”