WARNING: This involves Spoilers!
This is another documentary, and remember when I was so torn about if I should include those in this blog. This one really threw me. It was sad. I cried in the first five minutes of the film. I didn't even cry that much watching The Tillman Story (2010). I think that is due to the fact that Pat dying is just as sad and that documentary also dealt with a family losing someone and not getting justice, but I knew going into that story what it was about and it didn't throw any fastballs at me.
Dear Zachary starts out just as the blurb on the back of the box says. Zachary's mom killed his dad. They were both Doctors, who met in med school in Newfoundland. She was 40 and twice divorced and he was 28. His friends didn't like her, she made lude comments and they just said something was off with her and she was done with her residency and not practicing which they thought was weird. At the end of their relationship he was living in PA and her in IA I believe. He ended up breaking up with her and putting her on a plane. She then drove 16 hours back and wanted to meet with him. He agreed. She shot him dead. His friends knew right away that she did it. They played audio of her lying to the cops. The thing is she owned a gun that matched the bullets. She had also taken lessons for the gun and the man who gave them to her said her gun would malfunction sometimes and leave unspent casings on the ground. Those were there as well.Mind you this took place in the early 2000s and she had made numerous calls to him on her journey. They had to check every cell phone tower along her route to confirm that she was lying saying she never went to see him and at home 16 hours away. She then changed her story and said she did go see him and she had given Andrew the gun.
Andrew, Zachary's dad was an only child. The man who made this film was his best friend growing up. Growing up Andrew had appeared in all of the film makers films. This was nice since he had tons of footage of Andrew for Zachary.
So the crazy bitch goes back to Newfoundland, and I guess their legal system is very slow and stupid and they let her out on bail even though she is charged with first degree murder. They then find that she is 4 months pregnant. Andrew's parents quit their jobs in CA and move to Newfoundland. The only way they can see their grandkid is to hang out with the lady who killed their son. But he looks like their son and they adore him. The government of Canada had not only let this woman out, because they said she wasn't a threat to society, but they had also given her the child to raise. It's insane.
Since she is crazy and what they refer to as "a fake mom" the baby likes his grandmother better. The mom knows this. And she starts getting weird about it and not letting them see him. All this time and Canada is doing nothing to send her back to the US where she faces murder charges.
Finally when Zachary is 13 months old, they both go missing. A body of a baby is found. Yes, she killed him and herself. She put adavant in his bottle and took one herself, strapped him to her chest with a sweater and jumped into the ocean. I was dumbfounded. I had spent the whole film thinking that OK, she's going to go to prison soon and he will be happy with his grandparents and everyone will continue to tell him how his dad touched their life. No. The whole movie is talking to a dead baby. In the end it becomes a film about the grandparents and how strong they are and how much they are loved. How one women who should of been in jail, but because the Canadian system failed them this woman took not only their son, but also the only piece of their son they had left, their grandson.
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