A man and a woman are murdered in cold blood inside their Topeka, Kansas, bedroom under cover of darkness in 2002. Suspicion quickly falls on the man’s ex-wife, Dana Chandler, with family and forensic evidence painting her as the jealous type. But the county prosecutor at the time declines to pursue charges in large part because nothing places Chandler at the scene of the crime. It’s only after a politically motivated prosecutor is appointed and CBS’s 48 Hours airs a 2009 report rehashing the case that Chandler is arrested on two counts of premeditated first-degree murder in 2011 and condemned to consecutive life sentences the following year.
No doubt: the story is hot copy. And more than likely, Chandler’s conviction marks the conclusion if a husband-and-wife team of true crime enthusiasts hadn’t become convinced that the real killer was still walking free. “There’s a lot of questions that remain,” says film-maker Matthew Galkin. “But when you start to unpack the crime itself, there’s a lot of hoops to jump through and a very high bar to clear in order for her to have pulled this off.”
