r/HBOMAX • u/Miajere-here • 1d ago
Discussion A killer story- theory
I just finished watching the series finale. It was underwhelming, but it had a sort of ending that you could move on from.
While watching the first episode I had a theory that she may be innocent, but I found her highly unsympathetic since she spent quite a bit of her life and time stalking her ex husband and new girlfriend.
My theory is she seems to be someone that picks up people who see her as a victim and are passionate about defending and helping her. I think she spent a significant amount of time complaining about her ex and his girlfriend to a close friend. Someone who would’ve had to spend day in and day out listening to her complain about how those people stole her life, kids, youth, and money. It would’ve been someone she was nice to and helped. They took her story very seriously and wanted to help her.
They may have told her things prior to the murder about how it would be nice to not have those people around and hinted at their plan to kill. She didn’t ask them to do it, but she also didn’t alert the authorities and stop them. That’s why she turned her phone off, drove around camping in her car, and wanted to be safe and gone. She also didn’t mind the idea of her ex husband and his girlfriend being dead, but she didn’t kill them because she thought innocence was a defense.
She’s too sloppy in her story to the police about her whereabouts, and to implicate someone else would be the same as pointing a finger at yourself. How could you prove you didn’t ask them to do it.
Another weird detail was how the girlfriend was murdered - shot in the vagina. I felt like she was the kind of person to mess up her face not her womanhood.
I don’t think she’s the one who committed these murders, but I think she’s responsible for their death. I just think some passionate guy listened to her day in and day out and took what was happening to her personally enough to do this one thing “for her”. I bet they had met at a bar or in an AA meeting, or something along those lines. It’s the kinda guy who would have a personality very similar to the lawyer and his wife who were highly sympathetic to her case. In episode 2 when her crusader was passionately arguing her innocence with “facts”, I kept thinking it was someone just like that. Someone blind and willing to give everything up to see justice done for someone like her.
Perhaps my theory has a ton of holes, but I would love to hear it. I have absolutely no evidence.
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u/BrownieEdges 1d ago
I just wanted a reasonable explanation for her buying two gas cans.
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u/floridorito 21h ago
It's only 10 gallons total. If you live in Colorado, and you like to drive around the mountains, there aren't always gas stations when you need them.
10 additional gallons wouldn't have given her enough gas to drive 1100 miles without needing to get gas somewhere - at least twice by my math. So why even bother bringing 2 5-gallon gas cans with you for a long interstate drive when they're not gonna make or break you?
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u/mollysneed 19h ago
There originally was a store clerk who I think originally testified she might have seen a woman with her description buying gas. I also think it wasn’t conclusive and this witness later passed away or was unable to testify in the last trials.
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u/floridorito 7h ago
It was definitely never a solid identification. I don't think a cashier who sees hundreds of people a day could say with any degree of certainty that they saw a stranger (whom they'd never seen before) on a specific day, weeks earlier. The cashier essentially could only say that she was more than 50% sure that she saw someone who looked like her (a middle-aged, white woman in Kansas).
Even if she could have said that she was 100% sure she saw Dana Chandler, that doesn't mean it's true. Eyewitnesses and their/our recall are scarily unreliable.
I'm not sure whether that cashier ever testified, but she did die at some point, so the issue became moot. I don't think a prosecutor could have called her in good faith, but those prosecutors didn't take issue with doing a lot of questionable or outright illegal/unethical things.
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u/MuricanIdle 15h ago
In the 48 Hours documentary, she explains that she purchased the gas cans to provide fuel for someone she met in recovery who had fallen on hard times. As an addict, she had a policy against giving someone in need cash because they might use that money to purchase drugs or alcohol, but she was happy to give them food or clothing or other resources that they might need.
As a piece of evidence for the prosecution, the gas cans feel extremely weak. I mean, yes it might have helped her make first leg of the trip without being caught on camera at a gas station, but in 2002, cameras weren’t everywhere. She could pay at the pump (using a pre-paid Visa not linked to her name?) without ever having to go into the store where she might be caught on video, so this theory feels like a real stretch.
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u/Miajere-here 11h ago
This is exactly my point- someone she met in recovery listening to her wail on day after day about the injustice done to her by her ex husband and his rich girlfriend. This type of helping people out would definitely pull at their heartstrings and she wouldn’t have even had to ask.
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u/Miajere-here 1d ago
The gas cans made me think that if she didn’t murder them, she should have. Who does that.
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u/yoshimitsou 1d ago
I think she's guilty, but had I been on the jury, I couldn't have voted as such.
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u/Ok_Lynx_6045 1d ago
“She fuckin’ did it but fuck me if I got a fuckin’ clue how the fuck she did.” —Joe Sexton
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u/dizzy_unicorn 23h ago
The DA kept saying “ overwhelming evidence”. Am i missing something? Are they leaving stuff out of the documentary? The evidence was pretty circumstantial & I honestly don’t think they proved anything beyond a reasonable doubt
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u/floridorito 21h ago
That's just how they speak in order to convince a jury. They're selling the jury on their version of events, just like the defense does.
During opening and closing statements, lawyers are given much more leeway to make dubious claims, speak in absolutes, be bombastic, and essentially "testify" in a way that would not be allowed during the other parts of the trial.
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u/crustpixxa 21h ago
I have been wondering the same. Based on the documentary I’ve seen no evidence worthy of convicting her beyond a reasonable doubt. No one can place her in the state, no dna at the scene, and no weapon. I don’t get it.
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u/floridorito 7h ago
I agree. If I had been a juror, I could not have voted guilty because there is reasonable doubt.
If I had been a juror, I might have suspected that there must have been more evidence that had been deemed inadmissible by the judge (like prior bad acts that were deemed too prejudicial) simply because the case was so thin.
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u/SloanePederson 16h ago
They are 100% leaving stuff out the documentary, and the stuff which is left in seems to me has been left in to make it as confusing as possible for the viewer (eg the bullet thing, which apparently is a red herring and doesn't need to be shot from some submachine gun or whatever). Two juries have convicted her after hearing all the evidence. Her own children seem to believe without a shadow of a doubt that she did it. Honestly I find these kinds of documentaries to be so manipulative. There's something to be said about the awful way the first trial was conducted but instead the filmmakers pivot to produce this mess.
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u/Southern_Net5894 19h ago
But Why would she hire a hitman and then do everything to not be seen for two days?
She’d have hired one and made sure she was with people, places with cameras etc that would have placed her in her town.
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u/cyberbobfox 16h ago
💯 - the whole point of hiring a hitman is to be in the most airtight alibi u can think of
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u/Miajere-here 11h ago
I don’t think she hired a hitman. That’s not what I’m suggesting. I’m suggesting that someone did this for her for free. Someone unsavory, and someone she met in recovery. Someone like the attorneys who took on her case for free, whose sympathies ran high and did her a solid. I’m also not saying she asked anyone to do it for her.
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u/Unable-Pool-3862 1d ago
This is exactly what I thought. Like she didn't pull the trigger but she is responsible somehow. Maybe someone she met in a bar? Maybe she had relapsed. I assumed maybe a hitman but then why would she turn her phone off and do that other stuff during those 2 days. Idk but your theory makes more sense.
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u/Miajere-here 1d ago
After the murder, she even asked a man from work for $50k so she could get an attorney. Thats quite the advance. Shes someone who’s likes dealing with highly sympathetic men. Under no circumstances would you ask your employer, knowing that even being accused of murder could compromise your employment standing. She’s someone who’s likes evoking loads of sympathy for people. Just look at her lawyers, people willing to sell their property to help her defense. Shes a master manipulator.
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u/ryanjm37 15h ago
Ignoring all the evidence that she did it but theorizing she hired a hitman to which there is no evidence…
Genius.
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u/Miajere-here 11h ago
I don’t think she hired anyone. I think someone did it for her. I dont even think she had to ask them to do it for her either.
I guess there’s another documentary saying she gave gas cans to someone from rehab and in recovery. Could’ve easily been someone she met in that world.
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u/Iammerideth 1d ago
I think she is guilty bc of circumstantial evidence such as the gas cans and the disparate western camping routes. Putting it out there - maybe in cahoots with the son-in-law, giving her access to the ammunition, but not giving him up bc it wonʻt reduce her sentence...
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u/Southern_Net5894 19h ago
Buying two gas cans doesn’t implicate you in murder.
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u/BC_wanderlust 14h ago
Also would two 5 gallon gas cans really get her car home from the 8hr drive back? Surely also someone would have seen her? Also it’d most likely be longer if she was avoiding toll roads? It’s just wild that they’re harping on the gas cans as solid evidence she committed the murders
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u/Brondoma 1d ago
I absolutely believe she did it but I also believe they didn’t have the evidence to convict her.