On June 13, 1980, Candy Montgomery, a homemaker and mother of two in a North Texas exurb, dropped her two children and one of their friends at church, picked them up for swimming lessons and then took them to see “The Empire Strikes Back.” At some point in the late morning, she also killed Betty Gore, the mother of that friend, striking her with an ax 41 times in the utility room of the Gore home.
That killing and Montgomery’s eventual acquittal (she claimed self-defense; the jury believed her) have inspired two series more than 40 years later: “Candy,” which debuted on Hulu last May, and “Love & Death,” which premieres on HBO Max on Thursday, with new episodes following weekly. These shows join a recent crop of fact-based dramas about women who kill or who kill by proxy: “The Act” (Hulu, 2019); “The Girl from Plainville” (Hulu, 2022); “The Landscapers” (HBO, 2021); and “The Thing About Pam” (NBC, 2022).
Women who resemble the protagonists of these series, white and most often middle-class, are already familiar archetypes of the true-crime mythos: the mothers always ready with a kind word and a casserole, the daughters with smiles that light up a room, the women with their whole lives ahead of them. But in most true-crime narratives, these mothers, daughters and wives are the victims. Here, they’re the killers. This grants these series, which typically attract a majority female audience, a unique appeal and horror. Murderers: They’re just like us.
“It is scary!” Jessica Biel, who played the title role in “Candy,” agreed in a recent phone conversation. Biel spoke of Montgomery’s service within her community, her care for her children.
“If she can do that, I guess I’m capable of doing that,” she said. “Everybody’s capable. That’s the thing that’s terrifying … and fascinating.”
In the United States, female murderers are comparatively rare. And despite the narratives that true crime prefers, female victims are, too. Half a decade ago, the F.B.I. calculated that more than 88 percent of the perpetrators of homicides were men and that women accounted for just over 21 percent of homicide victims. Yet polls suggest that women seek out true-crime media — books, podcasts, dramas, documentaries — more frequently than men, particularly media about violent crime.
There are two main theories to explain this feminine obsession, which some researchers have termed a “fear of crime” paradox, in that women are much more likely to be compelled by what is far less likely to affect them.
The first, said Marissa Harrison, a professor of psychology at Penn State Harrisburg and the author of “Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers,” involves thrill-seeking and morbid curiosity, the same impulse that makes us rubberneck at a car crash.
Harrison also sketched out the second theory, which is that women consume true crime out of protective vigilance. “We evolved over time to pay attention to the things that could harm us,” she said.
Under this rubric, women see true crime as educative — watching and reading and listening to learn what to avoid. I would never have accepted that ride, a consumer might tell herself. Never gone on that date. Never opened the door. (This protective vigilance often borders on victim blaming.) And yet stories like Montgomery’s allow, chillingly, for fewer lessons. Because who wouldn’t open the door to a church friend picking up a swimsuit?
Still, narratives like “Candy” and “Love & Death” provide their own lessons — lessons that typically reinforce gender difference, substantiating common beliefs about the gender binary.
“These narratives confirm deeply held beliefs about women’s emotions, about women’s inability to control their emotions, about women being emotionally driven,” said Sarah Rebecca Kessler, a professor of English at the University of Southern California and a self-described true-crime obsessive. Montgomery confirms them better than most: a paragon of femininity, she sang in the church choir and was best known for her famous lasagna until she butchered her friend, seemingly on impulse.
That men kill is no surprise. A few years ago, Marc Cherry created a scripted series called “Why Women Kill” that ran for two seasons on CBS All Access and Paramount+. It’s nearly impossible to imagine a gender-reversed “Why Men Kill.” Dramas about the likes of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy or Richard Ramirez never worry too much about the why of it all, intent on establishing monstrosity rather than delving for a root cause.
Where women are concerned, however, the why is paramount, with viewers asked to pay close attention to the murderer’s circumstances, behaviors and psychology. “When instead of being caregiving and loving, she’s harmful and hurting and murdering, it’s ‘Why? Why? Why?’” Harrison said.
The why attracted David E. Kelley, the writer of “Love & Death,” to the Montgomery case.
“Therein lies the mystery,” he said. “How could a person who had great aspirations in her heart, including love and community, act in a way that belied those principles at their deepest core?” (The motives were less opaque in his earlier HBO hit about fictitious killer women, “Big Little Lies.”)
Both “Candy” and “Love & Death” solve this mystery by accepting and reiterating Montgomery’s version of events. On the stand, she testified that Gore had attacked her first, angry over an affair that Montgomery had conducted with Gore’s husband, Allan. A psychotherapist also offered evidence, obtained under hypnosis, of childhood trauma that Montgomery had suffered. The defense’s theory held that when Gore shushed Montgomery during the attack, it recalled that trauma, pushing Montgomery into a dissociative state.
But the why isn’t the whole of the story. Any true-crime drama worth its blood spatter has to show the how. Since both “Candy” and “Love & Death” are identified as prestige drama rather than true-crime drama, however fact-based, both shows struggled with how much violence to show and from whose point of view.
“We wrestled every moment of every day of whether we should actually shoot the killing,” Robin Veith, a creator of “Candy,” said.
Both shows ultimately staged the killing in ways that also dovetailed with Montgomery’s trial testimony, in scenes that disturbed even the people making them.
Biel described taking refuge in the period-appropriate set decoration and costumes of “Candy,” particularly the wigs. (Biel looks nothing like Montgomery, and yet onscreen the resemblance is striking.) Only by immersing herself fully in the character, from the toes of her sandals to the ends of her curls, could she allow herself to feel what Montgomery had presumably felt, to do what she had done.
“The second I put that wig on, I didn’t recognize myself,” she said. “I could behave in a way that I wasn’t accountable for.”
Elizabeth Olsen, the star of “Love & Death,” had fewer wigs to rely on. Onscreen she looks less like the real Montgomery. Her Candy — a mingling of soft voice and hard angles, dream and determination — is arguably more impressionistic. The first time she shot the killing sequence, she found herself hyperventilating, sick with adrenaline.
“I don’t like violence at all,” she said during a video call. “It was a horrible feeling. There was no part of me that entertained, ‘Oh, I wonder what that would feel like to play.’ It was really nasty.”
Lesli Linka Glatter, the veteran director who shot “Love & Death,” wept after calling “cut.”
“Have I ever cried on a set? Never,” she said. “This was probably one of the most upsetting things I’ve ever shot, because it was real, because it was up close and personal. It was just two women, two housewives in this room.”
Two housewives went into that utility room, but only Montgomery walked out. And while most of us will want to tell ourselves that murderers are different from the rest of us, a woman like Montgomery — so personable, so ladylike — thwarts that disidentification.
“Maybe the most frightening thing is that monsters could lie within us all, even the people that we love and trust,” Kelley said.
In both “Candy” and “Love & Death,” Candy, in her silly late ’70s fashions, seems so normal, prey to the same pleasures and exasperations that many of us feel. But normalcy, it seems, is no protection from the worst that a human can do.
Watching most true-crime dramas, a lot of women will needle themselves with a shivery thought: This could happen to me. “Candy” and “Love & Death” inspire thoughts that are arguably worse: I could do this. I could want to.
Alexis Soloski
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