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Your Father's Murderer: A Letter To Zachary

Kurt Kuenne

Storyville: Your Father's Murderer: A Letter To Zachary

22/02/2010

BBC Four - Storyville, Your Father's Murderer: A Letter To Zachary

A memorial to a man whose ex-girlfriend and likely killer says she is expecting his son.

Documentary in which filmmaker Kurt Kuenne memorialises his murdered friend Andrew Bagby after his ex-girlfriend and likely killer announces she is expecting Bagby's son.

On the evening of 5th November 2001, 28-year-old Dr Andrew Bagby was murdered in a parking lot in western Pennsylvania. The prime suspect, his ex-girlfriend Dr Shirley Turner, promptly fled the United States for St. John's, Newfoundland where she announced that she was pregnant with Bagby's child, a boy she named Zachary. 

Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, Bagby's childhood friend, originally began this film as a way for Zachary to learn about his father. But when Turner was allowed to walk free on bail in Canada and given custody of Zachary while awaiting extradition to the US, its focus shifted to the desperate efforts of Zachary's grandparents, David and Kathleen Bagby, to win custody of the boy.

A film that prompted standing ovations at film festivals across North America, it is the recipient of numerous honours and citations, was named one of the top five documentaries of 2008 by the National Board of Review and named in Best Films of 2008 lists by more than three dozen critics.

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