Review of Pet Cemetery Murders: Not Quite Heaven’s Gate

One of the reasons so many true-crime documentaries focus on long-forgotten or little-known murders is so that the story can maintain a degree of surprise. So while it wouldn’t take too much Googling to find out who was ultimately arrested and charged with Thompson’s murder, it’s probably best to leave that detail intact here, so the story can unfold as expected. Suffice it to say, those interviewed by Cairney directly accuse the prime suspect in the second episode of The Pet Cemetery Murdersand that much of episode three is concerned with whether or not this person will make it.

Regardless, solving a murder is only part of what Cairney’s documentary is about. He and his team also question why it took more than 25 years to convict someone of Thompson’s murder. Savvy viewers may also wonder why the title of this series adds A ghost story-and why Murders is plural.

THE ghost story The element is one of the main selling points of the document. Another big rumor about the Thompson Pet Cemetery is that it is haunted, or at least that the bayous of Toca are filled with restless spirits. At the end of the first episode of this series, Cairney drops an unusual piece of information from 2009, when a man came forward to the St. Bernard police to say he had been visited by Thompson’s ghost. Turns out this “witness” isn’t the only person who told cops that Thompson was visiting people from beyond the grave to demand justice.

As for why it took until the 21st century for this unsolved case to heat up, there are multiple mundane reasons, ranging from lack of resources to lack of urgency. (As one lawyer put it, this case had “terrible witnesses and an unsympathetic victim,” referring to rumors that Thompson might have murdered her husbands.) Moreover, just as new investigators were beginning to use DNA evidence techniques to try to pin down suspects, Hurricane Katrina hit and washed away much of what they were working on.

Cairney emphasizes the Louisiana character of this story throughout the film, sometimes unintentionally, simply by interviewing people with thick accents, and sometimes very intentionally, by giving almost every shot a haze of high humidity. The Pet Cemetery Murders also includes several interludes to address Toca’s tragic story. According to this documentary, the region is named after a cruel slave-holding judge who helped facilitate the Reconstruction era.St. Bernard’s Day Massacre” of 35 freed black people. Native residents tell their own stories of how their ancestors were massacred and/or enslaved by plantation owners. One native interviewee scoffs at the idea that his people took revenge by cursing this land, saying any curse came from the mass murderers, not their victims.

And this is where it’s a shame that Cairney doesn’t have the creativity that Morris demonstrated. Gates of Heaven And The thin blue line. There is a bigger picture than The Pet Cemetery Murders tries to paint, which gets a little lost in the stubborn devotion to the usual true-crime documentary tropes. (If there’s an interview in this film, you better believe the subject will be looking slightly askance at the camera, while sitting in a place with lots of local color, like a restaurant.) Cairney’s earlier filmography is filled with high-profile documentaries about fine artists and musicians. He brings some of this scientific rigor to this project.

Nevertheless, his argument stands out. Similar to The thin blue line (and many true crime docs inspired by The thin blue line), this series is in part about how complicated murder cases are and how they often become even more difficult to solve as the evidence mounts. This is because the two people who know the crime best – the perpetrator and the victim – do not speak. But it’s also because everyone’s personal story becomes quite strange the deeper you dig into it. Certainly, the more investigators learned about Dorothy Lou Thompson, the more mysterious her life became.

But The Pet Cemetery Murders it’s also very much what people TO DO know, and why they didn’t do anything. There are (probably) no real ghosts in St. Bernard. But there are many dark shadows, cast by crimes dating back centuries. And there have always been whispers, too: about who is dangerous and what they have been doing not-so-secretly.