Long Island Serial Killer: A Mother's Hunt For Justice is Lifetime's latest 'Ripped From the Headlines' thriller. It's inspired by a true story of Shannan Gilbert's 2010 death, which led to the opening of the Long Island Serial Killer case, in which as many as 19 bodies were found on Gilgo Beach on Long Island. Centered on Shannan's outspoken mom Mari Gilbert (played by Kim Delaney), the film follows Mari as she urges the reluctant police department to take action. 'They've been stalling and avoiding,' Mari says in the trailer. 'I'm beginning to think there's a cover-up.'

Per The New York Times, it was Gilbert who pushed the Suffolk County Police Department to consider whether Shannan and the rest of the victims were linked, as they were mostly women and sex workers with similar builds. “[The real] Mari Gilbert singlehandedly brought closure to families who never knew what happened to their missing sisters and daughters,” executive producer Deborah Norville, who covered Gilbert’s story as an Inside Edition reporter, told Deadline. “To law enforcement, she was ‘just a mom,’ but her tenacity led to the discovery of a serial killer who may still be roaming free.'

Though Gilbert tirelessly worked to solve her daughter's death, she never saw Shannan's killer brought to justice. On July 23, 2016, Mari Gilbert was found dead in the Ellenville apartment of her other daughter, Sarra Elizabeth Gilbert. Per The New York Times, the 27-year-old Sarra was charged with second-degree murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. According to court records, Sarra later testified that she stabbed her mother 227 times and then beat her with a fire extinguisher because 'she was a demon' and needed to 'shut off her voice.'

Serial Killing Mom: The True Story of Stacey Castor: A collection of True Crime - Kindle edition by Anthony, Paula. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Serial Killing Mom: The True Story of Stacey Castor: A collection of True Crime. The opening credits claim that the movie is based on a true story. This is not actually the case; the titles are just the first of the film's many satires of true crime. 72 of 72 found this. Mathew Lillard plays serial mom's son. Lillard would later play a serial killer himself in 'Scream'. 34 of 43 found this interesting.

According to Sarra Gilbert's attorney John Ray, Sarra was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was 'in and out of psychiatric hospitals since 2014,' per PIX11. He did not specify why she was out of the hospital in 2016, but earlier that year she was already showing concerning signs that her condition was worsening. In February 2016, Sarra was arrested in Ulster County and charged with endangering the welfare of a child and animal cruelty. As a source told PIX11, she drowned a dog in front of her 8-year-old son and then threatened to kill him. In May, she was arrested again for violating her boyfriend's order of protection.

Sarra Gilbert pleaded not guilty to the charges. According to Newsday, Ray didn't believe she should be held responsible for her actions due to her mental illness. 'Sarra is, from all the evidence, clearly not responsible for what she’s done,' Ray said. 'She’s a schizophrenic, a serious one. It’s extremely tragic for her, as well as for her mom, as well as her family.”

But jurors found her guilty, and Sarra was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison on Aug. 4, 2017. She remains in jail to this day.

Mari Gilbert's murder was 'the most morbid turn in this already complete tragedy,' Vesselin Mitev, who Mari originally hired to help her solve Shannan's death, told The New York Times. “There’s just no way anybody could’ve expected this.'

Though Gilbert's life ended in tragedy, her mission to capture the Long Island Serial Killer — and find justice for Shannan — continues. As recently as Dec. 13, 2020, new Suffolk County Police Commissioner Geraldine Hart told 48 Hours CBS News that they are still looking into Shannan Gilbert’s death “as a possible homicide.”

A loose remake of Female Trouble with Polyester's subversively accessible polish, Serial Mom is the strongest film of the post-midnight-movie chapter of John Waters's career. Serial Mom was released theatrically in the United States on April 13, 1994 to mixed to positive reviews from critics, but was a box office bomb, grossing nearly $8 million from a $13 million budget. The film is widely regarded as a cult classic. In an upcoming Netflix series, the horrific real life tale of a serial rapist — and the story of one of his victims, who was disbelieved by everyone around her — is brought to the small screen, showing how two dedicated female detectives hunted him down, resulting in the criminal getting hundreds of years of prison time and that young woman getting her credibility back.

There is even something about the way he shows sunlight bathing a breakfast table that's amusing; his Sutphins look like they live in a cereal commercial. He has the look and feel of their middle-American neighborhood just right, but the movie's comic premise doesn't go anywhere with it.

Beverly, the Serial Mom, is played by Kathleen Turner, a brave actress who has ventured here where several other actresses reportedly feared to tread. One thing I like about Turner is her willingness to tackle unlikely roles; her agent probably warned her against Danny DeVito's 'War of the Roses,' for example, but she and the equally fearless Michael Douglas took that exercise in matrimonial bloodshed and made it ghoulishly effective.

In 'Serial Mom,' though, it's not so much that Turner's performance doesn't succeed, as that there's something sad about it that works against the humor. All serial killers are insane (at least I hope so). But in a comedy they need to extract some sort of zeal and manic joy from their atrocities; they have to give the audience permission, for the time being, to suspend the ordinary rules of good conduct.

In the slasher movies, the humor comes because the killers are seen as the victims of their programming, repeating the same obsessive behavior over and over again; we laugh because we see their mistake. In the classic horror films, we're amused because the evil is so stylized we can't take it seriously; Vincent Price licks his lips and rolls his eyes and intones his pseudo-Shakespearean imprecations, and his behavior takes the edge off his actions.

Beverly Sutphin Serial Killer

Watch 'Serial Mom' closely, however, and you'll realize that something is miscalculated at a fundamental level. Turner's character is helpless and unwitting in a way that makes us feel almost sorry for her - and that undermines the humor. She isn't funny crazy, she's sick crazy. The movie shows her triggered by passing remarks (a garbage man says 'somebody ought to kill' a neighbor woman who refuses to recycle). She gets a weird light in her eyes that I guess we're supposed to laugh at, but, gee, it's kind of pathetic the way she goes into murderous action. Like 'Clifford,' this is a movie where the comedy doesn't work because at some underlying level the material generates emotions we feel uneasy about.