Closure is a powerful thing. Yolanda Herrera's family hasn't gotten closure since she was murdered in 1981 when she was 23 years old. She was walking home late at night after work but she never made it. Her body was found in a field by two kids as they were walking to school. Herrera's murder is the oldest cold case in San Antonio. DNA evidence is available but so far no matches have been discovered. Last week, local authorities asked the public's help for any information connected to Yolanda Herrera's murder.
I discussed the case with Chris Lang, producer & writer of the hit British crime drama show, Unforgotten. There was a similarity between Herrera's case to the story in Season 1 that centers around the murder of Jimmy Sullivan -- decades had passed with no killer brought to justice. Jimmy's remains were found in the basement of a house 39 years after he was murdered.
What is special about Unforgotten is it's giving people hope that one day they will find out who murdered their son, daughter, wife, husband, mother, father, or sister. I told Chris Lang how much his show is appreciated by the people in my community. He was elated. "That really is an amazing thing to hear! Thank you for telling me! Social media has changed my relationship with the audience in a positive way. A lot of connections were made and I get to experience them through you and the response I get about the show. To write something and hear back about how it's connecting to people, shaping the way they think and helping them."
From the first episode in Season 1, Unforgotten has received critical acclaim. I remember feeling so drawn to the show that I binge watched all three seasons in one week. The main character, DCI Cassie Stuart is played by Nicola Walker. Her case partner, DI Sunny Khan, is played by Sanjeev Bhaskar. Both actors have great professional chemistry in the show. As you watch them you'll see that both Cassie and Sunny, as well as the investigators in her department, are in a "hive mind" to solve each cold case with level headed determination.
In a pivotal scene in episode one of Series 1, Cassie is having dinner with her father and they're discussing Jimmy's Sullivan's case. Two separate schools of thought in the matter. Cassie's father said "Feels like history to me. Ancient history." But Cassie was the opposite. She felt a strong sense of duty and she voiced that to her dad, "Is a crime less serious because time has passed? Is a wrong less wrong because it was done 50 years ago? 60 years ago? ..... society has a responsibility to take [cold cases] seriously no matter how far back, no matter how old [the cases] are.” Later, we see Cassie briefing her department about Jimmy's murder and that "she wants to find whomever killed Jimmy and she wants to punish them".
It's a similar conversation I've had here in San Antonio with families of the victims. All these years have passed with no solution. Murderer not found. Nothing. They want the police to care no matter how long time has passed. For them, it feels like time has stood still.
Unforgotten.... focus on the victims. Unforgotten... focus on the families.
Chris Lang goes further, "What Unforgotten does, which is unusual in crime shows, is that it tells the story of the victims and their families in a way that we don't get to see. Quite often in a procedural and crime drama the victim is just a device in order to tell the detective story and investigative thread. In Unforgotten, we spend time with the family and those people who have not been able to find closure 10-15+ years afterwards. It's brutal for them. I think that's why they forge a strong connection with Cassie [DCI Stuart] and Sunny [DI Khan] because they do very valuable work in bringing that story to an end. As a parent myself of five children I can't imagine anything worse not knowing what happens to your loved one. I think it would be a living hell. I'll say about 500 people from around the world over the last 2-3 years contacted me on Twitter saying,
'Hey that was my story. It was the first time I had ever seen anyone articulate all the things that I had felt but had not been able to say. I can talk to my husband (or wife) about what happened to me and I could say watch this and then you'll understand what it feels like.'
You can't ask anything more as a writer, you feel your work goes out there and it touches people in some way. It's the holy grail of writing that in some small way affects, in a positive way, people's lives."
Here in Texas there's capital punishment and many have been executed for their brutal crimes. It's difficult sometimes to feel compassion for these coldhearted murderers because we're all human beings and we get carried away with our emotions. But we have to be neutral and say "they're going to prison for a very long time. Their life is over."
In Season 2 the story centers on David Walker whose remains were found in a suitcase in the River Lea by city workers. Towards the end of the season, we start to see how several people had been psychologically and physically abused by the ones they murdered. This is where Cassie and Sunny determined that they had suffered most of their lives and that some evidence wasn't enough to send them all to prison. Cassie's determined sense of justice, of punishing the ones who had committed these crimes, had dramatically changed. What happened?
"What I hope the show has is compassion," Chris said, "We're all guilty of judging people very brutally and social media enables that....if I get to do a series 5, that's exactly what I'll be writing about. How does someone cross the line and end up in a terrible place where they commit murder? About 99% of them have suffered a lifetime of trauma. Do we ignore everything that made this person and treat them as criminals? Do we put them in jail with no hope, don't give them a shot at redemption? That's one of the prevailings of the series: compassion, forgiveness, understanding. That's not to say that you don't punish people and they don't go to jail but we should be more compassionate and forgive a little more."
In Season 3 of Unforgotten, the story begins with the discovery of human remains by construction workers in a median near a main highway. The victim is later identified as Hayley Reid, a 16-year-old who disappeared on New Year's Eve in 2000. As the story progresses, there are four persons of interest in Hayley's murder. One of them is Peter Carr whose past misdeeds came back to haunt him. Cassie took the case files with her to a cafe to review them but because of her absentmindedness, she leaves Peter's file in a cafe. It's found by a person who later gives it to a journalist, Sandra Rayworth, who exposes Peter Carr's past on her blog. As Peter leaves work, he's stabbed (later dies of his injuries) by a vigilante who was incited by Sandra's relentless social media toxicity. Eventually she's arrested for what she caused. As for Cassie, her career is in jeopardy.
“We've just had a dreadful case in this country of a television presenter who killed herself, Carolyn Flack", said Chris, "as a result of a sustained social and print media attack on the mistakes that she made. She couldn't cope with it anymore. It's just awful and people should pull back. There's a real backlash against the aggression displayed in social media. I hope it changes but I don't know [if it will]."
What's happening in Season 4?
Chris gives us a bit more detail, "The story centers around the relationship with the police in great detail. Again it's deeply historic. It tracks through the stuff you've been talking about, Lucy, and the toll it takes on a police officer, particularly Cassie Stuart. These things don't come up without a cost when you spend 30 years being a front line police officer. All the decisions she made in Season 2, the things she saw and witnessed in Season 3. These things have an effect and we'll be tracking through what that effect is. Cassie has been in the police force a very long time and many police officers like Cassie deal with trauma and anxiety, the occupational hazard of being in that line of work. This is a big journey for our two heroes."
The story for Season 4 is greatly relevant to the relationship our society has with the police. Chris says the police situation is different in England, "What the police really need in this country is for people to appreciate them a bit more and get a pat on the back. People need to be reminded that we get very complacent about what the police do for us. In the UK, in the last 5 years we've had a lot of issues with terrorism. In London where I live we've had terrible incidents and the stories you read about what the police do when something like that happens, they walk towards the madmen."
You look at the news stories and people are running away from the chaos while you see the police running towards danger without hesitation.
Chris agrees, "And they do it on a daily basis and I think we take that for granted. But we should never take it for granted." Though police brutality is common here in the States, I remind people (who are constantly voicing disapproval of the police) that there are great cops who have been in the force for decades. They've been stabbed, shot, run over by drunk drivers and they still show up for work after they recover. "There was an off-duty copper on the London Bridge bombing. He was at a nearby bar having a drink and he saw what was beginning to unfold outside. He came out, he had no protection at all and he tackled one of the main terrorists (there were 3 of them). He beat him to the ground but he got stabbed 15, 20 times and he nearly died but he didn't. That is bravery!", Chris says. We don't acknowledge them enough because someone like him will get awarded a commendation for bravery but there's other coppers doing something equally brave every SINGLE day of the week."
All day, every day.
Season 4 of Unforgotten is halfway through production. For updates on when the show will premiere, follow Chris Lang on Twitter: @ChrisLangWriter or follow PBS Masterpiece @PBS.
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