Love and Hate Crime

A young man is led into court and sentenced to life for the savage murder of the woman he loved. The camera follows him into prison, where he starts to explain his story and how he reacted with blind rage when he found out a secret his girlfriend was holding from him. But is he telling the truth, and what really happened? Slowly his story unravels as more and more information is found out about him.

Filmed with amazing access to the killer in prison and in court, the film tells the story of a hate crime and the danger of being different in the USA. The film also traces the victim's story through speaking to the police, others who investigated the murder and those who were close to her.

When James Anderson was run down in the street by a gang of white youths, it was condemned as a modern-day lynching, a sign that the old race hate of the southern states was as strong as ever. This is the story of one of the white teenagers, Sarah Graves, then 18, who was in the truck that ran Anderson down. The film follows her family as they try to come to terms with what happened that night and looks at why Sarah became part of a gang that carried out a racist attack.

When coastguard officer Adrian Loya breaks into the Cape Cod apartment of married couple Lisa and Anna Trubnikova and opens fire, it is the culmination of many months planning. With Lisa dead, Anna badly wounded and a policeman shot, Loya is taken into custody. Police find he is wearing a video camera to record his actions and also find videos made over many months when he was planning of the attack. There is also a journal charting his obsession with and hate for Lisa and the twisted thought process that lead to his decision to kill.