Featured Image Credit: Netflix
Topics: Netflix, TV and Film, Viral, Twitter, True Crime
Emily Brown
Netflix users are praising one of the men involved with the shocking true crime documentary Girl In The Picture after it was released on the streaming service this month.
The discovery of the conspiracy that makes up Girl In The Picture began in 1990, when three men spotted a blue high heel in the middle of the road and nearby found a young woman lying facedown on the ground.
The woman was identified as Tonya Hughes, but was later found to have gone by other names, including Sharon Marshall.
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A synopsis for the documentary describes how the woman's mysterious death and her son's subsequent kidnapping blows open a 'decades-long mystery about the woman's true identity, and the murderous federal fugitive at the centre of it all', with viewers left shocked and horrified at the events that play out in the film.
Though many of the responses online relate to how mind-blowing Marshall's story is, many Twitter users have also used the release of the documentary to praise investigative journalist Matt Birkbeck; the man whose work the film is based on.
Birkbeck wrote about Marshall's story in two books, titled A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon, and has been credited with raising awareness of the events and bringing closure to those who were impacted.
One Twitter user flagged Birkbeck's work in response to a review of Girl In The Picture, writing: "You don’t mention the film is based on two incredible books, A Beautiful Child and Finding Sharon, and the relentless work of the author, Matt Birkbeck.
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"I read the first book years ago and am still haunted."
Another stressed it was the journalist who 'refused to let decades-long questions go unanswered', writing: "He was the glue that eventually stuck each piece of this mess together to give Sharon her name back & some semblance of closure to those who loved her."
Girl In The Picture quickly shot to the number one spot of Netflix's Top 10 movies in the UK following its release and has received an impressive critics' score of 94 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.
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Marshall is honoured in the film as an ambitious student who had been accepted into Georgia Tech university and dreamed of being an aerospace engineer, with friends remembering her apparent father to be a strange man who at times seemed inappropriate with his daughter - or at least the woman he claimed to be his daughter.
Girl in the Picture is streaming on Netflix now.