Killer Sally

Killer Sally is another true crime story like we are bombarded with on television lately. This case is well explained, with good interviews of both sides of the story, from killer to children, from best friends to attorneys. Everybody will have an opinion about the case and so did I. I think Sally McNeil was a battered woman but still she shouldn't have killed him. Leaving him was the only correct solution, like it always should be in these cases. I am sure he wasn't an easy man to live with but she had for sure a violent temper as well so these two should never have met each other or ar least not stayed together. I didn't found her a heartless or irritating woman. The only real cockroach of society in this well made documentary is Dan Goldstein, the former district attorney. A nasty narcist that enjoys being in the spotlights, that feeds on the misery of others. He's the only one that made me sick to the stomach.

And child abuse are really the underlying themes of Killer Sally. Without those, people would not get into or stay in clearly toxic relationships. What is apparent is that Sally and Ray both had dysfunctional childhoods, which led them to the perfect storm that was their six-year relationship. No one with healthy boundaries and a strong sense of self would marry a lover after a mere two months of courtship. That was the first red flag.

The maltreatment of Sally by her stepfather caused her to believe that she was flawed, undeserving and never good enough for anyone. She learnt to base her worth on what she did for other people. Ray, on the other hand, had to fend for himself after being abandoned by his parents; this led him to view people only as utility or an extension of himself as his young psyche sought to protect itself from obliteration. In other words, through opposite adaptation to emotional trauma, one became a giver and the other a taker.

There is a concept called repetition compulsion where we replay dynamics of previous significant relationships in current ones. Sally was unconsciously repeating her relationship with her stepfather with Ray. She could not step away from her marriage to Ray, even to protect her children, because she was determined for it to succeed in order to make up for the approval she could never gain from her stepfather. Ray became a substitute for Sally's stepfather; in shooting him, Sally was really trying to silence the crushing disapproval that she felt from the male figures in her life. There are no villains here, only children who deserved better parents and happier childhoods.

This is one of those stories that makes one feel hopeless about humankind. A couple of self-involved, lusty individuals stick together for several years of unhappy relationship. Eventually, even though they both wanted out, neither left until the bitter end.

Ray and Sally were two bodybuilders so wrapped up with their "career" that they kind of forgot about her two children destined to follow in their footpath of broken families and violent upbringing.

Sally gets the lion's share of the documentary and gives her own - biased - version of the story. Even if Ray was violent towards her, she did not leave. Especially her statement about being ready to move back with her parents rings false. She stated that "It was too late" without explaining why. What actually stopped her? Certainly not Ray, who was ready to move on with his lover...

Anyway, in true Netflix spirit, they try to turn Sally into a sort of saint martyr, and they manage because the audience seems not to have noticed the extremely relevant part of her reloading the shotgun to put another round into Ray, who was lying on the floor dying. That was what made her spend 25 years in prison - like it or not, reloading and shooting somebody on the ground rules out self-defense.

However, this is a depressing story were all the parties involved are equally repulsive and pathetic, a bunch of people totally unable to exercise any form of self-control or restrain and capable only to follow their instincts in a savage and brutal way.

I like Sally, and I identify with her a little bit. I have always been an emotional passionate woman who could get a little out of hand sometimes. But having dated some really big guys myself, who were in The bodybuilding world, I can tell you there's no way she could have defended herself with anything but a weapon that could put some distance between her and her abuser, and that means a gun. When a bodybuilding man is on roids it's much different then for a female, especially one who is only taking one. We now know that men on steroids can really become out of control animals. Who's to say what was happening in their home that day but the kids should have been taken more seriously and they told the cops that the dad had beat their mother. I feel that Sally is the unfortunate victim of a time when squeaky Wheels were screaming for women to be held responsible for being abusers. I myself was in the unfortunate position of being arrested once when I slapped a man who had pulled my hair and thrown me on the ground in front of witnesses. I was arrested for being the abuser and he was not arrested. The cops were under extreme pressure to get women in handcuffs who were doing any sort of physical action or reaction. Add to that the fact that Ray was, for all intents and purposes, a celebrity, and we can see that Sally was railroaded. She has a good case to get her conviction overturned because of the words of her own lawyer in this documentary. Even though she's already done her time, she should pursue this. He even admits he didn't want her to get on the stand and yet she didn't know that he felt that way. That is some BS representation . I don't know where Ray was when she took that second shot, but I believed her when she said that he was still talking and trying to get back up. If he were on the ground trying to get back up when she took that second shot then the blood spatter would have gone up into the lamp just like she said. She had a crap lawyer during the time when the cops were trying to get handcuffs on women. I thought the documentary was interesting and not so long that you might feel you want to get your time back. But there wasn't really much about the trial itself so I think the title is misrepresenting what's actually here. But as someone else said, if it was titled two Marines abuse each other and one gets killed nobody would watch it. I was really struck by the son who said he hated Ray. It takes some serious abuse for a child to hate a caretaker. There's probably some other things they're not telling us here. One of the reviews here that says something about taking on the da I agreed with except for the part where they said how fraudulent the US justice system is. Our system in the US is actually the most coveted system in the world, it gives both criminals and victims the most fair outcome based on a jury of their peers. There is no other country in the world where you could kill another person and actually have the potential to walk out a free person. So while I agree that there are many discrepancies in our system like Johnny Depp getting away with abusing Amber Heard and her being railroaded by the media, there is no other country I would rather live in if I were accused of a crime or the victim of a crime. And almost every other country victims seldom get any form of compensation for medical expenses or punitive damages or any such thing. People can look down on lawyers and complain about the system but I would love to see them go live in another country and have any sort of crime happen to them or be accused of a crime and then they'll be lamenting that they wish they were back in the US.

This documentary was well made. The first episode I laughed out loud and it was quite lighthearted and interesting, and then I posits 2 became darker.

They did it in a way in that lost of the story was from Sally herself, however they did present the other side which had you wondering what you'd do if you were on the jury.

I really feel for her children the most, the poor things were so young and entered into a life of violence afterwards too.

Being only 3 episodes this was a perfect amount of time - anything over 4 episodes is too long for a documentary.

Recommend to all true crime doco lovers out there. You'll learn something about bodybuilding too!