The real life crime the film is based on is the 1990 home invasion by Von Taylor and Edward Deli of a remote family cabin in Oakley, Utah, belonging to the Tiede family. The two men murdered Beth Potts and Kaye Tiede and also shot Kaye's husband, Rolf, and left him for dead. They then took two hostages: 20-year-old Linae Tiede and her 16-year-old sister Tricia before being apprehended by police. Both were parolees who walked away from a halfway house. They stood together in court as a multitude of charges were read, but then their cases went their separate ways through the justice system. There were different lawyers, different juries, different procedures. Von Taylor ended up being sentenced to death, Edward Deli got life in prison. In 2020, Taylor's death sentence was vacated, but was reinstated in 2021.
