516 - Murder at 100 MPH: The Mackenzie Shirilla Case

In the pre-dawn hours of July 31st, 2022, a black Toyota Camry turned onto a road leading to an industrial district in the Cleveland suburb of Strongsville, Ohio. Behind the wheel was 17-year-old Mackenzie Sherilla. In the passenger seat was her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and in the backseat, their friend, but really more of Dominic's friend, Davion Flanagan. Seconds after Mackenzie made that turn, calmly and in perfect control, the car surged forward, accelerated up to 100 miles per hour, and then did not slow down as it hurled off of the road, jumped up and over the sidewalk, shot across the grass, obliterated a sign, and kept speeding straight into a solid brick wall of a big manufacturing facility. Mackenzie, pinned under the dashboard, badly broken, will somehow survive. Dominic and Davion will not. In the immediate aftermath, to friends and family, this was devastating and confusing, but ultimately an accident. To the first responders, it looked like reckless driving. Mackenzie herself seemed to rationalize it as a freak medical accident. But soon, to the investigators who pulled the car apart and started to analyze the data, they started to think this was something else entirely. When they looked into who Mackenzie was, poring over her TikTok and Instagram posts and talking to friends and acquaintances of not just her, but of the young men who died in that car, they started to think that maybe this was murder. Today, we're diving into the disturbing and deeply tragic case of Mackenzie. On this week's True Crime, if you decide to drive your car into a wall, maybe you're not just a bad driver, but a murderer. Edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald, and you're listening to Time Suck. You're listening to Time Suck. Well, happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the cult of the curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suckmaster, status quo questioner. Guy who sometimes thinks life would be so much easier if I wasn't so curious. And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lucifina, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. Final reminder that tickets are still on sale until August 1st for Wet Hot Bad Magic Summer Camp 26, Hoedown Showdown, the final camp. This camp will be held Thursday, September, 10th, 2026, 2 p.m. as a start time through Sunday, September 13th. And that will be in Equinox, Pennsylvania, kind of by upstate New York. They're not too far from Woodstock. All kinds of extra details at badmagicproductions.com. Very excited to head back to Equinox and see a bunch of familiar faces and some new ones as well. Good weather, bad weather. A lot of fun is going to be had regardless. A lot of memories are going to be made and a lot of bacon will be eaten. Okay, let us dig into this story that shocked first a suburb of Cleveland and then grabbed the attention of the rest of the nation and beyond. Before the fatal car wreck, Mackenzie Shirilla seemed to many like a typical, you know, albeit angsty, social media obsessed 17-year-old. Fresh out of Strongsville High, living in a comfortable suburb south of Cleveland, she appeared to have it all popularity, designer clothes, a tight-knit friend group, a long-term boyfriend she had been with since she was barely a teenager. That boyfriend was Dominic Russo, or Dom for short. They'd been together for about four years. And to those who knew them, they weren't just dating, they were inseparable, even living together. Most people assumed they would end up getting married. On July 30th, 2022, Mackenzie Dom and their friend Davion rolled up to a low-key graduation party at a friend's place around 10.15 at night. Mackenzie, Dom, and Davion mainly kept to themselves, chatting in the corner before they left the party to hang out at another friend's house. Friends would later insist that everybody was in good spirits, that there were no arguments, not a single perceived moment of tension, nothing that anyone noticed. Then sometime around 5.30 in the following morning, the three of them piled into Mackenzie's car, drove off into the dark. Minutes later, two of them were dead. They had died after being involved in a very, very, fusing car accident. What threw many of the first responders to arrive at the scene was that this wasn't a car that had drifted or swerved or slid off some winding road in the dark. It had gone pretty much dead straight through a T-intersection, over the curb, across the grass, and into a wall. And it was still clearly going real fast when it hit that wall. There was no sign anywhere that the brakes had ever been used, clearly based on how obliterated the car was. The car had been hurling towards that wall. One of the first responding officers talked about how the car initially looked like it had been torn in half. Some drugs were found in the car, so they thought initially that might have something to do with it. But those drugs were weed and psilocybin mushrooms, not the kind of thing that would generally help explain this particular type of accident. People high on shrooms, weed, tend to drive slower, maybe, you know, erratically, sure. But they don't, they don't suddenly become NASCAR drivers, you know, most of the time locked in, trying to set some fucking time trial record. And what were these kids even doing? Out in an industrial cut-through at 5.30 in the morning? Perhaps Mackenzie had gotten lost? Tired from a big night of partying? But this is also where she had, you know, grown up, lived her whole life. Was she drunk and or high? Had just randomly taken a wrong turn, couple wrong turns? But that still didn't explain the obviously extremely high rate of speed. Trying to figure out just exactly what the hell really happened, investigators soon started pulling data from the car's blackout. Technically called, it's a vent data recorder. And also they gathered GPS data. They had a specialist analyze the condition of the vehicle. Did the car malfunction? Was Mackenzie just as much of a victim as the two dead young men? Eh. The more investigators looked, the less like a victim Mackenzie appeared to be. Mackenzie herself was no help to the investigation. She claimed over and over that she could not remember anything from the moments that led up to the crash. She also appeared devastated while she didn't know Davion that well. She seemed to think of Dom as her soulmate. She had just lost the love of her life. But was their relationship actually that dreamy? Mackenzie, investigators would quickly learn, had quite the temper. She could be wildly jealous, insecure, very possessive, downright abusive. She had a long history of making violent threats to Dom. But also she was 17. So her behavior, to many, largely influenced, I think, by her small size and gender, read less and controlling and more like the behavior of a brat. And a lot of people struggle with this. Would a bratty teen, a mean girl princess, really try to kill the boyfriend she had wrapped most of her existence around? And even if prosecutors could point to Mackenzie and Dom's toxic relationship as some sort of motive, what about Davion? Why crash the car while he was in it? What the fuck did he do to anybody? He had nothing to do with whatever was or was not going on inside of Mackenzie and Dom's relationship. And then the most confusing question of all, why did he crash the car while he was in it? Well, one, the county medical examiner and the judge of Mackenzie's trial would each have to sit with. Why would Mackenzie try and kill Dom in a way that would almost certainly also kill herself? If Mackenzie was trying to kill Dom, had she also come to believe that she wouldn't be able to live without him? Was this a crazed lover's attempt at a murder-suicide? Mackenzie's defense team would argue that nothing about the fatal car crash was intentional. That instead it was medical. That diagnosed condition. POTS. A.K.A. Pedal to the Metal On and On Time After Time Syndrome. And that acronym works, by the way, thanks to a lot of hyphens that turn big word combos into single words. Pedal to the Metal, one word, okay? On and On, another. Time After Time, yes. When you have POTS, her team would argue, you can't just drive. You can only race. You only have one need in this actually suffered with POTS for decades. Yeah. He wrote a song about it a long time ago when I was just a little kid to try and raise awareness for this condition. It's a fucking sad song. I can't, I can't hear it without tearing up. It's just, it's so tragic, right? That he literally could not, cannot drive 55 miles an hour. And of course I'm being silly. I assume all of you know that, but I would, it would make me happy to hear that at least one of you heard all that and actually did tear up. Oh my God, man, the fucking poor Sammy Hagar. Jesus Christ. I just sang along all these years and I had no idea. No, POTS is a Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. It's a disorder of the autoatomic causes an exaggerated increase in heart rate and symptoms like dizziness or fainting. Mostly when you stand up, you know, quickly after sitting or, or lying back down or lying down. And then it improves typically when you, when you do sit or lie back down. It can give you brain fog, lightheadedness or fatigue. It can make you faint. But when people faint while driving and POTS generally doesn't affect you as severely while you are sitting down, would you grip the steering wheel tightly enough to keep driving straight over various obstacles that would otherwise tilt the steering wheel? Uh, would you push the gas pedal to the fucking floor and keep it there? That doesn't doesn't really make sense to me uh didn't make sense to investigators right that you would pass out and that your body would go limp but your hands would stay death gripped on the wheel and also your arms rigid enough to not turn it and your right calf would just flex and stay flexed and keep the pedal on the floor wouldn't you be much much more likely to let go of the steering wheel and stop pressing the gas pedal if you passed out mckenzie would let a judge decide if that defense explained the crash in the summer of 2023 she waived her right to a jury uh jury trial let a single judge decide what really happened and before we get to that judge's decision let's rewind all the way back to the beginning let's get to know mckenzie shirilla a little bit look at what was really happening inside her four-year relationship with dom russo examine the crash itself the trial the documentary and where mckenzie sits today and how things have been going for her since the trial in today's time suck timeline trap on those boots soldier we're marching down a time suck timeline mckenzie ford shirilla born august 2nd 2004 to parents natalie and steven shirilla mckenzie and her older sister danielle who we don't know a lot about since danielle has clearly made a decision to do her best to keep her life as private as possible in the wake of all the media focus around her sister uh they were raised in strongsville ohio which is a middle-class suburb southwest of downtown cleveland in cuyahoga county with a population of 46 491 as of the 2020 census uh although not incorporated until 1961 the township was founded back in 1818 i've been through it many times my wife grew up in cleveland my father-in-law ed he lives right down the road in brunswick while a lot of cleveland is pretty polish like my wife uh germans which my wife is also partly german germans more than poles uh because she was born in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland and she grew up in cleveland or became the primary residents of strongsville and today at least 30 of residents there claim german heritage uh the famous rockefeller family lived in strongsville at one time including a young future industrialist john d rockefeller when he was a teenager uh strongville's nice in my opinion it's it's very very american suburban right it's got a big indoor mall south park mall uh place with all the usual suspects bath and body works abercrombie and fitch right auntie ann's apple bees buckle claire's and cinnabon dicks and dillard's uh hot topic h&m footlocker all that shit uh strong as well has costco and walmart super centers got targets got jimmy john's taco bell wendy's mcdonald's plenty of bars and parks got pizza places that fill up with people after softball football basketball baseball games etc it's very vanilla and i'm not trying to be insulting when it comes to picking a place to live a lot of people prefer you vanilla they love it uh it's generally a great place to raise a family right has a ton of green space big beautiful wildlife areas uh very low crime rate consistently ranks as one of the safest cities of its size in the entire u.s uh it's also uh has an exceptionally low violent crime rate uh 35 to 42 incidents per 100 000 residents which is about 60 to 65 percent below the national average and that's part of why mckenzie's story became as big as it did in my opinion maybe not a huge part but but part uh this isn't the kind of town or city where big criminal cases you know like this almost ever happen a lot of families live in strongsville for the safety and the stability uh generally the biggest complaints about strongsville seems to be uh the traffic lights too fucking many in some areas according to redditors there are roughly 50 traffic lights packed into just four square miles uh which you know a lot of people understandably just find unbearable according again to these redditors they do not sync up at all either what the fuck right also according to these redditors street after street and in cul-de-sacs there's not enough cut throughs to ease traffic flow it's fucking bullshit and when you're mostly complaining about something like that i think a part of you knows that you've got it pretty good uh by most outward measures the shirilla home looked like a typical household steven a trained graphic designer an ohio university graduate go buckeyes oh i have never encountered alumni so fanatically devoted to their alma mater in my fucking life as the buckeyes uh had worked as an art director in television in both cleveland and columbus before layoffs led him to pivot and to teach in art and digital media at mary queen of peace school a private catholic middle school in the old brooklyn neighborhood of cleveland not far from the zoo right across the street basically from gus's old brooklyn family restaurant home of the only homemade hash the only homemade hash in old brooklyn god damn it might not be as good as slyman's probably not but it might be fucking close just ask gus even though it's actually nico's recipe i don't know how nico relates to guts i would call them an ass but i don't care that way much anyway uh much less is known about steven's wife natalie shirilla's upbringing despite her current notoriety a lot of people online uh love to hate natalie shirilla right now and i don't i don't know that they're wrong uh she would go on to be her daughter's most vocal unwavering and again in the opinion of so many people online most fucking annoying enabling tone deaf public defender according to natalie she grew up in a traveling show family a quote show family filled with theater performers and musicians she would later describe her upbringing as having a stevie nicks gypsy vibe where relatives spoke to one another in a coded language known as carnie which she learned as a child and passed on to mckenzie who grew up speaking it as well so she's a carnie i love that she describes her child as being part of a show family it's like you were with a traveling carnival so what did you and your family do growing up uh show bits i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know you know theater stuff music hollywood type stuff uh cut to a clip of her just helping set up the fucking tilt-a-whirl in a dead mall's parking lot outside of peoria looking sickly thanks to getting over 30 percent of her daily calories from funnel cakes cotton candy and elephant ears so so you guys were musical huh oh yeah oh for sure no we all played music uh what instrument did you play uh calliope same as everybody else so some of you knew that's what i was going to say but i'm not going to do that i'm not going to do that some of you knew that was coming any excuse to play that i do and speaking carnie i had to look that up uh i expect a little bit more than what it is basically it's just a it's like a variant of pig latin as in he is a there's a miazart or mark we as oops the piazzaris we as he'll just expliazoted whoops the ferris wheel just exploded i'll just translate his pig latin there uh that's just some random dude jailhouse phone call recordings have captured mackenzie and natalie speaking in carnie to one another to try and hide what they're saying from authorities uh here is a little bit of the two of them speaking i mean she speaks it fast yes and that's that's odd right that's strange uh maybe maybe not the best example for mom to set uh help and hide her conversations from authorities i mean even if you're not saying anything shady it appears as if you are when you do that the charillas uh were not the kind of parents to enforce strict discipline uh that much is clear from watching those carnies on the netflix doc and in other videos uh by their own admission uh very permissive even if they don't use that exact word in my opinion way way too permissive typical carnies not enough oversight with parenting just like there's not enough oversight with the games the robin is blind on the fucking milk bottle toss oh for real though they didn't seem to have a problem with their daughter at all living with dom when she was 17 did not seem to have a problem with the two starting to date uh when he was 16 and she was 13 didn't seem to care that she posted tiktoks and instagram videos of her smoking all the fucking weed all the time uh smoking it while she was driving uh smoking every situation it seemed like she lived in a permanent cloud of wheat and i'm not anti-weed but i am anti you know straight up endorsing your kids continual smoking of it while they're still in high school uh not some authoritarian hard-ass parent either studies show that that doesn't work out well in the long run but you're supposed to set some boundaries to try and keep your kids safe and on the path to becoming at least a somewhat productive member of society and uh you know uh being a decent citizen that others do not want to continually punch in the fucking mouth teaching your kid you know how to function and succeed in the world setting boundaries for them loving them teaching them about consequences and trying to keep them safe pretty much sums up the job of a parent and they missed a lot of that uh mackenzie's parents seem to have treated their child as more of a friend like a peer than a kid uh they put her on a pedestal in a in a negative way for her development i think uh treat her like a princess who could do no wrong constantly trying to explain away or write off what i consider concerning behavior you know they they taught her i think that the rules just didn't really apply to her she was above it that's a fucking terrible lesson uh you being too spineless to give your kid them from consequences it just kicks it down the road and sets them up for a bigger drop right sets them up to take a huge fall when they fuck up in a way that gets a boss involved or the cops away you can't control anymore you can't protect them anymore uh creates people who think their shit doesn't stink or that they're the center of the universe and that tends to not work out well in the long run despite some fucking sociopathic narcissist doing very well but that's not a good example uh from early on mackenzie seemed to be drawn less to achievement in the academic sense of just uh you know somehow becoming rich and famous and adored uh my daughter monroe is 18 right now and i see this mentality so much with kids her age and kids a little older than her you know they post all the time on social media you know whatever uh uh but they hope but they truly hope with these posts that their account will just like magically blow up and they'll just and they'll just somehow be rich and famous from it but they have like no distinctive voice or plan uh they're not like you know like like creating really cool paintings and developing that and and posting pics of those to show their journey as they improve and experiment uh they're not posed in well thought out comedic sketches or you know recording original songs that they've worked hard to compose and hope will go viral so they can catch the attention of a label exec or you know become an independent artist who doesn't need a label and make money streaming they're not they're not designing clothes to try and establish their own brand they're basically just taking the same duck-lipped selfies using the same filters lip syncing to the same songs trending as literally millions of other young girls and when they do that and say that it's their dream to become famous it always reads to me as a pipe dream more than an actual dream right it just comes across as a delusional narcissism more than artistic passion right and for most kids i think it's a delusional narcissism more than an artistic passion right and for most kids i think it's ultimately harmless i think it's just part of a phase right you're you we all tend to be a little more self-absorbed you know growing up it's kind of part of how your brain develops i had all kinds of dreams myself at that age that i put zero fucking thought of work into dreaming random dreams that you don't really work at you know part of the fun of being young but underneath those dreams hopefully there's some practicality you know i also had college plans a regular job of some kind to try and paint my way through life so my dreams didn't end up costing anybody else around me anything does not seem mckenzie i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know or holds currently a similar pragmatic view uh she really loved still loves fashion especially a y2k inspired look before the crash uh often dressed head to toe in designer brands uh big on status you know brands that far exceeded what she or her parents could realistically afford uh not sure how she got uh all of that other than her dad said that dom had a lot of money and spent a lot of it on her how did dom get his money uh so young it's it's never explicitly said in reliable sources that i can find but the rumor is in addition to maybe doing all right with some crypto and stock trading uh he sold weed uh maybe shrooms as well uh he allegedly wanted to open up a dispensary later and you know and probably would have not a bad business plan marijuana would become legal in cuyahoga county just a year and a half after he died so uh you know if he wouldn't have been in that car he maybe could have opened up his own store maybe he had a dispensary right now uh image seemed to be everything to mckenzie based on her frequent frequent posts on instagram and tiktok her ig account still active i think a lot of old posts have been deleted uh but her tiktok account has been deleted entirely most of her remaining ig posts seem to be her in swimsuits or swimsuit adjacent outfits you know posing to look cute or hot also i would say you know this is fairly typical of a teenage girl you know who has some kind of aspirations realistic or not of you know becoming a model uh when lindsey and i watched a netflix documentary together and the prosecution showed certain photos and videos of her in a swimsuit trying to paint her in a very unflattering light you know sometimes we would shake our heads and think the same thing it's like yeah okay she gives off self-absorbed mean girl vibes or or i think i'm super hot girl vibes but is but is that that unusual for a high school girl we referenced several acquaintances of monroe's and said yeah that could be so and so and for some honestly of what they showed we were like yeah that could be monroe uh to talk about her home life again briefly it seemed like she could do no wrong to natalie and steven mckenzie was the golden child and it feels like her approval of them often seemed to matter more than her actual behavior which again i just don't have any respect for that uh sympathy okay sure we all want our kids to like us well most of us but not at the cost of their emotional moral and intellectual development is what you're supposed to do uh even mckenzie's friends noticed this dynamic describing natalie and steven as parents who cared much more about being liked by their daughter than they cared about doing you know the hard work of discipline and boundary setting and over time of course that dynamic as it tends to do uh it gave mckenzie a lot of control she set the tone she called the shots and she ran the shirilla household as a teenager that's fucking ridiculous uh outside of the shirilla home of course not everybody was under her spell which is part of why that parenting style is so fucking damaging right fucks with kids expectations man coming out of high school i expected the world to not give a fuck about me and uh it didn't i also remember having so many problems with my parents and my parents and i remember having so many problems with my parents and my parents and my parents and my parents at stand-up shows thrown out over the years uh when that uh person happened to be a young attractive woman uh more often than not they would they would cry they would have this reaction of wait what i i can't just act however i want wherever i want i can't loudly talk at my table throughout the entire show and ruin it for everyone around me but i wanted to do that why are you kicking me out for doing what i wanted to do why are you being mean that was like the feedback why are you being so mean some version of that seriously happened so many times in the early years especially entitlement is so real such a problem for many and at least in her documentary and in pretty much every video and post i've seen of her mackenzie reeks of entitlement and i blame her mom and dad there's a difference between uh making sure your kid you know knows they're special and then letting your kid think that they're so fucking special that the world should just bow down to them as mackenzie moved through center middle school in strongsville an entitled monster was born a monster of sorts noticed not by her parents but seemingly by pretty much everybody else around her by teachers administrators kids not part of her clique and eventually the police according to her case's prosecutor tim troop uh love this dude by the way seems like a very smart no bullshit kind of guy who sees through people trying to hide shit from him according to him mackenzie's school records contain a steady stream of incidents involving disrespect towards teachers and other students which in troop's opinion pointing to a lack of meaningful oversight in her home life again to bad parenting right why change your behavior at school if you're not uh you know gonna do doing something's gonna get you kicked out and your parents are never gonna punish you people who knew mackenzie in school you know they had mixed memories uh one said she could get aggressive that she bullied people another remember mackenzie just wanted to be at the top several classmates said mackenzie was a huge fan specifically of the character regina george from mean girls right the the head mean girl and and wanted to imitate her well there's others who were close to mackenzie insisted no she was a great friend not mean kind loyal and ambitious pretty typical of high school in some ways right i mean if she truly was a mean girl and i think she definitely was uh that doesn't mean her circle of friends kids that she thought was cool and worthy of her uh we're gonna feel that way about her because they're not on the receiving end of the cruelty and also they might be mean as well and a judgment against her would be a judgment against themselves sometime during 2017 mackenzie collapsed onto the kitchen floor when she was either 12 or 13 her mom and her dad were in the kitchen floor and she was in the kitchen floor when she was 12 or 13 her mom and her dad were in the kitchen floor when she was 12 or 13 her mom and her dad were in the kitchen floor when she was in the kitchen floor when she was in the kitchen floor when she was in the kitchen floor when she was in the kitchen floor when she was in the kitchen floor when she was in the kitchen floor when the doctor diagnosed mackenzie with pots which stands for again pedal to the metal on and on time after time syndrome uh no uh again it stands for i fucking love that course it's uh again it stands for uh postural orthostatic tachycardia and it stands for postural orthostatic tachycardia and it stands for syndrome, a condition, as I mentioned, where the body struggles to adjust to moving to an upright position that can cause the heart to beat faster than normal when you go from sitting or lying down to standing up, causing low blood pressure, a higher heart rate, and even fainting. The doctor wasn't worried, though. Generally, he's not that serious. He affects about one in a hundred people, and they prescribe salt tabs, which McKenzie would take or replace with salty food as needed. I have low blood pressure, and I fucking love salty food. Sometimes, yeah, I need it. And if I don't get enough salt, yeah, same thing, like at the gym, whatever, doing squats, I will get like super light head. Some degree of this is, I think, pretty common. Yeah, Monroe has it too. In 2018, McKenzie would be introduced to the police for the first time. The introduction occurred in February that year at the end of an ordinary school day at Center Middle School, where school kids began spilling out of the classrooms and making their way towards the buses. One of them was McKenzie. The other was an on-again, off-again friend, maybe a little bit of a frenemy. Kenzie, or McKenzie, was just, she goes by Kenzie with her friends, was just 13 at this time. She and this other girl had started bickering at lunch, and by the time the last bell rang, the argument had not cooled. Just outside of the school grounds, words turned into shoving, shoving turned into punches being thrown, and somebody called the police. You know, it was just a schoolyard fight, kind of thing that would usually be forgotten by next month. But this one, maybe it was a bit more violent than some, because a report was created, and the police now had a name, McKenzie Sherilla, as one of the girls involved. On its own, is this that concerning? I don't think so, as an isolated incident. But it wasn't an isolated incident. That October, when McKenzie was now 14 and a freshman in high school, the phone rang again at the local police station. This time, a mother was calling to report that her daughter was being threatened with violence by a group of fellow students, by some mean girls. One of them was McKenzie Sherilla. Not sure if the cops ended up talking to McKenzie or her parents about the incident, this or not. But, you know, now we're getting a bit more evidence to back up all the mean girl rumors. Next year, when she was a sophomore in high school, McKenzie's police file grew again. This time, it was not a fight or a threat, but theft. A coal shoplifting complaint was logged after she walked out with a pair of earrings she didn't pay for. She was never charged. A report was created, but she wasn't charged. The incident, you know, ended up on her record. Backing up a bit now. While in high school, at Strongsville High School, McKenzie met Rosie Graham, an aspiring model and fitness influencer. Uh, it seems, uh, already, you know, working towards that in high school. Uh, McKenzie was, uh, telling people that she was an inspiring model and influencer of some sort as well. But Again, common for that age. As a freshman, Mackenzie met Dominic Russo, who she, again, would call Dom. Mackenzie was 13 years old when they started to date. Dom was three years older, aged 16. One of Mackenzie's friends in the documentary said that she and some others in Mackenzie's circle found this age difference concerning at the time. But it doesn't appear that Mackenzie's parents did. I fucking would. I would find this very concerning. Three years isn't a big gap a little later in life, you know, like 19 to 22. But 13 to 16? That's a rough spread, I think. I am aware that a lot of opinions are out there that don't agree with mine, but I would not like that at all. Now, before we learn more about Dominic Russo, time for today's first to two mid-show sponsor breaks. If you don't want to hear these ads again, please sign up to be a space lizard on Patreon. Help us make monthly charitable contributions. Get the catalog ad. Free episodes three days early and more. Thanks for listening to our sponsors. Now let's get to know more about Dominic. Born in the fall of 2001 and raised in Strongsville, Dom Russo came from a big family. One of six siblings, and he was close to all of them, especially his parents, Frank and Christine, his brother Angelo, and his sister, also named Christine. As a kid, Dom apparently never sat still, a lot of energy, loved music and basketball. By his teens, he had developed what his father called. a go-getter's itch. He traded stocks and cryptocurrency, planned on launching his own clothing line, was filing the paperwork on an LLC to sell vape products. I gotta say, I love that level of entrepreneurial spirit at that age. I find that very impressive. As a kid, you know, I worked, but like, like regular jobs I didn't have to think much about. You know, like mowing lawns, grocery store, you know, stocking shelves. I don't think I had the balls to invest anything back then either. Mackenzie and Dom seemed to run out of money. They were running the same fuel, ambition, image, a taste for the finer things in life. They wore designer everything. All of it posted across her TikTok and Instagram feeds. But it seems again like Dom was the one paying for it all. Mackenzie modeled, supposedly tried on clothes in exchange for a product and money sometimes, which surprised me because she never really had a big follower count. But she really wanted to become an influencer. Numerous sources say that before the notoriety of the fatal car crash and subsequent trial, she only had a few thousand followers on each platform. That's not enough. That's not enough to attract much sponsorship, but I guess people thought there was potential or something. Anyway, she, she worked toward becoming a, as she worked towards becoming an influencer. Dom was always chasing the next hustle day to day. They were nearly inseparable, cooking organic vegetarian meals together. You know, they were very, very fit shopping for clothes, moving between their two houses. By all accounts, they were addicted to one another to everybody around them. Friends, followers, even Mackenzie's parents, you know, they're the kind of couple that, you know, people were sure we're going to get married. One day and someday soon, probably, but not everything was as it seemed with Mackenzie and Dom. So often when it comes to people's, you know, romantic relationships, you don't actually know what's going on behind closed doors. In March of 2020, police and firefighters were called to the Shorilla home for a 15 year old girl with a documented history of anxiety who had threatened to take her own life. A psychiatric evaluation was requested when Mackenzie wasn't taken to the hospital. According to the report, her parents did not believe the threat was real. And didn't think she would actually hurt herself. Worth noting, due to what happens later, though, that, you know, she was apparently, you know, experiencing suicidal ideation around this time. By December 2021 or January 2022, now 17 year old Mackenzie had essentially moved in with Dom during her senior year of high school, settling into the house his mother owned, which was right next door to her own. Which is cool that they were able to do that as far as own a house next to their house. Mackenzie's parents signed off on this reasoning that she was responsible. Enough for this arrangement. Right. Of course they did. I wouldn't like it, but OK. Through the first months of 2022, she and Dom kept slipping in and out of fights and makeups, but never quite breaking up for good. Somewhere around this time, Dom allegedly cheated on her, which friends said left a permanent crack in the relationship. But the two of them stayed tied together anyway, moving as a unit, sharing the same friends, including a kid named Davion Flanagan towards the time of the crash. Davion was born in March of 2003, the oldest of three. He'd had a brutal start to life, pulled from a home where his biological parents were lost to addiction and shuffled through numerous foster home placements alongside his two younger sisters, Divine and Dahlia, until 2011 when a Christian married couple, Scott and Jamie Flanagan, adopted all three siblings when Davion was eight years old. And that is so beautiful. That is so wildly impressive that they adopted not just one kid or two kids. They adopted all three kids to keep them from being separated. And raised them. In every video I've seen of them, Scott and Jamie come across like absolutely amazing people and parents. Davion loves sports. He was good at them. He was a starting running back at Strongsville High School, worked part time as a youth swim coach for a while, looked like football was going to be his path forward. But near the end of high school, he tore his ACL and UCL. And with that, felt like the dream of college and maybe even an NFL future that he'd been working towards was over, rightly or wrongly. After the injury, Davion felt lost. Started running with a different friend group, which happens a lot in high school. Started smoking a lot of weed. That led to him starting to clash with his mom a lot. And for a couple months, he would actually sleep on a friend's couch, Landon Turner, nickname of Bubba, while the tension at home kept building. Friends that he and his mom, you know, really butted heads on some stuff. Davion, to me, did not seem like a troubled kid. You know, he wanted to party. Of course he did. He's a teenager. He didn't want to follow the, from what I can infer, you know, fairly rigid rules of his adopted conservative life. In the documentary, his dad referred to marijuana as a gateway drug with complete conviction. Like he was, you know, doing a PSA in the 90s. Probably, you know, were very worried about him having premarital sex as well. You know, good people, I think. Very, very good people. But, you know, they come across as, you know, very, very strict. And their son, you know, the first kid they have entering the teenage years, rebelled. Which is not uncommon at all. Not a sign of his life going off the rails. Davion actually was, you know, very, very strict. Was putting more thought into his future than a lot of kids his age. When he died shortly after graduating from Strongsville High in 2022, he planned to go on to barber school and hoped to eventually open up his own barbershop. Excuse me. Apparently had a real talent for that. Genuine love for cutting people's hair. Liked to style his own. Was known for giving himself, his friends, and teammates fresh cuts and fades. He worked full-time after graduating. Was actually saving up money for and applying to the Allstate Hairstyling and Barber College in Cleveland. Hoping to start the fall. Fall 2023 barber program there. Like Davion, McKenzie also graduated from Strongsville High in 2022. A couple years before Dom. That same spring, the spring of 2022, McKenzie's parents, Natalie and Steve, filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Despite listing $398,000 in assets compared to $173,000 in liabilities. I'm guessing most of their assets was home equity. And they were trying to keep from losing their house while being unable to pay all of their bills. I would guess probably had a lot of high-interest credit card debt. It's usually the way that goes. But I am just guessing. Among the assets was a 2018 Toyota Camry. The same McKenzie regularly drove. Which reportedly had about 32,000 miles on it. Valued at $18,000. McKenzie didn't seem worried about her parents' money troubles. Or letting that slow her down. Totally normal for a teen. She spent the beginning of her summer after graduation. Mostly, it seems, smoking so much fucking wheat. Like Snoop Dogg, Cypress. Willing to sell Willie Nelson levels of wheat. She made no secret of it. She posted videos to social media constantly. Of herself driving stoned, smoking weed, while showing off designer clothes. Bragging that she was, quote, one of those girls who could do a lot of drugs and not die. At the same time, she was spending most of her time with Dom, Davion, Rosie, and their Titan 8 group of friends. As friend Landon Bubba Turner later said in the Crash documentary. This was the best friend group that I've ever had in my life. We didn't have any worries in the world. Shortly after graduating high school. Probably all felt like they were going to live forever, right? That they're golden gods, immortals. In a perfect world, that's how everybody gets to feel. When they've just turned 18. And they have their entire adult life in front of them. When society no longer sees them as kids. When most of them are just starting to get a true taste of autonomy. But don't have a lot of responsibility yet. It's an amazing time. Or should be. On July 30th, 2022. Mackenzie, Dom, and Davion were out doing what they usually did that summer. Drifting from one hangout to the next. Looking for the best house party. With no real responsibilities. And nowhere else they needed to be. Man, such a fun time in one's life. I didn't really get to experience partying like that right out of high school. Just mostly due to geography. But once I got away from my stepmom. Well, it was also a lot to do with her. And I was in college. Man, it was the fucking best. No curfew. No one to check in with. The start of each night felt like the beginning of some new adventure. That could, you know, turn out to be fantastic in so many different ways. Earlier that week, they'd heard about a graduation party at the home of Mackenzie's friend, Kelly Raja. Someone she knew from the local suburbs party circuit. Which is how most kids in their social circle had met. Davion texted Kelly to ask if he could come. Telling her he was coming with Kenzie and Dom. She said that was fine. She had no issue with any of them. Davion, Dom, and Mackenzie pulled up at Kelly's house party at around 10-15 p.m. But it was less of a party. Just more of a laid-back evening with a fire going. Small group of people playing games. Nothing wild like they were kind of hoping for. Mackenzie, Dom, and Davion had brought a little bit of tequila. Some weed to share. But they ended up mostly keeping to themselves. Hanging off to the side for about 25 minutes. At one point, Mackenzie asked Kelly whether any of them would come. Anyone else there was tripping, which Kelly, of course, took as Mackenzie checking whether psychedelics were on the table or not. But they weren't. Kelly's mom was at home. Kelly told her that that really wasn't her thing. According to Kelly, Mackenzie seemed happy, asked her about, I guess, some tomatoes she had and was acting totally normal. After about 30 minutes, Davion, Don, Mackenzie bounced and left Kelly's gathering, headed to their friend Paul Bullinghouse's house, arriving there just after 11 p.m. They listened to some music, smoked some weed, watched a bunch of videos on YouTube. Totally normal teen shit. Rosie Graham was there, too. That influencer friend of Mackenzie's working in a coloring book she'd brought along. Rosie was a legit influencer on TikTok and YouTube already by this point. She'd had a number of videos on fitness, makeup, skin care, et cetera, go viral on those platforms, getting a million or more views each, sometimes several millions again, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers. She was doing a version of what Mackenzie really hoped to be doing soon. At one point, somebody brought up the idea of taking some psychedelic mushrooms. And. And quite a bit of shrooms would be found in the wreckage of Mackenzie's car hours later. But the group decided it was too late for that. A little late to start that long of a trip. So they stuck to the weed. Later, when questioned, most friends told police that they didn't know if Mackenzie was smoking weed or not. According to Bubba, Mackenzie was taking a smoke break or a tea break because she'd been coughing up some sort of black mucus and wanted to look after her lungs in addition to resetting her tolerance. Later, Paul Bullinghouse would testify that he did not see Mackenzie or Dom fighting that evening. That everything between them seemed totally fine. At around midnight, Paul went upstairs to go to sleep in his room. He awoke, came downstairs again around 2 a.m. Where he found Mackenzie asleep. But Dom and Davion awake and watch an episode South Park. Getting stoned. Watch that little South Park. Right. So fun. Rosie Graham later recalled Dom stroking Mackenzie's hair as she drifted off on the couch. She said there was no argument between them that night. Quote, there was not one moment of tension. There was not one bad vibe towards anybody is what she would later tell the documentary makers of the crash. Around 2.53 a.m. Dom picked up his phone and texted his dad. I love you, dad. Right. Very sweet. A couple hours later, Mackenzie woke up from a nap, decided she wanted to go home. Davion had planned to ride home with Bubba, who had offered to run back before the two of them worked on a truck later that morning. Run him back. But the last second Davion changes mind, said, no, I'll just catch a ride with Dom and Mackenzie instead. And with that, they said their goodbyes left around 5.30 a.m. Davion climbed into the backseat of Mackenzie's black 2018 Toyota Camry. Dom took the front passenger seat and Mackenzie slid behind the wheel. All three friends had either smoked some weed or taken a marijuana edible that night. But Mackenzie felt confident to drive, you know, considering driving with Stone. While Stone was certainly nothing new to her. She is not going to, you know, pause at that. Minutes later, city surveillance captured Mackenzie's Toyota Camry, turning the turn signal on and then making a slow, very controlled looking turn off of Pearl Road and onto Progress Drive. And this is where shit gets confusing. This turn did not lead to Dom's house. It didn't lead to where Davion was crashing that night either. And then seconds later, the car began to rapidly accelerate. Almost 45 minutes later, just before 6.15 p.m. that morning, a man named Tom driving by in his motorcycle noticed a wreckage of a black car folded into the side of the massive 248,000 square foot brick Plidco building, a manufacturing plant set back off the road behind a strip of grass. Tom, who was heading back from an early breakfast, didn't stop to go chugging. He did a quick check on whether anybody inside was still alive. I bet he assumed they were not. Two minutes later, he called 911 to report a single car crash at the dead end where Progress meets Alameda. The sun was barely up when the first responders arrived at what some would later describe as the worst wreckage they'd ever seen. The black car looked like it had been cut in half, totally obliterated. The nose of the car was a mangled mess of metal. The windshield had caved in. The roof was folded in half and every airbag had been deployed, turning the windows white. Looking at photos of it, it is fucking mind-blowing. It is fucking mind-boggling that anyone survived this crash. Totaled, doesn't even come close to describing it. Officer Michael Glassie first approached the car, assuming anybody inside was dead. He made his way to the driver's door first, heard some mumbling. Through the broken glass, he could make out a young woman's legs and lower body, still belted into the seat. Her upper half was pinned beneath the passenger dashboard where the cabin had folded on top of her. He could see her stomach moving. She was unconscious, but still alive. He couldn't get into the car from that side, so he moved to the passenger side. Where the passenger seat was reclined all the way back. There, he found a young man, who would later be identified as Davion, lying with his back on top of the passenger seat and his head facing the top of the car. Fuck. Lying underneath was a third body, who would later be identified as Dominic. Both had devastating head injuries. Both appeared dead. Both were also, and this is very much worth mentioning, not wearing seatbelts. But Mackenzie, again, did have hers on. This will, of course, later at Mackenzie's trial, not look good. As officers arrived on the scene, they smashed a window, began cutting away the deployed airbags. Minutes later, the Strongsville Fire Department arrived with the jaws of life, extraction tools, and they worked to free the bodies from the mangled metal. As they worked to remove Mackenzie, she slipped in and out of consciousness. She mumbled the name Jacob, and then, according to first responders, asked, how was Davion? Two air ambulances, and that's kind of interesting, too. Like, how was Davion, not how was Don? How was the love of my life? Two air ambulances were requested, one for Mackenzie, one for Davion, who was, somehow, still barely alive. Again, at the time of the crash, Dominic was dead. I should add, though, it is not thought that the first, you know, that had first responders, excuse me, arrived closer to the time of the crash that Davion would have lived. He sustained what were described as, quote, fatal injuries instantly upon impact. So, even if they'd got there faster, it is strongly, strongly assumed, due to the nature of his injuries, that he would have died. Those poor kids. Davion would die. And moments later, before he could be airlifted to the hospital, Davion and Don would both be pronounced dead at the scene, and the county medical examiner's office took custody of both deceased males' bodies. On the way to the hospital, paramedics began to stabilize and assess Mackenzie, who was partially responsive when she briefly came to. They asked her questions. She gave delayed answers, confused but alert, not fully oriented to where she was or what had happened. A big thank you, by the way, to all the first responders out there listening. When people need you, man, they really do. They really need you. So continually amazed by your poise and just what you do. First responder Brett Stanislaw would later testify that Mackenzie's pulse, motor function, and sensation were normal across all four limbs. Findings, which he said, ruled out a stroke, a seizure, or any other significant neurological emergency. Right? That she did not just, like, faint or something. She had several broken bones. Her blood pressure was elevated at the scene. Mackenzie's blood oxygen level was 82, an extremely low reading that could have indicated that she had gone into or come, uh, out of cardiac arrest, uh, to some. Uh, later it would be determined that she had a broken femur, three broken ribs, a lacerated liver and kidney, broken arm with a detached tricep, and damage to both carotid arteries from the way her neck was bent. Back at the crash site, officers combed through the wreckage. They found a bag with 8.1 grams of psilocybin mushrooms. Had a nice amount for three people to have a strong but not life-altering disassociative trip. Uh, a digital scale, two phones, a bong, some marijuana, a purse. And a Cadillac key fob. A separate baggie of mushrooms had been found tucked into Mackenzie's own shirt and jammed under the accelerator with a pink fluffy Prada slipper. Drugs were likely a factor, they presumed, which is, uh, kind of funny to me. Uh, but like I asked earlier, uh, are shrooms and or weed really factors in many high-speed crashes? Alcohol is correlated strongly with aggressive driving, but weed, shrooms, associated with crashes, yes. But from the data I've been able to find, not associated with high-speed crashes. The geometry of the crash is what unsettled the investigators most. Uh, this was not a car that had drifted off a curve into a tree. To end up where it did, the Camry had to have blown straight through the stop sign at the end of progress drive, ignored both arms of the T-section, jumped the curb, uh, driven off the road entirely, plowed over a stretch of grass, uh, obliterated the Plitko, uh, company's monument sign, and then driven into the wall of the building, uh, set 130 feet back from the street at still going almost 100 miles an hour. Uh, the crash scene, struck the officers as strange from the start, and they talked it over amongst themselves. Because the dead end where the crash occurred was so obvious, they suspected the driver must have either been, uh, unfamiliar with the area or impaired enough to not realize the road ended there. Uh, the trouble was that these were, uh, not strangers passing through, they were locals. So what were three local teens doing at dawn in an industrial park full of offices and manufacturing plants miles from any of their homes? How were they crashed into a building at the end of a street that went fucking nowhere? Across town at Metro Health Hospital, Stephen and Nancy, and Natalie Chirilla, along with, uh, their other older daughter, Danielle, waited for word of Mackenzie. They still didn't know exactly what had happened or if Mackenzie was alive. They waited anxiously, pacing around the room. Then an officer finally met with them and he had good news to share first. Mackenzie was alive. She was breathing, conscious, and actually talking. Uh, she's going to be okay. But then when Natalie asked whether her daughter had been alone in the car or not, that feeling of relief drained, uh, out of the room, the officer hesitated. "You might want to sit down," he said. Natalie and Stephen sat down, on the edge of their seat. "How do I say this?" The officer began before reading directly from the police report. "Progress in Alameda. Car into a building. Two are deceased in the vehicle. Your daughter was driving." Natalie and Stephen began to panic. "Is it Dom? Is it Dom?" They asked the officer over and over. The officer wouldn't say for sure. Davion had been identified, but the other man in the car had not been yet. Uh, Natalie and Stephen pressed the officer again, desperate to know if Dom, who they considered part of their family, was one of the deceased passengers. Officer went to check with his colleagues, then came back with more information. One of the. seized passengers might have been called jacob he asked the shirillas did they know a jacob they didn't wasn't until later that morning that officers correctly identified the third passenger as dominic russo officers went to the home of frank russo and christine russo alerted devion's parents as well who were out of town back at the hospital uh the officers tell natalie and steven that drugs were found in the car and that their daughter was also likely speeding therefore all of her medical tests would likely be subpoenaed meanwhile mackenzie is sedated on ketamine and undergoing surgery on her shattered right arm and leg soon her alcohol screen came back clean mackenzie had not been driving uh driving drunk she had not been drinking alcohol that night uh however the blood draw showed she had been under the influence of marijuana not surprisingly uh how much not exactly made clear the report or at least what was publicly released of it just says traces in the hospital once her sedation thin mackenzie is eventually of course told that both dom and devion are dead according to the medical record mackenzie was now riddled with grief depression and shame upon hearing that news she told the nurse that she wanted to die that it was her fault that she had killed her boyfriend she was also adamant that she did not remember the crash and she reported pain quote everywhere only two days after the crash now august 2nd 2022 mackenzie shirilla turned 18 spent her birthday in a hospital bed at metro health with friends and family checking in on her among them were frank russo dom's dad and christine russo dom's uh sister who had reached out to natalie shirilla because mackenzie's phone had been confiscated in the darkest days of their grief the russo's were still worried about mackenzie a girl they had assumed would very likely be their daughter-in-law one day a girl they'd gotten very close to over the past four years uh they hoped that she was going to be okay at that point they had no reason to believe anything other than uh than this had been a terrible tragic accident when frank and christine had originally asked natalie for an update uh christine the mom now uh christine the mom now had originally asked natalie for an update uh christine the mom now on how mackenzie was doing this is interesting natalie told them that she still hadn't woken up for three days the russo's understood that she was lying unconscious in a hospital bed why because none of that was true mackenzie had been very much awake and conscious christine would later allege that mackenzie and her mom uh had told her that she was unconscious to give them time to come up with the story of what they wanted to say led to the crash as news of the crash spread mackenzie's social media following swelled and some modeling agencies and clothing brands slid uh also crazy to me based on her follower account that they're doing this i mean her ig is active now and after the documentary and everything still has you know about only about 60 000 followers which is a lot for like a random person but not a lot for like an influencer i'm fucking terrible at instagram i haven't posted much at all since i stopped touring even when i was touring i wasn't great at it i hardly ever have talked about it here and i have like a hundred over 150 000 followers i haven't posted on tiktok for fucking years and i haven't posted on tiktok for fucking years and i haven't posted on tiktok for fucking years still have over 300 000 followers there and i don't even know how to fucking use the app really but i know that no one was hitting me up for a bunch of collabs a bunch of endorsements uh these people must have assumed that she was just going to blow up so much further than she did or something or you know i guess to be fair i don't have model looks you know that many things she does maybe that's probably it that's probably the difference mackenzie's phone had been seized by police so natalie answered on her behalf thinking uh thanking excuse me one brand for the opportunity saying her daughter had been trying to reach them it's fucking kind of weird to be working business deals right now uh when mackenzie got her phone back she picked up the thread herself gushing to a brand that she would love to work with them so excited that's you know again just so close after the uh accident that's a little ick uh investigators would later also discover that mackenzie uh and her mom had been teeing up uh a los angeles modeling agency opportunity while mackenzie was still in her hospital bed davian's father scott flanagan would later have one word for this behavior tone deaf i know it's two words but there's a hyphen so now it's one uh no one in the right mind he said we'll be chatting about being thrilled about an opportunity like this in the you know immediate days after they just killed two people in a crash one of them supposedly the love of their life some sources say that uh mackenzie actually was posting directly from her hospital bed if so those posts have been taken down that same tone deafness was noticed by others when strongsville detective zaki hazoo came to an interview at the hospital mackenzie mackenzie reportedly said either to him or to her mother can they just take away my license for 10 years by this point a lot of people in town started to talk uh the record sent a shockwave through strongsville and in its wake a single question began to circulate was it an accident or had she done this on purpose everybody had an opinion police at this point were still investigating the crash as what it first presented as as an accident possibly due to a vehicle malfunction of some sort on august 4th four days after the crash on august 4th four days after the crash on august 4th four days after the crash on august 4th four days after the crash on august 4th four days after the crash on august 4th four days after the crash on um i know this can and does happen blacking out because of trauma but it's weird to me that she would claim to remember everything up to just a few seconds before accelerating and i know that's not impossible but you know suspicious in light of uh all the evidence that will come out uh soon dominic's mom will stop speaking to mckenzie when she learned things that would later come out at trial that others didn't um yeah she was uh she started to pull away a lot uh sooner than dom's dad frank did uh he will eventually turn on mckenzie as well though uh for the moment he felt sorry for mckenzie in his eyes she had lost the love of her life uh best friend uh and this you know another friend uh she would have to live with being the one driving the accident that took their lives mckenzie would join frank for things like ouija board sessions trying to speak to dom at the site of his grave uh even claiming to speak with his spirit there uh you know just so much grief in mid-august less than two weeks after the crash investigation turned for the first time an different direction two of davion's friends tyler croy and uh husni ahmed came to police with information they couldn't ignore these good kids good young men uh davion had been in their uh life 360 group this location sharing app teens and parents use to keep tabs on one another which i think is so cool uh love people doing this lindsey and i do something similar with find my uh she keeps track of so many people on find my so many friends and family uh thanks this app uh they had the entire final drive of davion's death and they had access to data which included more than just location data but speed acceleration braking and phone use when croy heard about the crash he screenshotted davion's data and later feeling suspicious about all uh suspicious about all this the two friends went to the police station to explain how it all worked to detectives according to the friends davion was using his phone texting them at around 5 30 a.m the crash happened at around 5 36 and davion's phone was still active at 5 35 the live 360 data also showed the car surging to over 90 miles per hour just before impact the friends told detectives that in their view it seemed like the three of them had been fighting and the drugs may have been involved but if psychedelics were part of it they said that did not fit with the claim that mckenzie had taken a nap earlier since those drugs can keep a person up for hours uh the officers asked tyler and uh who's need to send everything they had screenshots uh routes time stamps it was important they told him uh the detective would want all of this and again what a good couple of friends uh on august 16th mckenzie texted dom's mom when i get out of here i want to give you my bracelet that i made for you it's okay if you don't want to see me i understand right again dom's mom is like the one person being the coldest her right now uh christine replied why would you say that mckenzie texted i just feel like you guys all hate me christine replied we don't understand mckenzie texted that's been the hardest part for me none of this feels real when i get out of here can i go to dom's house i just want to lay in his bed or on on his floor so i can just smell him maybe take some hoodies home i also want to see you and give you a hug i love you guys so much christine asked when do you think you'll be released mckenzie replied i'm not sure yet i love you so much thank you for answering me i'm just so glad you don't hate me i'm sorry and and all of that you know could be just normal grief and sadness and you know all these emotions uh or it could be a guilty conscience could be a guilty conscience due to just happening to be the person driving that night or could be a guilty conscience for you know other much more nefarious reasons uh the next big development in this case uh maybe the biggest was the surveillance footage and i will tell you all about it after our second of two mid-show sponsor breaks thanks for listening to those sponsors uh truly uh hope you heard some deals you liked uh not not not being authentic about that i don't fucking care no i care a lot i do please i do care i hope you use our landing pages and uh codes so that you save money and they know we sent you and now let's learn about the surveillance footage investigators obtained cctv from two vantage points along the fatal route the first showed mckenzie's camry driving incredibly normally perfectly staying in its lane signaling a turn uh onto an empty street in the early hours of the morning even though no other cars were around but then the second clip captured less than a minute later showed that same car just tearing down this dead-end stretch of progress drive terrifyingly fast at up to 100 miles an hour and then mounting the curve followed by uh clipping and destroying the plitco building sign and then the second clip captured less than a minute later showed that same car just tearing down this dead-end stretch of progress drive terrifyingly fast at up to 100 miles an hour and then you hear this massive bang and deafening crash the footage is intense i've watched it many times pretty damning it looks like she was absolutely in total control of the vehicle when she made that turn and then still very much in control when she drove that fucking fast i have driven 100 miles an hour before on a bunch of different occasions uh and and you have to pay a lot more attention to keeping the car straight than you do at a lot lower speed slightly steering to the left or right at 100 miles an hour creates way more movement uh than it would at 20 or 30 miles per hour you have to be fucking locked in with a tight grip on the wheel to not risk you know fishtailing or even rolling the car missing the wall uh you know the car's greatly increased momentum drastically magnifies the effects of steering but investigators still had to rule out any possible uh innocent explanations first could mckenzie have blacked out seized up suffered some drug-induced episode that somehow sent her car flying into the wall very unlikely they thought but maybe not impossible could the camera itself have failed was there a mechanical issue with the car that caused it to accelerate uncontrollably if so you know then there was no murder also unlikely though for a car to suddenly have the steering mechanism seconds after it worked very well completely lock up and then at the same exact time begin accelerating as if you'd put the pedal to the floor and also have both your brake and emergency brake both not work i mean that combination is technically theoretically possible in some models of vehicle due to combos that are frankly way too tedious and full of obscure terms uh most non-mechanics mechanics you aren't going to know to explain but but it is highly unlikely but it had to be investigated the remains of the car would have to be inspected piece by piece investigators brought in sergeant adam mcquade an expert in crash reconstruction from the nearby brooklyn police department another nearby suburb uh the strongsville police asked him to review the camry's event data recorder which again is the car's black box according to mcquade the accelerator was fully pressed four point seconds before the crash the throttle stayed wide open until 1.6 seconds before impact and that's because the car went airborne after hitting the curb uh then the car made a very sudden move and then the car went airborne after hitting the curb and then the car went airborne a small right turn then a small left to correct then a hard right turn so sharp that the recorder logged a rollover event turning the wheel 142 degrees 1.1 seconds later the car hit the wall someone inside the vehicle had also manually shifted the gear shift into neutral but then was forced back into drive as the vehicle continued hurtling forward in its final seconds so had dom or davion grabbed the gear shift grabbed the wheel right were they struggling to stop the car right before they died had they been screaming for mckenzie to stop asking her what the fuck are you doing why are you doing this uh had they then tried to take control right of the car when it became clear she wasn't just trying to scare them or be dramatic but would had jumped the curb was actually trying to ram them while their seat belts are off into a wall investigators also explored a recent toyota recall to rule uh some things out uh plus there was a possibility that the pink prod a slipper wedge below the accelerator might have caused the car to accelerate they thought strong as well police now brought in mark sergeant a certified forensic mechanical expert from fire and explosion consultants i thought we just had this this sergeant guy uh no adam mcquade oh sorry i think i think it's just because like there's been sergeants involved i was like wait a minute didn't this did we just see this guy uh no we did not strong as well please brought in mark sergeant a certified forensic mechanical expert from fire and explosion consultants uh who conducts mechanical defect analysis on automobiles to look into one open recall on the camry a problem involving power brake assist uh it had been flagged on this car but toyota had already adequately repaired that issue on this car so that's not in play and wouldn't explain so much of the accident sergeant examined the accelerator pedal throttle mechanics and brakes and found quote no indication of any pre-crash mechanical or electrical failure that may have caused a loss of accelerator control a loss of braking or a loss in the ability to steer the vehicle the brakes appeared functional right they worked just fine as for the fuzzy prod a slipper sergeant also ruled that out based on where the slipper was wedged it could not have pinned the pedal down and caused the acceleration but rather according to sergeant the slip replacement was further proof that mckenzie's foot had been on the accelerator at the moment of impact when the car hit the wall very damning so rather than pointing detectives elsewhere this pointed uh more you know closely at mckenzie as being responsible uh when investigators realized the car had not failed they had to look elsewhere one by one they brought in people who knew mckenzie dominic and davion trying to piece together what had happened in the weeks days and hours leading up to the crash many of their friends were privy to the complicated dynamic between mckenzie and dom uh they were willing to share their own theories about what might have happened one of dom's friends figured the two had been fighting again he pointed to pictures of track marks on the grass consistent with mcquade's findings uh which suggested the car had veered hard just before hitting the wall uh the friend read this as a struggle perhaps somebody like i speculated uh grabbed for control at the last second maybe he thought mckenzie been trying to scare dominic by flooring it and then somebody lunged for the wheel at the last moment to try and uh you know avoid a collision and he didn't avoid a collision another friend described mckenzie to police as quote crazy and not mentally all there uh then there was dom's own family as time went on they became increasingly divided over uh you know what they believed had caused the crash the question of mckenzie's guilt had split the family down the middle dom's older brother angelo told police that whenever dominic talked about ending the relationship mckenzie would threaten to kill herself looking back on the crash through the lens this lens angelo said dom had tried to break up with mckenzie several times and he believed they were probably arguing that night but likely only a light argument because had it been a full-on fight according to uh angelo dom would have grabbed the wheel earlier before she started to speed up angelo said dom was likely trying to calm her down talk her down that morning in his final moments and that the hard swerving may have been his last attempt to grab the wheel while mckenzie with death gripping or bear hugging it damn still investigators not quite ready to arrest mckenzie as lead prosecutor tim troop put it every road led back to the same place and he said mckenzie was in the same black hole no one knew for certain what had happened in those last unwitnessed seconds inside the car and the only person who lived through them said she could not remember and on paper that meant the case was still officially an accident the county medical examiner had autopsied both young men had ruled davion's death accidental on september 12th with dominic's ruling following later that same day that october mckenzie applied for a new driver's license on the form she said she had no condition that caused her to lose consciousness or control of her muscles she also signed off that she had no physical or mental condition preventing her from exercising reasonable and ordinary control of a motor vehicle less than a year later this form will come back to haunt her on october 13th mckenzie texted christine dom's mother i didn't lose just dom i lost my whole other family and that's you guys christine wrote back my family will never be the same lost a part of my heart i'm sorry that people aren't receptive to you but those boys died in your hands you have to understand that i'm not the only one who lost my you think i want things this way my life is hell i'm broken mckenzie responded i did not do this on purpose if i knew any of this would have happened i would have made sure it was me that died i would think that you would understand but it's good to know you think this is all my fault i do understand that nothing is ever going to be the same we're in the same boat we both lost extremely important people to us and i see angelo and somebody else in his studio so i know that it has been more than you and angelo in hell everybody's life is hell everybody is so broken over this it's not just you and angelo i wish i could take that pain away from you guys and just make it only for me i tried to tell you guys i would never do this on purpose and i thought you would know that she really is so fucking tone deaf i mean partially due to age but what the fuck you're talking to his fucking mom don't act like it's the same fucking situation for you too you didn't have the same relationship with him you weren't even engaged to him she gave fucking birth to him and raised him that is so wild uh then but again you know fucking some i don't know some people can act like this and then not become pieces of shit they can grow out of it but maybe not in this case uh at the end of the same month came halloween three months the day after the crash mackenzie went out with her friends trick-or-treating dressed in a black corset uh ripped black leggings and corpse makeup posing in photos and tiktok videos uh the prosecution would later feast on these images as clear-cut evidence of her total lack of remorse but the prosecution would later feast on these images mackenzie's friend influencer rosie graham would insist she was not a corpse referencing the crash in any way but rather that she and mackenzie and someone else they were dressing up as a playboy cardi stage look an artist mackenzie and dom had both loved and and i do believe rosie on this one watching the documentary lindsey and i kept saying the same thing mackenzie comes across as not just tone deaf in a lot of moments but like legitimately fucking dumb like she comes across to me as somebody who just wouldn't even think of how bad the optics of dress up like a dead person might be in light of what fucking happened three months earlier because she was so wildly self-absorbed and just not very bright uh a friend might have brought up the idea to uh do that and she would probably just been like oh yeah cool and then that's probably as far as it went in her brain there's no contemplation of you know what others might read into that decision uh regardless her costume choice doesn't fucking sit well with dom's or davion's families understandably uh meanwhile detective zoo uh continued combing through mackenzie's social media history documenting more than a hundred instances of what he considered distracted or reckless driving that's that's a lot of instances and again i know she's a teen but over a hundred and that's just what she's fucking posting that's fucking crazy uh guessing there were thousands of ones you know just constant that she didn't and then christine russo found something a piece of evidence on a phone left in her son's room that changed everything in criminal cases it is what uh uh it is called prior calculation the kind of evidence that's called prior calculation and with it they would have enough to move forward and make an arrest and i'll reveal what this is later on the afternoon of november 4th 2022 natalie shirilla was driving mckinney to physical therapy when the car was pulled over mckenzie held her phone up filming the planes closed officers as they approached the car until one of them reached for it and she snapped don't touch my phone uh oh nope shit was way past that you don't get to document your own arrest as it turns out step out of the car they told her you're under arrest arrest what she said for murder for murder uh natalie shrieked from the front seat uh but then there were several police by then there were several police cruisers now surrounding them an officer came to arrest mckenzie and as they cuffed her she asked them to be careful not to break the bracelets on her wrists she didn't want them taken off they put her in the back of the police car drove her to the station while she cried in the back seat body cam footage would show her sniffling and sobbing the entire way which somebody innocent or guilty would probably do in the situation at the station she was told to remove her bracelets she broke down again when officers said that she couldn't wear them in jail a moment that would draw further backlash online with people saying she appeared more concerned with vanity than the lives of two people however mckenzie's friend rosie would later explain why it upset her so much the bracelets had belonged to dom uh they were one of the last things she still had from him okay so fair uh by the time mckenzie reached the station her father steven shirilla had arrived furious and combative of course what what are you doing my princess she she could never be arrested uh he confronted officers in the lobby demanding to see her insisting they had no right to even question her he told them they needed to warn her not to say anything and to ask for a lawyer when one officer calmly reminded him that mckenzie was 18 and legally able to speak for herself he did not back down yeah she he snapped but she's a dumb 18 year old i mean not wrong dad not wrong uh would have been a lot smarter though had you raised her better had you had you treated her like a fucking child not some friend you were desperate to impress uh because mckenzie was 17 when the crash occurred just barely by two days her case started in juvenile court uh prosecutors filed a complaint accusing her of six offenses aggravated murder murder felonious assault aggravated vehicular homicide drug possession and possessing criminal tools also wanted to try her as an adult but a 17 year old can only be tried as an adult if a juvenile judge signs off so the court held a hearing to decide whether the case should be moved up to adult court prosecution laid out its evidence judge ruled uh that there was enough to move forward on almost everything but not the most serious charge aggravated murder so that count was dropped but now it goes to adult court everything else is transferred there where she will be tried as an adult four months later in march of 2023 prosecutors submitted more evidence to the medical examiner and asked for the cause of death to be reviewed uh that evidence included phone transcripts still photos video and witness interviews after reviewing it dr uh joseph filo the cuyahoga county chief deputy medical examiner and forensic pathologist changed the autopsy reports from accident to homicide the report said that their investigation revealed quote the driver's intention of inflicting self-harm and harm under the passengers in her vehicle on cross-examination dr filo admitted that the manner of death was changed to each of the victims based in part on evidence that shirilla had previously claimed that she had intended to kill herself by the time the trial opened in august of 2023 almost exactly a year after the crash both sides understood just how bizarre unique and complex this case was there was no dispute about what the car did everybody knew what happened there the only question was uh what had been going on in mackenzie shirilla's mind in the minute before the crash but again the uh only person who could answer that kept saying over and over she couldn't remember a thing and that it was a total accident mackenzie's attorney uh james mcdonnell told her there was no evidence of intent or told the uh court there was no evidence of intent that anybody could see that this was an accident the prosecution led by cuyahoga county assistant prosecutor tim troop had to prove a state of mind with no confession no surviving witness no memory to work from not an easy task mackenzie waved a jury and chose a bench trial uh meaning the decision about her guilt or innocence would rest with one person judge nancy margaret russo bold choice dominic russo's grandma i told you she wasn't very bright all right young lady good fucking luck unless you figure out how to reincarnate my grandson you're getting the chair bitch we're bringing out old sparky to roast your trifling carny ass uh no she's of no relation to dom russo uh there was some logic behind this decision bench trials tend to move along faster rely more on legal reasoning than emotion and defense lawyers often prefer them when a case depends on technical evidence they also sometimes prefer them when they fear a jury will not like their defendant and mackenzie comes across to a lot of people when you poke around online as wildly unlikable very self-absorbed and tone deaf uh defense attorneys can also uh want this when they think a judge will be a uh you know especially fair but the choice was a gamble with jury the prosecution has to convince a jury to vote for the defendant and the jury has to vote for the dozen people that the defendant is guilty get them all to agree uh the defense only needs one juror out of those 12 to not buy it to stop a conviction but with the judge the defense has to be one for one so very different odds sergeant adam mcquade and mark sergeant took the stand to testify to what the black box and the record showed a florid accelerator no braking and a forceful last second yank of the wheel that the data could not attribute to anybody mark sergeant admitted that a hard right turn could be consistent with a driver trying to maintain or regain control of the vehicle but it could also be consistent with the passenger pulling the wheel to avoid a crash or even a physical reaction caused by the car hitting the ground after becoming airborne when it left the road and mounted the grass he admitted it was possible that a driver trying to break may accidentally hit the accelerator but sergeant said that in that situation he would normally expect the data recorded to show the accelerator dropping from 100 to zero at some point any point but it didn't not even close still sergeant was clear about one thing the data could not prove whose hands were actually on the steering wheel or the gear shift in those final moments i mean probably the fucking driver but you can't prove uh next to testify was uh esther sang a trauma surgeon at metro health medical center who testified that natalie shirilla told medical staff that mackenzie had a history of as we have went over pots which can cause one to pass out but again usually when you're standing up from the sitting or prone position not when you're driving it is possible while sitting but usually after you've sat for a long time like you know you've been on a long drive and your blood has really had a chance to pull uh but still even then not very common on cross-examination doctors saying acknowledge that because medical staff examined shirilla about two hours after the crash there was a chance that someone who had suffered a seizure or mini stroke could potentially have recovered by then and not show any signs natalie then testified that mackenzie had experienced a pots episode a week or two before the crash and said it was quote really bad worse than it had been a long time that left prosecutors with the question if mackenzie's pots was so serious why hadn't anyone said so before or listed it in uh you know on her driving paperwork when mackenzie later applied for a temporary driver's license she said she did not have any condition that caused episodes of impaired consciousness or loss of muscle control why not assistant prosecutor tim troop would also of course play some footage in the courtroom the surveillance video alongside the car's data recorder to show that the uh camry stayed at full acceleration throughout the final seconds no one disputed that uh troop then turned the footage against the defense's own theory seconds before that violent acceleration that same video showed mackenzie signaling and making a calm controlled turn onto the street the kind of precise maneuver he said uh no one in the midst of a fucking blackout could pull off you can't lose consciousness and still execute a clean signal turn and then also moments later put the pedal to the floor all the way into a wall but then the defense was like yeah but what about sammy hagar what about sometimes people with potches having to drive really really fucking fast then they put sammy hager on the stand and it went pretty well until he was cross-examined by the prosecution when you said i can't drive 55 you were not saying i can't drive 55 i can't drive any slower wait what then you were saying i can't get down to that yes sir yeah you know uh when they change the speed limit i was in africa on vacation with my family on a safari you know for for six weeks i was gone i came home two o'clock in the morning i'm in albany new york i flew into albany and driving to lake placid two o'clock in the morning i'm going 62 miles an hour and i get a cop pulls me over and i'm going what's the deal he's going we give tickets for 62 around here i'm going wait a minute speed limit 65 he goes no it's 55 and i and i didn't even know they changed it and i wrote the song i swear right on the spot this oh wow fuck so he can drive oh less than 55 it was a misunderstanding he didn't have pots well that cross-examination pretty much destroyed the defense's case and i think i'm done with that sammy hagar silliness now uh so far the case had been about physics and medical terms next term to dom and mckenzie's relationship allison grolo uh who ran an organic produce market in strongsville that mckenzie and dom shopped at two or three times a week and their final months described them as uh very loving towards one another holding hands constantly having their arms around each other mckenzie's aunt candace shipley uh said the two had spent hours at her home two days before the crash talking about their future with no signs of trouble and appeared quote very much in love other friends including paul and kelly also gave statements stating that they uh hadn't noticed anything unusual between mckenzie and dom and mckenzie's relationship and their final months described as dom in the hours leading up to the crash next uh detective uh zaki hazoo uh walked the court through mckenzie's own social media and found as i mentioned earlier more than 100 instances he characterized as distracted or reckless driving Filming herself smoking and high behind the wheel, driving with no hands, steering the wheel with her foot, music always blaring. Then came the text in the videos. This seemed to mark a turning point in the trial. Prosecutors reviewed hundreds of messages between Mackenzie and Dom stretching back to early 2020, a years-long record of relationships swinging between hatred and obsession. One video, recorded by Dom and found on a spare phone, showed Mackenzie threatening him, saying she would break into his house, bang on his door, demanding to be let in. Dom calmly told Mackenzie he could not let her into the house while she's behaving like that. After all, she had broken up with him earlier that day, so why would he? Mackenzie counted down multiple times, called him a pussy, a bitch, threatened to key his car, break the handle of the door. Dominic finally stopped recording and called his mom for help. I have a little bit of that I can play here. Like before, you lied. You lied and said you would never lock me out of the house again. That is why we got back together last time we broke up. But I forgot you can never keep from your word because you are a little fucking weak bitch. You broke up with me earlier. You really broke up with me earlier. This is your last chance to open the door or you are not coming out of this house all night because I will not leave. You literally broke up with me earlier. Like, what is the point of trying to, like, you broke up with me, like, earlier. No, no, I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. I didn't. You really said that shit. Like, you really broke up with me. Like, what are you trying to make? Like, why would I just let you in my house if you broke up with me and you don't need to break my shit? Like, if I need to key my car, if I need to break the door, it's like. I will key your car if you do not let me in the house. You're going to key my car if I don't let you in the house. If you don't let me in the house, yes. What the fuck? Yeah, I know. So just let me in the house. No. Like, why can't you just be, like, calm at least for a second? I am calm. I am calm. I don't think you get to decide that with your fucking weird ass. Like. You're really threatening to fucking key my car and shit. What else are you threatening? John, I'm going to give you one last chance to open the door. I'm going to leave and do what I said I was going to do. What are you going to do? I'm going to give you one last chance. It's pretty telling that he's recording this. Kenzie, look. Look. Let me go to dinner. No. No. You can let me go to dinner, then I can let you come over later. No, you're not. I'm coming to dinner, too. No, you're not. Why? You should have told me you wanted to come. You fucking retard. You already put me on the reservation. So fucking open the door, you dumbass. All right, let's just go next door, then. No, we're not going next door. No, we're not letting you hit the house. We need to talk first, though. Because you just, like, betrayed me. All right, we can talk outside. Here, cut it out. Uh, if that didn't sound that bad, Now imagine some big guy with a deep voice saying all of those words to a small woman who sounds scared. It hits different, right? But it's the exact same behavior. I mean, that's just straight-up abusive. Dom's mother, Christine, testified that in the six months before the crash, the relationship had turned strained with fighting, arguments, breakups, threats, and that McKenzie had grown increasingly possessive. One day on July 17, 2022, just two weeks before the crash, Christine had been sitting with Christopher Hench Martin, a friend of the Russo family, when her phone rang. It was Dom. He was upset. McKenzie, he told his mom, was driving erratically and threatening to crash the car. Christine grew worried in turn because she knew exactly what the two of them were like. Hench offered to go find them. He set off toward the highway, calling Dom back on the way to pin down a location and eventually found the car pulled onto the shoulder of Interstate 71. According to Hench, still on the phone with Dom, he heard McKenzie say in the background, I'm gonna wreck this car right now. That doesn't fucking look good. When he arrived at the scene, he testified, that he saw the pair get into a tussle inside the car and saw McKenzie, quote, swinging her hands at him. So, you know, domestic violence. After that, there was no real question left in the courtroom about who McKenzie Shurilla was or what kind of relationship she had. But there was one more piece of evidence the prosecution was sitting on that would seal McKenzie's fate. The final piece of the puzzle that had made her arrest possible. GPS data showed McKenzie's phone near Progress Drive in Alameda, the site of the crash, on July 28, 2022, three days before she wrecked the car. This location is about a 10-minute drive from where McKenzie lived. Detective Zaki Huzoo testified that the location data was limited since a cell ping only shows a general area, not an exact spot, but combined with her earlier threat to crash the car, prosecutors argued that it pointed to one thing, premeditation. There was no reason for her to have been in that general area. There was no fast food over there that she might've been picking up, no grocery store to get her organic food, no shopping to be done, no friends who were there, who lived there or near there, wasn't in route to any of those things. I highly doubt she was swinging by to put it in order for any Plidco specialized pipeline leak repair products or maintenance fittings. Prosecutors argued that this was supposed to have been a murder-suicide. It had been planned for days. Dominic was the primary target. Davion Flanagan was simply, quote, cargo. Someone in the wrong car at the wrong time. McKenzie's mom, Natalie, pushed back on this, insisting that her daughter had never been suicidal, but that claim didn't survive long. Well, prosecutors produced a police report from that time in 2020 when officers had been called to the Shorilla home after a 15-year-old McKenzie threatened to kill herself. I personally, just my two cents, am not as convinced it was a murder-suicide attempt, though, just because McKenzie had her seatbelt on while the other two passengers didn't. I think that she probably kind of hoped to survive, but I guess it doesn't matter. As several users on Reddit and elsewhere observed, it has been documented that she wore her seatbelt on the day of the crash, but then in videos, she took for social media for smoking weed in the car. Every single video, according to some, she never had her seatbelt on. So that's telling, right? Again, I think she crashed the car, probably hoping that she would kill them, but thanks to her seatbelt and airbags that she would live. I do wonder if the prosecution thought that as well, but didn't chase it because it would be harder to prove. And at the end of the day, you know, the important thing was just proving that she wanted to kill Dominic. Didn't matter that she might also want to kill herself or not. On the afternoon of Monday, August 14th, 2023, just a year and two weeks after the crash, Nancy, Judge Nancy Margaret Russo was ready to hand down her verdict. But first, after thanking the spectators and media personnel for respecting the trial process and the attorneys and giving her acknowledgement to the families involved, Russo delivered a scathing review of the case. She told the courtroom, I have carefully and deliberately considered all the evidence in this case, including testimony, scientific and expert opinions, medical evidence, physical evidence, photographs and video evidence. There is nothing I can do or say today that will return these two years young men to their families. There is nothing I can say or do to restore Mackenzie Sherilla to the life she had before July 31st, 2022. And there is nothing I can say or do to restore the lives of these three families before the fateful moments of that day. This trial is a culmination of decisions made by one person, the defendant. Those decisions have forever altered the futures of three families. Your decisions forever robbed Dominic and Davion of the futures they had. If there is one thing to take away from this case, as painful as it is, it is this. Every decision we make is important. Every action we take is important. Whether the decision is good or bad, whether the action is good or not, the result is the same. The consequences ripple through time and affect more people than one might think. Judge Russo then took an opportunity to call out specifically the crash video and how both chilling and tragic it is knowing that you're watching the oncoming deaths of two people. She said, the video clearly shows the purpose and intent of the defendant. She chose a course of death and destruction that day. Exhibit 802 crystallizes the defendant's decision-making. She morphs from a responsible driver to literal hell on wheels as she makes her way down that street. At this point, Mackenzie gasps, puts her hands over her mouth, shaking and starts to sob. I mean, pretty clear what the judge's decision is going to be at this point. I mean, you don't say all that and then follow it with something like, but you know what? I like it. You got real moxie, kid. Too many of these young men out there, they think, what, they get to be with a young lady as fine as you and not be expected to come to heal? Not be expected to have to deal with a little bit of drama? You deserve better. He should have never locked you out of that house. He was, if I may be frank, being a little bitch, a pussy. Innocent on all charges. Go get him, girl. The world is yours. Take no prisoners. Uh, no. Uh, no. Judge Russo said, she made the decisions knowing, as any reasonable person would, that death can involve others, not just those in the car, but others in the car. Other people, other cars, pedestrians. She had a mission, and she executed it with precision. The mission was death. Mackenzie alone decided to push the pedal to the floor and reach speeds of 90 to 100 miles per hour. She alone decided what was to be. She decided death was the ultimate goal that day, and she made that decision for Dominic and Davion. Whether or not she intended to kill herself is speculation and not relevant to the weighing of the evidence. The totality of the evidence clearly demonstrates that Mackenzie Shirilla acted purposely and intentionally in the early morning hours of July 3rd, May 31st, 2022. Her purpose was to kill Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. No reasonable fact finder could come to any other conclusion. Her actions were controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional, and purposeful. This was not reckless driving. This was murder. Judge Russo ruled that Mackenzie Shirilla was guilty on all counts. From the county prosecutor's office, those counts were four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault, two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide, one counts of murder, One count of drug possession. and one count of possessing criminal tools in the gallery mckenzie's parents looked stunned their hands over their mouths as they gasped the sentencing was scheduled for a week later monday august 21st 2023 man non-jury trials move so much faster uh in the days before mckenzie's sentencing dom's father frank russo told nbc news why can't they just let her go right the judge already scolded her uh she'd been in jail for practically a year right it's not no uh he said she's just a little kid she fucked up she did a damn stupid thing but now her parents are destroyed her family's destroyed too i wish there was a way she could get some kind of help some kind of treatment man uh he seems like such a cool dude actually frank russo i mean he just seems like a really nice gentle guy really empathetic man that'd be so hard to do in this in this situation to talk about your fucking son's killer like that uh before mckenzie charilla heard how long she would remain in jail for the families of davion and dominic had an opportunity to read their victim impact statements uh davion flanagan's little sister divine spoke about a brother who had been a role model to her a person who made her feel safe right the one person she could most consistently count on she said it was unfair that mckenzie might one day walk out on parole while her brother is gone forever she asked judge russo for the longest possible sentence and said that in the three years she had known mckenzie she had always taken the easy way out davion's adoptive mother jamie used her time to talk about her son his soul his heart of gold she said davion was the kind of person who would rescue a friend in the middle of the night who showed love and love for him and she said davion was the kind of person who would show love to the people society had cast aside she told the court that davion was more than just cargo the right the word prosecutor tim troop had used to describe how he ended up in that car my son davion jamie said is and always will be so much more than cargo jamie spoke too of her heartbreak for her daughters davion's biological sisters who had already endured far more than their share of loss jamie said she prayed that one day mckenzie would find true remorse and repentance in her heart in his victim statement dominic's older brother angelo called dom the most selfless person he knew and mckenzie the most selfish dom he said had been everyone's best friend a young man whose goal was always to be better he read from a different author every day planned to join a branch of the military started to uh started two companies never stopped trying to become the best version of himself then angelo pointed to what mckenzie had said in the hospital in the days after she had killed his brother couldn't they just take her license away for 10 years that angelo told the court is who mckenzie shirilla really is she killed dom he said over the fact that she didn't want to risk losing him then dominic's mother christine delivered her statement she began by saying that no one had wanted the outcome to be a murder no one wanted to punish mckenzie shirilla for an accident but this christine said was not an accident the evidence and the science had proven it mckenzie had murdered her son and davion too christine thanked the strong as well police department for chasing the truth because of them she said the family finally knew what had happened that morning uh what they would never know is why christine described the morning of july 31st 2022 when she called mckenzie's mother she said natalie shirilla's first response was a plea not to pay attention to what people were saying online christine told the court she could not understand how anybody in that moment would be thinking about facebook and social media and saying as much to somebody who had just lost her son then she turned to mckenzie directly you're going to prison because you did this christine said be thankful you're still alive and have a future whatever that may be because dom and mckenzie were robbed of theirs of their hopes and their dreams when it came to the defense's turn the case for leniency came largely from natalie shirilla i was going to play a bunch of what she said for you but without a video without being able to see your facial expressions and body language i think it's better to summarize most of it and then i'll share some comments from what uh people watching online thought about it after just playing a tiny bit she began by asking judge russo uh whether she was even allowed to address the families or not given permission she turned to them read from some notes she'd written that she was broken sad and lost and she was hurt was for everybody uh her heart hurt for everybody davion she said had been her daughter's new friend dom had been the love of mckenzie's life and a part of the family she was so sorry this had happened uh natalie's message and her delivery of it uh didn't land well so many sentences ended with okay uh this verbal tick that in the context of addressing two families who just lost their sons felt disrespectful to a lot of people i will say to me it just sounded like a normal woman from cleveland talking she has the exact same accent as my mother-in-law and father-in-law and other people in lindsey's family most of them and maybe just coincidence but most of them also end a lot of sentences with okay just like natalie uh i felt bad watching some of this heavy uh emotional stuff in this video and i had to fight off laughter that had nothing to do with what's being talked about what's being said i just could not stop picturing various family members up there i'll play you a little bit so you can just hear what i'm talking about i just want to say to the families that i'm broken sad and lost and my heart hurts for everyone okay davion was her new friend and dom was the love of her life and he was part of our family okay i'm just so sorry that this happened and my heart broke okay okay and then your honor this was a terrible tragic nightmare accident to have happened that she has no memory of and she will never emotionally or physically recover of it recover from it um she almost died too uh her okay i know it can make you sound flippant but again like like my mother-in-law one of the best human beings i've literally ever met truly an incredible kind empathetic loving protective open-minded on and on all the best adjectives person uh she might have sounded exactly like this talking about like this or something else you know similarly tragic uh your honor okay i am so sorry i lit those firecrackers and i started that fire that burned all those kids to death okay all the screaming and the wailing okay as those what was it those those two dozen children they were burned alive okay it's heartbreaking okay it's it's like share said so well if i could turn back time okay i i would have never lit those okay your honor okay natalie turned to judge russo after addressing the families uh she said as you heard the beginning of uh that had been a terrible tragic nightmare accident uh one her daughter had no memory of please she pleaded do not run the sentences consecutively okay just don't do it okay uh from there natalie told the story of the morning of the crash from her side and she said i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry i'm sorry uh that when she heard there was an accident she called dom's number over and over okay and prady would pick up she said that they all love dom so much okay and insisted she didn't talk to christine russo about social media okay she told the judge that uh she was the one commenting on social media defending mckenzie from people who were calling her a murderer uh because she didn't want her daughter to wake up and see people saying those things okay uh quick note she did this because natalie quickly got a lot of backlash from the public who are cared about social media was even on it posted on mckenzie's account in the days following the crash so she created this problem uh natalie told the judge that mckenzie had spent three months post-crash barely able to walk crying listening to nothing but dom's music right he also messed around with production had some original music or just listened to songs that he liked until her friends finally invited her to go out for one night halloween natalie told her baby please go okay it's halloween you've been lying for three months crying only listen to his music okay please go ahead okay just have a moment of fun okay she begged judge russo not to blame mckenzie for that uh that it was herself and her husband who pushed her grieving daughter okay out the door to go partying on halloween okay it was uh at this point the judge russo interrupted telling natalie shirilla i'm hearing a great deal about your daughter and not very much about the two dead people natalie not prepared for a rebuke like that uh tried to not make it all about mckenzie for about two seconds okay uh then almost immediately returned to speaking about her daughter begging for leniency she said that dom was part of the family okay and then she said that she was not prepared for a rebuke like that and she said that she stumbled over uh davion calling him a new friend okay judge russo replied what does that mean his life is worthless twitch natalie answered in a rush of no no no god god no no no they all loved each other okay uh the judge reminded natalie that uh that was the problem that all of them had trusted one another and now two of them were dead natalie said once again it was a tragic accident her daughter would never do anything like that on purpose twitch judge russo said well we're gonna have to disagree before moving on some of those comments from uh beneath of natalie uh taking in court i'll read some uh she said sorry to the family like she bumped into them at the grocery store that was the worst courtroom apology display i've ever seen this isn't an apology this is an enabler trying to get her daughter out of trouble she apologized to that family as though she checked it off a list wow un-fucking-believable i'm sorry okay worst apology ever no wonder the daughter is like that and those were just the first five comments the first five top comments listed underneath the video uh more top comments were stuff like now i see why her daughter is the way she is uh this girl inherited her mother's ability to cry without tears i wouldn't have the audacity to say my daughter will never physically and mentally be the same after addressing the families of those who will never walk this earth again the way the mom speaks about how dom's mother responded uh tells you uh the way yeah the way mom speaks about how dom's mother responded tells you everything you need to know about her what a shallow clueless and self-centered woman and then uh this mother has zero insight zero accountability zero empathy it is disgusting i scrolled down so many pages and did not see a single comment supporting the mom or mackenzie not one that's rare for youtube uh next up a time for mackenzie shirilla to speak she was crying before she began and then she addressed the courtroom sorry uh that was more of her prison carny speak. No, she would speak normally. that was her speaking but she would speak normally here uh to the families of dom and davion mckenzie said she was deeply sorry okay no she didn't say okay much uh she said she would never have let this happen never have done it on purpose and that she wished she could remember what had happened she said she was heartbroken that she had loved both of them that's the they'd all been friends and that dominic had been her soulmate when it was finally her turn to talk actually before sharing that it is really sinking in like how bad that okay sounds like again i was just thinking of it constantly like my mother-in-law's tick as well but that is a fucking terrible word to throw after addressing a tragedy i am so i am so sorry that i was driving when your sons died okay it just it does make it sound kind of flippant right there at the end like you're saying something heavy i i don't know why i would do that i i am why i didn't mean to cheat on you okay uh i you know oh my god yeah okay i punch you in the face okay but like i'll never do it again okay like it just makes it sound like it's not a big deal um okay judge russo acknowledged the grief that packed in the room uh when she said three dollars a race three dollars a chase step on up step on in pick up a gun give it a whirl give it a twirl first one to the top automatically wins when your sweetie a tweety your honey a bunny how about that teddy bear for that love affair uh that was just a the defendant curled all the defendant controlled all the events she chose the day specifically a day just before her 18th birthday she chose uh to drive the car and the time to drive it she chose an obscure previously scouted route through an industrial parkway she chose the target to hit and the victims she chose the means and the method to follow through she planned and purposefully executed the events of july 31st 2022 and i'm just catching this now if you're going over this a bunch of times that thing about right before her birthday that also makes me think that she might have actually wanted to survive this and then you know as a fail safe if somehow it came back on her she'd be charged as a juvenile it might have been a thing of like well if i'm gonna do this i better do it before i turn 18 uh anyway this decision judge russo told the court was not whether shirilla was guilty that was settled but whether to run the two life sentences consecutively or concurrently she did choose concurrently which surprised me she did not believe she said that stacking them was necessary because she thought there was a very good likelihood that shirilla would still spend the rest of her life in prison people get paroled really all the time but okay mackenzie shirilla was sentenced to two concurrent terms of 15 years to life and her driver's license was suspended for uh life with credit for time already served her first chance to ask a parole board for release will come october 29th 2037 when she is 33 so she'll still be very young 10 days after the hearing on august 31st 2023 she was admitted to the ohio reformatory for women in marysville where she remains today the crash documentary premiered on netflix on may 15th and she was sentenced to 20 years in prison for the first time in her life 15th of this year its director gareth johnson was drawn to the story for personal reasons as a teen he'd been in a car crash that had killed someone and left him badly injured and he wanted to flip that experience around and understand a tragedy like it from the outside to the lens of the families left behind he and producer uh angharad scott uh spent months earning the trust of the people closest to mackenzie dom and davion and found the families uh more willing to talk than expected nearly everyone whatever their stance felt quote their voices haven't been heard so far or that they still had more time to talk about it and they were able to talk about it said scott one of mackenzie's strongest defenders besides her parents was her friend rosie graham that influencer who spoke up for both mackenzie and her relationship with dom mackenzie and dom's fights according to rosie were the ordinary ups and downs of young love uh she'd be with him nearly every day she said it was never constant conflict mackenzie loved her life and loved what she had with dom uh but then but i will say even with this it's like you know it's like yes you can be with them all the time but but when you're not with them it can just always be so different in a you know a lot of you know situations where somebody they will wait until no one else is around which just makes sense to then let out their anger or fury whatever uh the crash would reignite public interest in the evidence and after it aired strongsville police released roughly 32,000 text messages spanning years of the relationship which media outlets around the world seized upon uh messages that left a lot of people the overwhelming majority of people in my observance not agreeing with rosie and jumping on team mackenzie uh for example in the morning of january 14 2020 shirley became more than a little upset after russo said that he couldn't give her a ride five minutes after russo told her he couldn't pick her up she texted him i'm so fucking mad i'm so mad she texted again and added in two separate messages i'm gonna kill someone i'm mad as fuck right now later that same day mackenzie texted dom in all caps i fucking hate myself i'm ugly and you just add on to it and make me feel even uglier a lot of misspellings followed by you make me feel like i'm worthless i do so much shit for you when russo replied that she would uh not have to do anything for me and i'd probably be happy she texted back now i'm at your fucking house breaking down on your floor like you cause pain to me for no reason and then you wonder why i'm so stressed i'm trying so hard to please you but it's never enough mackenzie later texted i just want to bang my head on the wall till i'm dead she also threatened dom a lot over the next two years on the morning of august 31st 2021 she got mad at russo for interrupting her and saying a joke she didn't like that's my bad but you did threaten to stab me in the eye dom wrote back to which mackenzie responded yeah i don't care uh he doubled down and texted mackenzie had threatened to stab my eye and then uh she wrote back maybe if you just had my back you wouldn't be threatened dom responded kenzie i made a joke and you threatened to stab me in march of 22 uh 2022 dom texted to mackenzie you didn't let me out of the car and then hit me and pulled the shit out of my hair and then tried to throw a rock at me and threatened to call the cops on me and key my car mackenzie wrote back that she only threw the rock his way because he was taking videos of her freaking out man that's some fucking classic abuser shit right it's always the victim's fault uh she texted if you didn't take a video or a photo of me freaking out i would have not have thrown the rock or anything i pulled your hair because you were trying to open my mother's car door and make it and make it hit a fucking stop sign on march 11 2022 dom texted mackenzie if i'm being totally honest it's your temper that's the main problem you can't act on me hot-headed and then expect me not to react like if you controlled your temper we wouldn't be in any of this obviously i have anger issues i've been working on it in my whole my whole life i need somebody that's going to be there for me and de-escalate my situations when i'm going through a manic episode and you never do that you choose to escalate the situation all the time consistently mackenzie never takes responsibility for her behavior even when she admits to do something crazy right she's not sorry she's mad at other people for not doing a good job of calming her down of not being you know there for her when she's lost control it's fucking wild uh her parents natalie and steven shirilla have never accepted the verdict of course not right nothing is ever baby girl's fault their little princess still perfect if only the rest of the world accepted that with no evidence like they do uh they claim they provided their daughter's original defense attorney with crucial evidence that was never presented in court including medical records documenting mackenzie's diagnosis of pots shut the fuck up about pots oh my god it's so fucking desperate and text messages that they're fucking idiots too they are fucking idiots i've seen a text messages they say contradict the prosecution's narrative and access to automotive experts who could have challenged the state's interpretation of the crash data in the crash documentary steve and natalie shirilla announced they were launching an appeal after discovering what they described as ironclad new evidence material they claim was never presented at trial they brought a new counsel attorney eric nemisek in a renewed effort to challenge their daughter's conviction their appeal centered on two key arguments one she is fucking pretty and young let her go uh no uh first a medical claim the family hired neurologist dr kamal uh shimali to review mackenzie's post-crash records he concluded the data was consistent with loss of consciousness at the time of the crash supporting the defense's position that she blacked out rather than acting intentionally pointing to elevated lactate levels abnormally low blood oxygen and complete amnesia following the incident which dr shimali says are markers of a seizure or similar uh oh my gosh auto atomic event i always want to say automatic when i say that word uh the second pillar was the text messages and the shirillas argued they told a completely different story about who the aggressor really was they pointed particular to text messages from july 17 2022 after dom called his mother christine mackenzie texted her asking her to come uh pick him up but in those messages she claimed dom grabbed the steering wheel and tried to spin out the car mackenzie can you come get dom he just grabbed my steering wheel on the highway trying to spin out my car and hurt me christine hench is on his way calm down for now please mackenzie tbh i can't calm down when he just tried to end my life to the shirillas this exchange supported their claim that mackenzie was not the aggressor attorney eric nemesec said of those text messages there were text messages and communications about the argument that took place demonstrating that it wasn't necessarily as testified to and that she may not have been responsible and in fact was not responsible for starting the argument or threatening to crash the car critics however have interpreted these messages as just mackenzie lying and shifting blame and responsibility additional messages from that same day show mackenzie continuing to accuse dominic of trying to harm her the fact that my boyfriend of four years just tried to end my life by steering me off the highway that's how i know you're not in love and you never were somebody who loves me would never do this to me dom texted back that he really didn't do that uh the only reason it went this far is because you tried to end my life mackenzie texted again and dom responded kenzie i didn't so it's a he said she said and i will just add that i i've come across sources claiming that numerous people have witnessed mackenzie putting her hands on dom verbally abusing dom i mean we heard her do that could not find any sources with witnesses claiming that they saw dom put his hands on mackenzie or ever verbally abuse her like that uh the documentary uh didn't just end up retrying mackenzie in the court of public opinion put her parents on trial too their on-camera defensiveness shrugging off teenage daughters we'd use claiming mackenzie is just a good kid not to mention their decision to let her move in with a older boyfriend before she turned 18 lit up the internet most uh or many took to reddit forums and youtube comments to debate was mackenzie a bad seed or the product of bad parenting seems most people come to the conclusion that it's a product of bad parenting within days of fallout reach steven's day job the cleveland catholic school where he taught art placed him on administrative leave over allegations of poor judgment they no longer felt apparently that he was the kind of person who should be supervising middle schoolers in any capacity not sure if the doc led them to taking a closer look at him and maybe finding direct evidence of that at their school or not in may of 2020 dom's sister christine russo publicly criticized the charillas for what she saw as a lack of remorse accusing them of prioritizing defense over accountability there was a fine line between defending your kids christine said and they created a monster they're monsters themselves well well put and of mackenzie christine said she always she's always appealing her conviction she can't take accountability or responsibility among the information released after the documentary hours of jailhouse calls between mackenzie and natalie during which they kept again slipping into that fucking carnie speak uh breaking words into syllables placing isa or ease right before the first vowel of each syllable rendering the whole thing fairly unintelligible something gibberish to people who don't know how to speak carnie especially when you're speaking it quickly a detective had recorded mackenzie and natalie speaking carnie in the hospital too prosecutors decoded those calls and presented them at trial and what they heard was mackenzie from her hospital bed asking her mother can we tell the police i had a seizure to prosecutors this is not a scared teenager grasping for answers it is brainstorming up a cover story uh then some women who had been jailed alongside mackenzie spoke out to the media revealing what she was like behind bars from their perspective mary catherine cat crowder who spent six months at the ohio reformatory for women with mackenzie spoke out to the media saying she never once saw mackenzie show any remorse whatsoever by her account mackenzie moved through prison as though she was still in high school with a full face of bright accessories clothes pulled tight around her body trying to look sexy uh charilla to her seemed very healthy and active always walking with no signs of depression never got her blood pressure checked for any debilitating pot was never like you know feeling faint and passing out she said most days even during heat waves uh she would see mackenzie out lying tanning with baby oil in the sun revealing as much skin as she was allowed to or you know maybe more trying not to get caught she passed time making jewelry customizing shoes for fellow inmates uh cat stopped short of outright calling her a mean girl but said it was obvious mackenzie wanted to carry herself like regina george from mean girls she added that mackenzie still seemed stuck in a high school mindset not some somebody grappling with reality of having killed two people and uh also had what looked like hickeys on her neck from multiple prison girlfriends also prison records obtained by us weekly show that charilla has faced multiple disciplinary actions behind bars including a uh not safe for work video call made in september of 2025 during which charilla allegedly showed her breasts to a visitor who in turn flashed quote a dildo sticking out of her pants twice i mean i guess she has a lot of free time and i don't know what to do with that i don't know what to do with that i don't know what to do with that you know she's horny uh she was restricted from video for that for 60 days uh video visits uh she was also written up for possession of altered clothing and for nude magazine pictures and october of 2024 prison officials restricted her commissary access for 30 days as punishment for those offenses another infraction in december of 2024 saw charilla put on a 30-day recreation restriction after she was caught dancing outside the gym instead of exercising january of 2025 prison guards wrote up charilla for having a period of time in prison for a year and a half and a packet of unknown medication and a personal photo of herself containing drug use she was cited for misuse of authorized medication and possession of any other contraband article knowingly possessed which has been altered or which permission has not been given for the photo restricted to herself for 30 days in april of 2025 charilla had access to electronics restricted for a month after being caught having more than 100 video visits with somebody she was not supposed to be visiting this unapproved visitor was an ex-inmate that was released also that april charilla was charged with for intentionally coming to another unit inappropriately dressed and potentially exposing herself to staff the infraction board ultimately ruled that there was insufficient evidence of intent to penalize her august of 2025 she faced seven days of restrictions after being found guilty for being caught making sexual contact with another prisoner all in all records from the ohio department of rehabilitation and corrections detailed that mackenzie charilla has accumulated 36 disciplinary conduct reports with 32 guilty for misuse of electronic equipment findings since entering the ohio reformatory for women in august of 2023 sure seems like she doesn't take rules much more seriously now than she did while she was in high school right seems just as entitled mackenzie and her family have also never accepted the verdict never have stopped trying to overturn it their first attempt was a direct appeal of the conviction itself in september of 2024 the eighth district court of appeals upheld charilla's conviction rejecting her claim that the evidence was insufficient to prove intent and finding that her trial had been fairly conducted uh this appeal you know uh yeah just denied uh the second attempt based on the argument that mackenzie's original trial lawyer had failed her and that he never brought in a medical expert to support a defense now they had one that neurologist i mentioned dr uh kamal shamali uh who reviewed her records and concluded she may have blacked out behind the wheel that appeal rejected due to a a miss uh missed filing deadline under ohio law convicted defendants generally have 365 days after their trial transcripts are filed excuse me to challenge their conviction uh because 2024 was a leap year the deadline fell on october 23rd her new lawyers filed on october 24th that's that's fucking ridiculous that's a big fuck up uh judge nancy russo the same judge who convicted her originally dismissed it for being late then in march of 2026 an appeals court agreed with the dismissal then with her lower court appeal options exhausted mackenzie took her case to the ohio supreme court and in late june of 2026 just a few weeks ago they declined to even hear her appeal so it wasn't like leap year was the reason that she'll stay in prison after all uh in an order signed by chief justice sharon kennedy on june 23rd the ohio supreme court stated that it declines to accept jurisdiction of the appeal denied again that is likely the end of the road road for her appeals uh and so mackenzie shirilla continues to be incarcerated at the ohio reformatory for women in marysville serving two uh 15 years to life sentences that run at the same time in recorded phone calls with her mom from jail she has continued to insist she does not need to be rehabilitated there's nothing wrong with her she is the third victim of the crash uh while mackenzie fights to get out her victims are fighting to make sure she never profits from what she did dominic's older sister christine has launched a petition for dom and debion's law urging ohio lawmakers to update the state's son of sam laws for the digital age amid concerns about mackenzie potentially profiting from social media based on her follower count i don't think they have anything to worry about but i i like that they're trying to ensure that legally uh just a few days before i recorded this a post was made on mackenzie's instagram account which currently has 57 400 followers the post was made by her team i'm guessing her team is her mom or her uh the post said mackenzie is trying to do better every day and holding on to hope her post conviction relief was denied due to a deadline technicality the decision has nothing to do with the contents of it uh it was unable to even be reviewed her appellate lawyer missed a deadline by filing it one day late due to a leap year which also makes him ineffective assistance of counsel mackenzie and her family along with everyone's help will respectfully continue to do everything they can so that the merits of the brief can be heard just as anyone else would do in their position keep sharing everything you can and please sign and share this petition for a fair retrial we all deserve fair representation and once you review her case you'll agree she did not get that please click sign and share the petition in her bio thank you to everyone who is and has become her voice mackenzie charilla support team hashtag free mackenzie mackenzie charilla hashtag wrongfully convicted hashtag the crash but then get this her bio doesn't have a fucking link in it not to anything these people are fucking idiots they also post this after the supreme court rejected another appeal not on a technicality i don't know what the fuck's going on these people i cannot find any sort of petition for her by the way anywhere online uh that same day as reported by local cleveland news stations mackenzie charilla asked ohio supreme court the ohio supreme court to reconsider its rejection of her appeal uh charilla's council filed a motion asking the supreme court to reconsider its decision not to hear her appeal um they hadn't provided specific reasoning for this rejection uh as of this recording the supreme court has not commented on whether or not they would essentially change their mind on the recent ruling i'm gonna say they're probably not gonna do that okay right responsibility has to be taken okay presidents have to be considered okay this wasn't some misdemeanor okay and mackenzie needs to stop uh pussing around with dildos and nudie pics and stop getting infractions before she ends up staying a lot longer than 15 years okay okay now let's hop out of this timeline okay good job soldier you've made it back barely okay real quick before my uh final thoughts uh we uh have another sponsor uh today's episode actually brought to you by my new favorite sponsor are you tired of going to sad funerals would you rather go to end of life party trade that potato salad for a keg and a disco ball don't you want to see more of a show in a slideshow? 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Come down to Good Time Denny's funeral home and cremation party station. Make that service feel less like a funeral and more like a vacation. Get up! Shake that ass! Come on! Wow! That's a fucking sponsor. I can fully endorse. Holy shit! I love that. I love Good Time Denny. Now I guess I should talk a little bit more about today's topic. If you're really confused well I've been talking about a lot of necrophilia lately, okay? That's how that thing just showed up. Now you're probably more confused if you didn't know why I was talking about necrophilia recently. The unusual double murder case of Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. Mackenzie Shurilla a 17 year old recent high school grad who loves smoking pot getting likes on Instagram and TikTok for wearing swimsuits and modeling other outfits doesn't resemble most of the other killers that we have talked about previously here. Right? Do I think she's some predator like a lot of these guys? Excuse me. Most of the guys that we've covered? No, no. She's very different. Right? She didn't kill obviously because of some sadistic sexual conflict. She wasn't trying to satiate the appetite of some dark passenger. She didn't have some long history of cruelty towards animals of being sexually abused or of sexually abusing others. Didn't slowly graduate from horrific fantasies to peeping on unsuspected objects of her desire to rape to murder to torture and murder. She wasn't an opportunistic killer like we've seen here before either. She was, you know not offing anybody for their life insurance money or killing a partner to avoid dealing with a costly separation or divorce. She wasn't some angel of death type thinking she was doing the right thing by quietly snuffing people out in their hospital or nursing home bed. In my opinion she's in a way scarier than a lot of those people because she could present so much more normally than, you know even most of those compartmentalizing pieces of shit. Right? Take away how ugly her personality is and she's a fit normal looking attractive young woman. She looks like someone more or less who could blend into my daughter's friend group somebody my son could date. She has pretty normal interests. She could be she can be popular. She likes a lot of things that people her age like. She could probably hang especially in a bar or party setting or you know at a game or a barbecue or at the beach with most other people her own age. You know people just anywhere in their 20s and she's not going to stand out. I could have seen some friend of mine when I was her age dating her. I could have dated somebody like her when I was that old. I dated some mean girls. She looks and acts on the surface like hundreds of thousands of other young women I imagine from all over the country. You know she could be your daughter. Your daughter's friend. Your son's girlfriend. You know just for a lot of people. She's not anyone who's going to present as scary. Self-absorbed yes. Shallow probably yeah. But all of that is kind of normal for that age when your brain again is more predisposed to want you to think that you're the most important person when you're still forming your own identity when your biology is pushing you to go out and get a mate right. You got that main character energy go out and make your mark on the world go go go conquer it's all about you but under the surface she is somebody who you know you know you know you know might not just tell you that they hope you get hit by a bus if you've wronged them or secretly wish that and just kind of some angry passing moment no she's someone who might truly genuinely want you to get hit by a bus rather than embarrass or hurt them by say dumping them and leaving them and if she's driving that bus and if she thinks she can get away with running your ass over she's the kind of person who will fucking run you over and then not feel fucking bad about it she'll rationalize it I mean she might cry because she misses you and moments later you know what you could have been for her you know she's not crying for you she's going to make it all about her and how did she become that person well she didn't become a monster by being abused neglected and or abandoned like so many of the other monsters we've talked about here she was turned into a monster through constant enabling in my opinion by having parents who instead of neglecting her indulged her overly indulged her parents who didn't want to enforce any rules or discipline who constantly sided with her whenever she got into trouble from what I understand you know teacher yells at her well what a fucking asshole that teacher is you know she didn't do anything wrong so the teacher must be flying off the handle oh she stole something well come on she's a kid who doesn't steal something when they're a kid right she feels bad that's enough there's no need to punish her she's punishing herself oh she hit Dominic well he must have done something to provoke that she's just spirited kids need boundaries they need parents who are more interested in being parents than they are in being their kids friends had she had those kind of parents I think Dominic and Davion are still alive today not that she doesn't not that it's like all the parents I mean at some point you got to take responsibility for your own actions so she's also a fucking shitty person but had she had better parents you know then she's she's probably not in prison okay not getting in trouble over and over we're still not taking the rules seriously okay we're still trying to do whatever the fuck she wants to do okay okay whenever she wants to do it okay she's not an entitled little monster okay finally being forced to swallow a real hard consequence pill okay okay okay okay time for the takeaways okay time suck top five takeaways number one uh McKenzie's Sharilla was a 17 year old who had just graduated from Strongsville High just outside of Cleveland uh she'd been with her boyfriend Dominic Dom Russo for about four years since she was barely a teenager uh from the outside things seemed to be going pretty well Dom had big plans for the future he's making good money uh she had recently moved in with him uh the Russo and Sharilla families were incredibly close and tight knit and as far as they knew Dom and McKenzie were deeply in love and probably on the path to marriage but behind the scenes there were constant sometimes abusive fights many breakups threats Dom may have almost uh had enough maybe was about ready to move on uh but his wildly insecure and possessive girlfriend was not going to stand for that number two on July 31st 2022 at around 5 30 in the morning McKenzie drove her Toyota Camry down an industrial cut through road in Strongsville and straight into the brick walls of a manufacturing plant at roughly a hundred miles an hour killing Dom their friend Davion uh barely surviving herself thanks to being the only one of the three wearing a seatbelt for a hot minute looked like nothing more than a tragic accident after a night out partying a group of teens must have taken a wrong turn ended up uh along a dark dead-end road early in the morning driver was probably high but then investigators pulled the car's black box and the accident theory quickly fell apart the accelerator had been pushed to the floor for nearly five straight seconds the brakes were never once touched and GPS coordinates from McKenzie's own phone put her on that exact obscure dead-end road three days prior a route she normally never drove they look like murder premeditated murder number three with all the talk about McKenzie's easy to lose track of the lives of the two people the center of this right the people who died Dominic Russo you know 20 years old close with his big family uh an entrepreneurial kid with a big heart big plans for the future uh Davion Flanagan also big heart had been adopted by a local couple along with his two sisters when he was a child he's now a 19 year old young man former Strongsville running back part-time youth swim coach young guy uh just accepted to Barber College with a start date that fall about ready to move on to the next phase of his life Davion was a new friend to Dominic McKenzie hadn't known them for long he had nothing to do with whatever was rotting inside of that relationship he was someone just along for the ride that night tragic collateral damage if only he would have uh taken a ride with another friend who had offered to give him that ride that same night number four McKenzie waved her right to a jury put her fate in the hands of a single judge called a bench trial a strategy defense lawyers often use when they fear a jury uh won't like their the defendant because of the extreme notoriety of McKenzie's case a judge would hopefully be better equipped than a jury to focus strictly on the technical evidence and legal arguments rather than emotion uh the state's case for intent did not rest on the crash alone a family friend testified that two weeks before during a roadside blow-up he heard McKenzie say I'm gonna wreck this car right now videos pulled off a phone in Dom's house played over the defense's objection showed McKenzie repeatedly threatening him and threatening to break into his home a detective testified he compiled over a hundred social media clips of her driving recklessly the defense's counter was that McKenzie has a real condition pots always the pots uh that can cause a blackout. But notably, they never put a single medical expert on to stand that, you know, to back that up. Judge Nancy Margaret Russo wasn't buying any of it. She found McKenzie guilty on all 12 counts and delivered a verdict that became the case's signature. This was murder. She called McKenzie literal hell on wheels and said she had a mission and she executed it with precision. And number five, new info. Four weeks following the release of McKenzie's jailhouse calls with her mother, the internet treated McKenzie and Natalie's coded language like a hidden confession waiting to be revealed. Like she was possibly saying what had happened in those final moments before the fateful crash. Then in a June, 2026 episode of the podcast, serial, uh, serial, uh, sleep. It's like cereal. It's like seriously, but the word serial in it serial asleep, uh, with Annie Elise, a fluent Carney speaker finally translated the most discussed calls. Turns out most of it was not a coded confession at all. Just mundane complaints about prison life and gossip about fellow inmates. No final moments revealed. Okay. Okay. Okay. Damn. Murder at a hundred miles per hour. The McKenzie Shrilla case has been sucked. Okay. I'm not gonna keep doing that. So annoying. Uh, thank you to the bad magic. I love my mother-in-law, but it is, we all have annoying things. Uh, thank you to the bad magic productions team for helping making time suck. Thanks to queen of bad magic, Lindsay Cummins. Uh, thanks to Logan Keith, helping to publish this episode and designing merch for the store at bad magic productions.com. Thank you to Laura Wood for her initial research. It is so hard for me to not start saying okay all the time now. Also thanks to the all seen eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad, making sure discord keeps running smooth and everybody over in the time suck and bad magic subreddits. And now still try not to say it. Let's head on over to this week's time sucker updates. Updates. Get your time sucker updates. Uh, I wanted to share some, some silliness this week because so much of it came in. Uh, the first email sent into Bojangles at time suck podcast.com comes from thoughtful future corpse, Becca lemons, who would like to give her meat sack back to earth someday. Not soon. She wrote the following message with the subject line of corpse disposal options, revered, curious cult leader. I'm writing to express my interest in your corpse catapult idea. Should you wish to develop said technology at a valid funeral as a valid funerary option? I would be happy to invest. Uh, seriously though, I've a long been a proponent of natural burial options. The idea of a body being stuck in a concrete vault was just so ridiculous to me. The law of conservation of energy says that energy cannot be created or destroyed only transformed. Everything we have in our bodies is energy that can be used for something else. We should be allowed and encouraged to give that energy back to our ecosystem. In a modern burial, all of that energy is just stuck in a box and completely wasted. Even cremation is a huge waste as our caloric energy is converted into heat, which is ultimately detrimental to the ecosystem. Let me rot in the woods where I can feed nature and give back to the earth I came from. If someone finds me out there and wants to have sex with my corpse, I guess that's okay. I'm not using it anymore. On another note, I don't know if you came across the book stiff by Mary Roach in your research, but it is a great examination of what happens to cadavers that are donated to science. Great information with a dark sense of humor. Uh, bodies do get launched. Thank you for all you do. Your loyal spacer, Becca Lemons. Oh man, Becca, I've not read that book, but I love the title and it sounds awesome. Uh, yeah, we are a strange species. Why do we need to leave our rotting bodies or bones around for loved ones? I mean, it's not like many are going to want to dig them back up, take them home like Carl Tanzer did. At least I hope not. What if there was like a nature preserve slash landfill type option for our corpses, like a, like a death park, a corpse park. I mean, most pathogens generally die pretty fast when the body dies. So there's not much risk for disease. You know, with that, it's not, it's not a big public health risk. We could normalize death a little more that way. See what I'm saying? Right. Hello, field trips, probably shocking at first, but maybe over time it would be cathartic somehow. I don't know. Imagine eating a bunch of shrooms and then go into the death park. What a fucking ride that would be. Uh, there could even be like some, you know, walls full of plaques to commemorate who's been disposed of there. So you could still go to the bog or the meadow or whatever, you know, where grandpa was left to turn back into the soil and remember him. If any creeps need to come in after hours and fuck a corpse or two, so they don't feel like they have to kill somebody to fuck them. Well, added benefit. They should just have to agree that they must raise any zombie babies they create. I think this should be on the table. Good brainstorm, Becca. Next up, more corpse talk from an anonymous and funny sack who sent in another great idea. This is so good, actually, with a subject line of my deepest fear and my death plans. Hello, Mr. Mr. Suckmaster. I've been listening to Time Suck since I moved away from my hometown a couple of years ago. Your podcast has covered a lot of things I've always been interested in, and it's helped me adjust to my new surroundings. Yay. Uh, with your recent episode on Carl Tanzler, I knew now was the time I needed to say something. Carl Tanzler was my boogeyman growing up. I wasn't afraid of the dark or bugs or anything normal as a child, but I was terrified of this man. I was a kindergartner when I saw my parents watching a documentary on him, and I'll be turning 35 next month. I am still scared of him to this very day. I also wanted to write in because ironically, I studied death sciences and greatly appreciated your coverage on it in this episode. I had to sadly give up my pursuit of life. Unfortunately, I will eventually pass away from this, but I have learned to deal with it and enjoy the time I have left, which I greatly do. I only bring this up because I need to tell you about my death plan and the longest standing argument between my husband and I. The longest standing argument. I want to be a Muppet. When I die, I want to be donated to a body farm in Vincennes, Indiana. That is my home state. I still want a funeral, but instead of my body, I want a Muppet version of myself in an open casket. I think this is hilarious. My friends think this is hilarious. My husband does not. He also doesn't want me to go to a body farm. As he is scared, I'll be sold illegally or something. I will be dead, so obviously I don't care if this happens, but this man is my soulmate and he's very scared that I will pass away earlier than him. As a compromise, we've decided I will be cremated, but I want my urn stored in the Muppet. He refuses my Muppet-based dreams still. I don't know why this man will not let me be a potential haunted Muppet. He is crushing my plans for the afterlife and honestly, I don't know what the big deal is. All joking aside, we've been together for 10 years. I'm not actually upset at him, but the Muppet will be involved in my death plan somehow. Praise be to Bojangles and the rest. You're a great comfort to me and have been for the past four years. You're appreciated. Keep up the amazing work. A future haunted felt puppet. He slash him. Well, anonymous he him. I fucking love your Muppet idea. I do understand how it could upset your husband, but also so fucking funny. Your funeral will be so it'd be full of so many people crying and weeping, but then occasionally just bursting out laughing at the complete utter absurdity of a Muppet version of you in the casket. A Muppet with your ashes inside. No less. I like this. Let's brainstorm again. What if you combined your Muppet idea with my animatronic exoskeleton idea and catapult idea? And at some point in the funeral, your Muppet does a dance number. And then to close out your funeral, the Muppet gets launched via that catapult towards some target. That's a fucking show. That's showbiz. That's how I do it in Indiana. And good on you for choosing to live life to the fullest, despite adversity. Hail Nimrod to that. Very impressive. And last up, just a bit more death talk. Practical sack Spencer Box wants his corpse fucked. Or at least he's not opposed to it. Wants is a strong word. He wrote it with the subject line of future consenting dead body. Hey, Danny boy, longtime listener, Albert Fish be my favorite suck subject. Showbiz. That's how I do it in Hollywood. So much necrophilia talk in the last two weeks. I began to ponder my own death. I've always thought of donating my body to science because I'm dead and I don't care what happens to my corpse. However, what if I could donate my body to a necrophile so that someone with a serious mental illness might have a safe outlet instead of becoming the world's next serial killer? Sorry for my fucked up brain thoughts. Always been a bit of an outside thinker. Just wanted to give a huge shout out to my best friend, Zachary Bolin. I've seen you in Columbia, Missouri, St. Louis, Missouri, and most recently took him to Nashville to see you for your final show. Without him, I would have killed myself a long time ago and I stars nice uh wouldn't change a thing i forgot to do the math exactly i'm 90 sure that is even higher than three out of five right or or even more than four out of six uh thanks for the laughs and giving me something to talk about with my long distance best friend spencer box spencer box spencer box it kind of sounds like a porn porn star's name right you ever gotten that spencer maybe just me uh wow so glad you have such an amazing friend in zachary bolin thanks zachary but don't put too much pressure on him live regardless uh but for real love your powerful friendship that is beautiful uh i get what you're hinting at yeah i thought about it and uh i'll do it okay i'll i'll i'll do it i'll fuck your corpse i'll try my best to finish but no promises i'll make a zombie baby with your fucking dead body okay you don't have to be you didn't have to be so coy about it uh but for real uh thanks for enjoying all this silliness i i too don't really care if somebody fucks my corpse uh you know outside of a small list of people i don't want to give that satisfaction to but uh in general uh you know i get my consent you know once i'm dead i guess you know you can fuck my corpse i guess i could donate it to a necrophile just make sure i'm dead first that donated to a necrophile made me think like yeah but they're eventually they're probably gonna get tired they're gonna want a fresher corpse i just picture the same kind of weird dude just going to the funeral home just like every month be like do you got anything is there is there anything fresh for me okay that was probably unnecessary hail nimrod weirdos let's get out of here you suckers i needed that we all did well thank you listening to another bad magic productions podcast be sure and rate and review time suck if you haven't already uh don't do anything really really stupid to the people you claim to love this week you know like try and kill them because they might leave you or kill them and yourself okay okay like sting once said if you love somebody set them free and keep on sucking okay can we hear a bit more carny speak before we go not not that carny speak gibberish coded language but actual carnival workers on the job speaking real carny interactions we can we shall one of the big things is we're together seven days a week 24 hours a day most of the people so it's like a family get this stuff put away and out of sight and make it look like a presentable joy i'm gonna put this side you this show has never been really the greatest show on earth put it in put your rg in and then tighten the turnbuckle as tight as you can get it common sense okay now just slip i keep popping out of there and he's got that turned all the way down do what i said i guarantee you it'll work i'm telling you nobody's listening to me put that fucking bar in that turnbuckle put that turnbuckle in that hole and pin that fucking hole and then tighten that turnbuckle up jesus christ it's stupid i've got a list of rules i go over when i hire a guy what's the interview process like hi how you doing you know how to push a button you're hired okay you're hired okay the tilted world no one's gonna die probably okay