Directed by Erin Lee Carr, I’m Not A Monster: The Lois Riess Murders is a two-part, three-hour docuseries that goes over the case of Lois Riess, who killed her husband David in the tiny Minnesota town of Blooming Prairie in 2018. While on the run from law enforcement, she then killed Pam Hutchinson, a woman she met at a bar in Florida, before she got caught.
I’M NOT A MONSTER: THE LOIS RIESS MURDERS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A person wearing a body camera takes a gun out of one locker and puts it in another. The person then goes to a holding cell and directs a middle-aged woman to where she’ll be processed after her arrest. “The mind is a crazy thing,” a woman says. “All I know is it happened.”
The Gist: Lois Riess, who pled guilty to both murders she was accused of, is interviewed from prison for the first time, both in person and over the phone. The first episode methodically goes over Riess’ tough upbringing in Rochester, Minnesota, the youngest of five children and a mother who had severe mental health issues. Her marriage to David seemed idyllic, as we hear from relatives and friends of the couple who all found the Riesses to be a fun-loving couple, even if Lois was marched a bit to the beat of her own drum.
The two moved from Rochester to San Diego and back to Rochester before settling in Blooming Prairie so that David, an expert fisherman, could open a worm farm that grew the critters for bait. In the privacy of their home, Lois reports that David was verbally and physically abusive. Then, she ran into money issues due to a gambling addiction that found her using her caretaker status to inappropriately utilize her disabled sister’s money, which she received from an inheritance after their dad passed away. This led to a suicide attempt and a stay at the Mayo Clinic’s psychiatric hospital. Soon after that, the chaos began in earnest.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? In the “unlikely killers” category, I’m Not A Monster: The Lois Riess Murders has the same feel as Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal.
Our Take: Whether you believe her or not, there’s no denying that Lois Riess is the most compelling part of I’m Not A Monster. At first you think that she’s going to be some person who is delusional, or tells obvious lies about her life. But she comes off as someone who’s intelligent, practical, and matter-of-fact about how tough her life has been. Carr does a good job of setting all of this up in the docuseries’ first 90 minutes, because then she drops the bomb that Riess more or less killed her second victim in cold blood, and it makes you wonder just who this person is that you’ve been listening to for the last hour and a half.
There’s no doubt that the history of mental illness in Riess’ family affected her; it toughened her up, but it also indicated that she could have similar proclivities. As much as one of David Riess’ friends says, “She’s no brain surgeon,” Lois Riess is likely much smarter and more calculated than anyone who encountered her in Blooming Prairie ever imagined.
What we’re supposed to come away with after this show is the question about whether Lois Riess actually blanked out and killed two people during some sort of psychotic break or if this was much more premeditated. We’re certainly left with those questions at the end of the first episode, and we don’t think the second one will shed any more light, given the fact that Lois herself calmly claims that she has no memory of what she did.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: At the end of the first episode, a body is reported in a condo in Ft. Meyers, Florida.
Sleeper Star: Scott Carlson, a friend of the Riesses, is the one who said that Lois wasn’t a brain surgeon, but he also thought she was weird for simply wearing a mermaid-ish dress to a function. He’s folksy as hell but maybe not the most reliable witness.
Most Pilot-y Line: There are a number of reenactments during the episode; they’re not super-intrusive, but they don’t seem to be all that necessary.
Our Call: STREAM IT. I’m Not A Monster: The Lois Riess Murders is fascinating because of the fact that Riess could be a troubled but largely emotionally stable woman who snapped or she could be a sociopath, and the interview with her that’s the centerpiece of this series keeps us guessing in that regard.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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