A retired police officer who worked on the investigation of Reena Virk’s murder says none of the investigators involved in the Virk case heard from the production team during the development of a true-crime drama based on the 1997 murder.
Retired staff sergeant Chris Horsley, who served as a media liaison for the Saanich Police Department during the Virk case, said he hasn’t seen any episodes of the Disney Plus miniseries Under the Bridge, which premieres Wednesday in Canada, and probably won’t. (The series premiered last month in the U.S. on Hulu.)
The miniseries centres on the real-life story of Virk, who was 14 when she was swarmed and beaten by a group of teens in Saanich and subsequently drowned in the Gorge waterway, near the Craigflower Bridge.
Lily Gladstone and Riley Keough star as a Saanich police officer and writer investigating Virk’s death. Keough plays a version of late author Rebecca Godfrey, whose 2005 book of the same name about Virk’s murder serves as the basis for the show.
Godfrey died in 2022 from lung cancer at the age of 54 before the series was completed.
Episodes made available in advance portray Godfrey, who co-produced the series with creator Quinn Shephard before her death, as participating with police in the investigation. Horsley said that was not the case.
“That didn’t happen at all. She didn’t write the book [until] long after the incident took place.”
In the pilot, Virk’s uncle and father, played by Anoop Desai and Ezra Faroque Khan, visit the police station to report the girl missing but officers don’t take them seriously.
Horsley also countered this, saying school officials reported her missing and that Virk was living in a group home at the time because of a troubled relationship with her parents.
He added that Virk’s family had an “excellent working relationship” with the police.
“The minute that the production strays from the truth and starts to become fiction, I think that is a great disservice to not only Reena and her memory but also to the people who worked on the case and those who participated here in the community,” said Horsley, adding that several anti-violence programs were launched in Greater Victoria following Virk’s murder.
The Vancouver-shot production only spent a few days in Victoria, including one flashback sequence shot in 2022 and some B-roll footage of Shoreline school. Craigflower Bridge was reconstructed on a Vancouver soundstage.
According to documents released by the Parole Board of Canada last month, Virk’s killer Kelly Ellard — who changed her name to Kerry Sim — told her case managers it was “so horrendous” that the series will “re-victimize the victim’s family.”
Horsley said he expects that far more than just those connected directly to the case will be affected by the series.
“It’s not just the family that would be retraumatized. I think it’s also friends of Reena and other people that lived in the community that were affected by the murder,” he said.
“The vast majority of the viewing audience, they don’t have that personal connection, but here in Victoria, there’s many people that do. It’s been 27 years but there’s still a lot of people in Victoria that were affected by this murder.”
Horsley said he’s perturbed by the proliferation of true-crime shows that are only loosely based on real events.
“These are real people with families that were murdered. And a lot of people are watching for entertainment value.”
Horsley said Virk’s death is, to this day, the “biggest media story” Saanich has ever had.
“It was very unique having not just young offenders but young female offenders committing such a degree of violence. I don’t think it was something we got our heads around at that point.”
Publicists for the production with Disney Plus Canada did not respond to a request for comment.
— With files from Mike Devlin, Times Colonist
