When reality inspires fiction on Netflix… For some time now, the American online video platform has been offering its subscribers the opportunity to discover certain miscellaneous facts in series. Enough to arouse the interest of fans fond of stories drawn from real events.
Latest example: the Netflix streaming platform has been offering Killer Sally: Murder on Steroids since November 2. A documentary mini-series made up of three episodes retracing the life of Sally and Ray McNeil, a couple of bodybuilders who marked America in the 1990s. A love story that nevertheless had a disastrous fate.
“Interviews with their friends, family and Sally McNeil herself trace the tumultuous marriage of a couple of bodybuilders and their sad end on Valentine’s Day”, summarizes the synopsis of the fiction online on Netflix. At the start of their relationship in the 1980s, Sally and Ray were fans of bodybuilding and had a cult following for their physique. From their meeting in a gym, they got married in 1987.
But, the marriage turns to disaster within the couple. Between a very seductive husband and a jealous wife, ex-soldier of the Marines, their daily life is punctuated by abuse and domestic violence. Until the evening of February 14, 1995, when Sally McNeil shot her husband dead with a 12-gauge shotgun. She then called for help before confessing to the murder to the police.
The following year, the trial of Sally McNeil (nicknamed the muscular princess) opened in the United States on Valentine’s Day. Accused of having premeditated her gesture, the bodybuilder pleaded self-defense. At the end of a media affair that thrilled America, she was sentenced to more than twenty years in prison for second degree murder. A sentence she served at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, California, before being released after appealing in May 2020.
Now 62, Sally McNeil would live with her two children and have rebuilt her life with a new husband. From this passionate story, the documentary Killer Sally: Murder on Steroids reacted to Internet users who discovered this news item in France. “The killer Sally documentary on Netflix is too interesting,” wrote this user on Twitter. Another, more sensitive to the report. “If I had known that I would end up in tears watching the documentary… I wouldn’t have started it now. It’s terrible and heartbreaking. This woman did nothing but defend herself and her children”.
Or these individuals fascinated by the report. “I started the Killer Sally documentary series about a couple of bodybuilders in the 80s who ended up in murder. It’s fascinating”, “The Killer Sally doc series makes me ouffff”, can we read on Twitter.
