When tragedy strikes, it’s natural to demand that someone be held accountable.
Baby Doe, a documentary directed by Jessica Earnshaw, tells the tragic story of 22-year-old Gail Eastwood, who finds herself unmarried and pregnant in a small, conservative, Christian community in Ohio. She tells no one—not her parents, not her friends, and not the baby’s father, Mark Ritchey.
In some sense, Gail hasn’t even told herself that she’s pregnant.
Gail works as a nanny and is shocked when the baby is born. Believing the baby to be stillborn, she bags the body and dumps it in the woods, a 30-minute drive away. The body is found by two women delivering newspapers.
When the sheriff puts out a plea to find the mother, no one comes forward.
Gail and Mark eventually marry and go on to live, by all accounts, a conventional life. They raise three children. Gail volunteers at a food pantry, they actively participate in the local church. She is kind, generous, and loving—an exemplary mother.
Until one day, more than two decades later, there’s a knock on the door. Using DNA analysis, the sheriff’s department confirms the link between Gail and Baby Doe. Gail readily confesses and is put on trial for murder.
The documentary footage is stunning—of Gail and Mark, their children, her mother, and close friends.
While it’s clear that Gail had choices, she is not the only one responsible. There is her overly critical father; her emotionally distant mother; her husband—the baby’s father—who wonders how he failed to notice her pregnancy; and a conservative church community that would have shamed her had the truth emerged. Not to mention a judicial system incapable of grappling with the complexities of people’s lives.
Yet it is only Gail who stands trial.
Baby Doe tells a painful, tragic story in its 100 minutes—one you’ll be thinking about long after the film ends.
Editor’s Note: Baby Doe, sponsored by Stephen Stern Law Firm and San Simeon Lodge, is one of eight full-length films to be screened during the ninth annual Cambria Film Festival February 4-8.