What You Need to Know About the Real People Behind Netflix's Unbelievable

The ProPublica article and This American Life episode also call the real survivor, like Kaitlyn Dever's character, Marie, referring to her by her middle name. After reporting her sexual assault in Lynnwood, Washington in 2008, Marie faced doubt from the police and her loved ones. She eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanour charge for lying to the police, forced to go through probation and pay court fees. Years later, police from a different department found her perpetrator. As of the time that the ProPublica piece was published, Marie had been living in a different state with her husband and two children, working as a long-haul trucker.

The real Marie kept in touch with two former foster parents: Peggy and Shannon. The article and podcast suggest that Peggy was the serious parent and Shannon the fun one. Both women doubted Marie due to her emotional detachment regarding the assault. Peggy would express her uncertainties to the police. In Unbelievable, Elizabeth Marvel and Bridget Everett play Marie's former foster mothers Judith and Colleen, who are based on Peggy and Shannon respectively.

The rape survivor that Amber (Danielle MacDonald) is based on was, in 2011, a 26-year-old engineering student in Golden, Colorado. She helped Galbraith and Hendershot link a series of rape cases to a perpetrator who wore a black mask, used a pink camera, and targeted women living alone. The two officers connected the Golden case with other ones in Aurora, Lakewood, Kirkland, and Westminster based on the suspect's MO and trace DNA. Besides Amber, we also meet the other survivors on Unbelievable.

Hereditary's Toni Collette portrays Grace Rasmussen, a character based on real-life Detective Edna Henderson. The detective, like Rasmussen, was the more experienced officer in the case, having worked over 100 sexual assault cases. She received a message from Denver's Detective Stacy Galbraith, who noticed similarities between her case and one of Hendershot's. The suspect in both cases wore a mask and used a camera to take pictures of the women he assaulted.

Merritt Wever, who recently picked up an Emmy for her main role on Godless, plays Karen Duvall, a character based on Detective Stacy Galbraith, who reached out to Hendershot after seeing similarities between their cases. While less experienced than Hendershot at the time, Galbraith had still worked on dozens of rape cases before. She and Hendershot would team up with other police departments to track down the suspect.

Officers Jeffrey Mason and Jerry Rittgarn had worked on Marie's case initially, essentially coercing her to recant her statement. On the series, they are Detectives Parker (Eric Lange) and Pruitt (Bill Fagerbakke).

A former military man, Marc O'Leary was the perpetrator behind the mask in all the different locations. Sifting through surveillance footage, the police connected a white Mazda pickup to O'Leary. Using trace DNA at the crime scenes, they deducted, after running a test on his brother's cup at a restaurant, that the suspect had to be within his family. After the detectives got a search warrant and saw an egg-shaped birthmark on his leg matching a survivor's description, they knew that they found their guy. O'Leary pleaded guilty to five rapes as well as over 20 other felonies. He was sentenced to 327.5 years in prison. On the series, he is the character Chris McCarthy, played by actor Blake Ellis.