I just finished watching the Philip Markoff movie, “The Craigslist Killer,” on Lifetime. I thought it was a pretty good overview of the case, presenting all the facts in an entertaining and mostly classy way, with decent acting. The only major flaw in the movie is that it exaggerated how sleazy and unfaithful to his fiancee Markoff was by taking some liberties with the facts. More on that later.
Warning, spoilers ahead:
The movie starts out with Philip (played by Jake McDorman), a medical student, talking to his classmates and supervisors, impressing everyone with his intelligence. He meets Megan McAllister (Agnes Bruckner), a college student, and he immediately falls in love with her and asks her out. Their first date is at (of course) a casino. Six months later, they move in together, and shortly after that, he proposes to her during a carriage ride.
Throughout most of the movie, shots of Megan planning and gushing about the wedding are juxtaposed with shots of Philip looking up erotic services ads on Craigslist, visiting the providers of such services, taking suggestive pictures of himself to post on his sex site profile, and buying plastic handcuffs, duct tape, and a gun. One of the best parts is when he browses Craigslist during class but answers the professor’s question perfectly.
Megan gets upset when she finds out that their bank account is overdrawn, and Philip assures her that the money is coming as he walks down the corridor to a prostitute’s hotel room. He ties her up and takes her money, credit cards, and underwear. Back at his apartment, he stuffs the underwear in a sock, puts it under his mattress, and carves out a hole in a Gray’s Anatomy textbook to store his gun.
Then we meet ill-fated Julissa Brisman, who lets Markoff into her hotel room after getting off of the phone with her mother. “You’re beautiful,” he says, and she replies, “You’re not too bad yourself.” As soon as he enters the room, he tries to tie her up, but she fights back, pushing him and grabbing his neck, and he shoots her.
Back at the apartment, Megan notices the cut on his neck, and he makes an excuse for it. The police discuss the profile of the killer as Philip is shown in bed with Megan and charming everyone he meets. Then he visits another prostitute, whom he tries to tie up and rob until her husband arrives. After a violent struggle, he escapes, upset and out of breath, and returns to his apartment.
Meanwhile the superintendent told Megan that Philip hadn’t paid rent for three months, and she confronts him. On the verge of tears, he apologizes, saying, “I am trying my best.” Meanwhile, the police are closing in on Markoff. He keeps seeing himself on the news, grows increasingly panicked, and convinces Megan to go to Foxwoods. On the way, cops pull them over and roughly handcuff Philip, while Megan is (understandably) confused and freaked out. Cops search the apartment, where they find flex-cuffs, a gun, 16 pairs of underwear, a fake ID, and other evidence.
In jail, Philip is taunted by other inmates and tries to strangle himself with his shoelaces but is stopped by a guard. A public defender named Robert Grossman, who according to the cops is pretty darn good, is appointed to defend him. Megan visits him in jail, and he almost confesses to her: “The person who did this, they didn’t feel like they deserved someone as amazing as you…they felt like all they deserved was to be punished.” When she angrily leaves, he panics, crying, and says that he’s scared. Finally, he commits suicide with a makeshift knife and writes “Megan” and “Pocket” on the wall in blood.
Megan is played as superficial and ignorant, and Billy Baldwin, who plays Detective Bennett, is kind of annoying and has a Boston accent that at times sounds almost British. But Jake McDorman makes a pretty good Markoff. He convincingly portrays his dark side and his panic as the noose closes around him. He constantly says cheesy but ironic cliches (With me, what you see is pretty much what you get…I told you, Pocket, it’s going to be happily ever after…I don’t want us to have any secrets…It’s just you and me, Pocket, nothing else matters).
Here are a few of the inaccuracies I noticed in the movie:
- Megan and Philip meet when she is in college and he is in his second year of med school. In real life, they met when they were both in college (she was a couple years older than him).
- Before he started dating Megan, Markoff once tried to kiss one of his female friends and held her against a wall, but she pushed him away. In the movie, this takes place while he and Megan are engaged.
- In the movie, Megan applies to BU med school but doesn’t get in. I don’t think this happened in real life, as far as I know.
- In the movie, after Markoff ties up Tricia Leffler, he actually cuts off her underwear that she is wearing. In real life, he just took them from her suitcase.
- The 16 pairs of underwear found in Markoff’s apartment were reported by some news outlets, but the actual number, according to police and prosecutors, seems to be less.
- It is implied that Markoff may have had sex with some of the prostitutes, which there is absolutely no evidence of.
