When I first heard about the Galรกpagos Affair, it felt like a well-kept secretโa mystery that is romantic, dramatic, and, most intriguing of all, still unsolved. In the 1930s, a group of European settlers moved to a remote island in the Pacific to escape civilization and to live quiet, peaceful livesโonly to end up, five years later, with two of them having vanished and two others having died mysterious deaths.
I devoured everything I could find on the subject at the timeโthe memoirs of two survivors, a nonfiction book, and a documentaryโonly to find that the mysteries of Floreana Island were still exactly that. As a fiction writer, I knew that if I wanted an ending to this story, I would have to create one. And so I did: my novel Floreana reimagines the lives of the settlers through the point of view of Dore Strauch, one of the first settlers.
Actor and filmmaker Ron Howard was similarly intrigued by the Galรกpagos Affairโand he, too, created a fictional ending for his film, Eden, which premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in 2024 and is now out in theaters. Like Floreana, the film follows the true story, with embellishments here and there, showing the often stranger-than-fiction happenings as the first two settlers, Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch, are joined by the Wittmer family and then by a self-proclaimed โBaronessโ who wreaks havoc on the other settlersโ livesโuntil she and one of her lovers disappear, never to be seen again, and two other men die under mysterious circumstances.
Thereโs something about little-known stories that beg for understanding. Whether itโs a mystery that needs solving, as is the case with Eden, or a way to process unthinkable crimes, as in some of the productions listed below, a film or television version of events offers a closer look at characters and a sense of time and place, while also allowing for a bit (or a lot) of dramatic flair.
The films and limited series below were inspired by lesser-known true crime stories and give viewers another perspective while also offering an outcome (whether real or imagined). And all show that while truth is often stranger than fiction, mixing the two is utterly compelling.
Eden stars Jude Law as Friedrich and Vanessa Kirby as Dore, Sydney Sweeney as Margret and Daniel Brรผhl as Heinz, and Ana de Armas as the Baroness, bringing together those involved in the Galรกpagos Affair and letting the story play out in all its real-life bizarreness, with a few invented or embellished details. With the real-life mystery still unsolved, Howardโs film creates a stunning visual setting as well as a dramatic ending for both the two disappearances and the mysterious death of Friedrich Ritter.
Under the Banner of Heaven is a better-known story thanks to Jon Krakauerโs book by the same name, and in this series Andrew Garfield plays Detective Jeb Pyle, investigating the brutal murder of a young mother and her fifteen-month-old daughter in Utahโs LDS community. As with the book, the series is smart, compelling, suspenseful, and utterly horrifying.
Also based on a book by the same name, by Charles Graeber, The Good Nurse limited series stars Jessica Chastain and Eddie Redmayne as nurses who become close while working the night shift togetherโuntil patients begin dying. When detectives begin investigating, nurse Amy Loughren realizes her friend and colleague, Charlie Cullen, is a serial killer whose crimes span sixteen years, nine hospitals, and hundreds of victims.
The story of Candy Montgomery, who killed her friend Betty Gore with an ax, is compelling enough to have inspired two limited series: Candy, starting Jessica Biel, and Love & Death, starting Elizabeth Olsen. Both series make riveting, if grisly, viewing, and are most fascinating for the ordinary suburban setting and the seeming normalcy of the murderer, who ended up pleading self-defense at her trial and was found not guilty.
The limited series The Thing About Pam stars Renรฉe Zellweger as Pam Hupp in the story of the murder of Pamโs friend Betsy Faria, the framing of Betsyโs husband, and Pamโs eventual arrest for murder. While Pam, who was the last person to see Betsy alive, pointed law enforcement toward the husband, Russ, eventually holes in her story cast suspicion on her, and all is revealed in a series whose tone is more black comedy than drama.
Midge Raymond is the author of the novels Floreana, a novel inspired by the same events featured in Eden, and My Last Continent, and, with coauthor John Yunker, the mystery novel Devils Island. Her writing has appeared in the Los Angeles Times magazine, Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, and many other publications.
