FAQ

Rochester (New York) police detective Megan Paige (Eliza Dushku) becomes obsessed with catching the "alphabet killer", a murdering rapist who targets young girls with names that start with the same letter as the town in which their bodies are found. When she begins seeing hallucinations of the victims, displays bizarre behaviors, and attempts suicide, Megan is diagnosed with adult onset schizophrenia. In between hospitalizations, she continues working on the case, eventually putting her own life in danger.

The movie is loosely based on the true story of the "Alphabet murders" (aka the "double initial murders") that took place in Rochester, New York in the early 1970s. The screenplay was written by Tom Malloy with the help of a homicide investigator who had worked on the original case.

From 1970 to '73, three girls in and around Rochester, New York, were brutally raped and murdered, their bodies dumped in neighboring villages. Each girl's first and last names started with the same letter and matched the initial of the name of the village where their body was found. The victims included Carmen Colon, 10, Wanda Walkowicz, 11, and Michelle Maenza, 11. Their bodies were found respectively in the towns of Churchville, Webster, and Macedon. Also, "C" is the 3rd letter of the alphabet, "M" the 13th and "W" the 23rd.

After admitting to Megan that he killed the girls, Ledge (Timothy Hutton) suddenly leaps out of his wheelchair, knocks her out, and drags her body to his car. When she comes to, he explains that killing Carla Castillo and burying her in Churchville was simply a coincidence. However, after he found out about her obsession with initials, he continued to kill girls with the same initials, hoping to help Megan get her job back. He drives to an abandoned warehouse along the Genessee River. Before he can inject her with a sedative and dump her in the River, Megan breaks free and runs away. Ledge grabs his gun, runs after her, shooting at her back. Megan takes refuge in a van, and when Ledge peeks in, she kicks open the door, knocking him to the ground. She picks up his gun and, while struggling with him, shoots him in the foot. She fires off another two shoots, but Ledge falls in the river. By the time she makes it to the riverbank, he has disappeared. The stress brings Megan to another psychotic episode, and she is hospitalized again, strapped to a gurney, and placed in a "quiet room" under heavy medication, making her unable to communicate. While Megan lies catatonic in her hallucinations, Ledge can be seen receiving communion in a new church and smiling at a little girl seated near him. In the final scene, Megan says in a voiceover, Every day I'm in here is a day he's out there. My only remaining purpose is to get out. The dead have given me their answers, and the dead won't let me forget them. I will get out, and I will kill him. A postscript then appears on the screen, informing the viewer: In 2006, police exhumed a fireman's body and posthumously cleared him as a suspect. To date, the Alphabet Killer has not been found.

Most of the film is fictional. The only thing that was really true was that the murders had to do with young girls with double initials and that it all happened in Rochester, New York. The characters are all fictional and the case went completely unsolved. There was no killer discovered like in the movie.