The True Story of ‘Unbelievable’: Who is the Real Marie Adler?

Netflix’s new crime drama Unbelievable flips the script on the genre. The series tells the story of a teen girl named Marie Adler (played by Kaitlyn Dever) who reports her sexual assault to authorities, only to be doubted. When the cops decide she’s lying, she’s coerced into retracting her statement, thus setting off a chain of events that just about ruin her life, while putting the lives of other women in peril.

Unbelievable is shocking, upsetting, frustrating, and purported to be based on a true story. But who is the real Marie Adler? What is Marie Adler up to now? Are intrepid detectives Karen Duvall (Merritt Wever) and Grace Rasmussen (Toni Collette) also based on real women? Who was the real rapist behind the Unbelievable cases? Was it skeevy Scott Parrish? Or someone else? And did they really get the guy in the end?

Here’s everything you need to know about the true story behind Netflix’s Unbelievable.

Unbelievable: What is the True Story?

The Netflix original series Unbelievable is based on a Pulitzer Prize-winning piece of investigative journalism by ProPublica called “An Unbelievable Story of Rape.” The story begins in 2009, when a teenager is being tried for lying about a rape charge. Called Marie by the reporters, which is her middle name, she is forced to undergo a year of counseling and to pay a $500 fee to the courts in order to have her charges dismissed. With her world dissolving around her, Marie goes along with it.

Then the piece switches to Golden, Colorado in 2011, where detective Stacy Galbraith is investigating a rape that sounds a lot like Marie’s “fictional” attack. Later that day, her husband David, a cop who worked in the neighboring area of Westminster, revealed his department had a case that sounded a lot like that. Galbraith soon teamed up with Det. Edna Hendershot. The two would eventually solve the case, and tie Marie’s ordeal to their rapist.

As Unbelievable is a fictionalized version of this true story, the show reimagines Stacy Galbraith and Edna Hendershot as Karen Duvall and Grace Rasmussen. The two characters are heavily based on the real life female detectives from Colorado who cracked the case, but the details are fudged for dramatic effect.

What was the Rapist’s Real Name in Unbelievable? Was it Scott Parrish? And Who Played the Rapist in Unbelievable?

During the course of Unbelievable, detectives Grace Rasmussen and Karen Duvall look at a number of possible suspects. At one point, thanks to a tip, they bring in a college co-ed named Scott Parrish (Tommy O’Brien) for interrogation. What they find is not that Scott is behind the rapes they are investigating, but that he is a casual date rapist with a major case of privilege.

Finally, Unbelievable identifies the rapist as Christopher McCarthy, an ex-military officer who sees his role as a serial sexual assailant not too dissimilar to the serial killers in Mindhunter. In fact, he asks to be interviewed by the FBI in a very Mindhunter-like manner. Christopher McCarthy is played by actor Blake Ellis in Unbelievable.

In real life, the rapist caught by Colorado PD was Marc O’Leary. He was caught in very much the same way McCarthy was on the show. Detectives followed his brother by accident to a diner, and then knocked on the door to find McCarthy. In his home, they found evidence linking him to the crimes, including trophies. O’Leary was sentenced to 327½ years in prison for the Colorado attacks, and an additional 68½ years for the rapes he committed in Washington state.

Who is the Real Marie Adler? What is Marie Adler Doing Now?

While Marie Adler is very much a real woman, her name is not publicly known. Marie is her middle name, and she tells her story in her own world in audio recordings in the ProPublica piece. In that report, we hear of other characters who sound an awful lot like the characters we encounter in Unbelievable. “Goofy” foster mom Shannon McQuery is a dead ringer for Colleen (Bridget Everett), and Marie’s last foster mom Peggy Cunningham makes a quip about expecting a baby that is given to actress Elizabeth Marvel’s Judith in the series.

According to ProPublica, “Marie” left Washington after suing the state and being awarded $150,000. She got a job as a long-haul trucker and married. As of October 2015, she had given birth to her second child. She did not want her whereabouts to be known.

Essentially, everything that happens in Unbelievable really happened. Only names and personal details were changed to protect the innocent.

Watch Unbelievable on Netflix