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Recently the Southern Humboldt based true crime docudrama “Murder Mountain” debuted on the Fusion Network. I can’t wait to see it myself, but I don’t have a TV, and I don’t know anyone who gets Fusion Network. So far, all I’ve seen is the one-minute trailer, but the show looks pretty good to me. I’ve heard people around here complain that it seems “sensationalized,” but that seems to be the pat response any time anyone draws media attention to any of the unseemly things that really happen around here.

Some complain about the title of the series, but people around here have called the Rancho Sequoia subdivision “Murder Mountain” for at least as long as I’ve lived here, and we call it “Murder Mountain” because things like the disappearance and murder of Garrett Rodriquez keep happening there. The Garrett Rodriquez story really is dramatic, and I’m sure they tell it dramatically in the series, but I don’t think they exaggerate the story. They don’t have to. The truth is dramatic enough. On the contrary, I think we have, as a community, become desensitized to the crazy shit that really goes down here. We’ve learned to look the other way, or dismiss it as normal business as usual. I’m actually glad for this new series because I always wondered about that case.

The information we got in the local news left me with more questions than answers. For weeks we heard pleas from Garrett Rodriguez’s family, asking the community to help them find their son. We knew they hired a private investigator and that he was talking to people in the area. Then one night, a truck drops a man off in front of the Garberville Hospital ER with multiple gunshot wounds. The wounded man claimed he was kidnapped at home by eight masked men all wearing camo fatigues who shot him and drove him to the hospital.

The next day, Garrett Rodriguez’s body was recovered. At the time, KMUD’s Terri Klemetson’s report on the local news suggested some connection between the kidnapping/shooting, and the recovery of the body, but no details emerged about how the events were related. No arrests were made and no one pressed charges. That was the last we heard about the murder of Garrett Rodriguez. Until now.

The producers of Murder Mountain really dug into this case and got the whole story from the people who were there, and the truth of the matter is even more interesting than I had imagined. I think the story reveals something of the humanity of this community, as well as the brutality of it. I won’t spoil it for you. In fact, I can’t spoil it for you because I haven’t seen it, but I did, along with a lot of other people from SoHum, get hired to act in it.

In that capacity I got to participate in the re-creation of those events, and talk to someone who was there when it happened. Acting in Murder Mountain answered all of my questions about the Garrett Rodriguez murder. I suspect that watching Murder Mountain will do the same for you, and the truth will surprise you.

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John Hardin writes at Like You’ve Got Something Better to Do.