Former inmate speaks out about Mackenzie Shirilla and “The Crash”: ‘Nothing like who I saw in there at all’

Key Points

• Mackenzie Shirilla’s former fellow inmate is speaking out about the convicted murderer after the Netflix documentary The Crash premiered on May 15.

• Shirilla is the subject of The Crash, which focused on a deadly 100-mph car crash that left her serving life in prison.

• “She was always laughing, always smiling and happy — like it was never on her mind that she was serving two concurrent 15-to-life sentences because she killed two people,” a fellow inmate said.

Mackenzie Shirilla’s former fellow inmate is speaking out after The Crash premiered on May 15.

Shirilla is the subject of the Netflix documentary The Crash, which focused on a 2022 car crash that left her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend Davion Flanagan dead — and Shirilla serving two concurrent life prison sentences with the possibility of parole after 15 years.

Former inmate Mary Katherine Crowder told The New York Post on Wednesday about what the convicted criminal was like behind bars at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, claiming that the documentary depicted a completely different person.

Per The New York Post, Crowder and Shirilla overlapped at Ohio Reformatory for Women for at least six months, where Crowder was serving time for outstanding misdemeanor warrants from Tennessee dating back to April 2024.

“This character in the documentary is nothing like who I saw in there at all, and it was shocking,” Crowder told the Post. When she saw Shirilla in The Crash, Crowder’s “jaw literally dropped,” “because her demeanor and the way that she looked was nothing like the person I was in there with.”

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“When I was in there with her, you’d look at her and she had her makeup done every day, she was very well put together — almost like preppy,” Crowder said.

“But in the documentary,” Crowder continued, “she did not look like that at all — she almost looked like she was conforming to the people that have been there for a while.”

Mackenzie Shirilla
Credit: Ohio Reformatory for Women

“Even the way she talks is completely different — she talked like a Valley girl when I was in there with her. Her voice was very happy-go-lucky and high-pitched, but now she has an edge to her voice,” Crowder added. She also claimed that Shirilla’s parents were financially supporting her from outside prison, sending her clothes and makeup, among other items.

Crowder likened her to Regina George of Mean Girls, saying that “she was this famous person within prison.”

“She always had makeup done, hair done, her clothes were altered to fit her body tighter or be different,” said Crowder.

“She was always laughing, always smiling and happy — like it was never on her mind that she was serving two concurrent 15-to-life sentences because she killed two people,” the former inmate concluded.

Entertainment Weekly contacted the Office of Public Defender of Cuyahoga County, where Shirilla’s public defender practices, and did not receive an immediate response.

In August 2023, Shirilla was convicted of killing boyfriend Dominic Russo and their friend Davion Flanagan in a July 2022 car crash.

Shirilla, who was behind the wheel at the time, drove her Toyota Camry at 97.8 miles per hour into the exterior wall of a brick building. Russo and Flanagan were pronounced dead at the scene, while she suffered broken bones and was airlifted to a hospital.

The investigation into the car crash turned into a criminal one as authorities looked closer at the details surrounding the crash. Shirilla was arrested in November 2022, and even though she was 17 when the crash occurred, she was tried as an adult.

Prosecutors believed that the crash was intentional, and witnesses claimed she had a “toxic” relationship with Russo. Shirilla also allegedly had THC in her system — more than what the legal limit is in Ohio, per Cleveland.com

Shirilla was found guilty by a Cuyahoga County judge, Nancy Russo (no relation to Dominic), of 12 charges including murder, aggravated vehicular homicide, felonious assault, and drug possession for the crash that killed Russo and Flanagan.

Mackenzie Shirilla in ‘The Crash’
Credit: Netflix

Shirilla is serving two life sentences concurrently. She will be eligible for parole in 2037.

“It’s really hard every day in here,” Shirilla says in The Crash. “I try to wake up and be the best person I can be every day, stay out of trouble. There’s not a moment that doesn’t pass where I don’t think about [Russo and Flanagan].”

The Crash is available to stream on Netflix.

Read the original article on Entertainment Weekly