THE LIVING
VICTIMS
As a locked-down world binges on true-crime
entertainment, some grieving families say the
genre is flourishing at their expense
BY MELISSA CHAN
Society
Mindy Pendleton Panicked when she learned her
stepson’s murder would be featured in a true-crime docuseries
on Netflix. Her stomach churned in the days leading up to the
debut of the show, which Pendleton worried would glorify the
killer who had strangled 25-year-old Robert Mast in 2015 as he
sat in a car in a Walmart parking lot.
“This was my greatest fear,” says Pendleton, 64. She’d helped
raise Mast from a toddler, and still has marks on the walls of her
Largo, Fla., home measuring his height through the years. The
last mark, made when Mast was 18, is 5 ft. 11 in. off the ground.
When Netflix asked Mast’s family and friends in February
2019 to participate in the series, I Am a Killer, those closest to
him pleaded with the producers to abandon the project. They
said it was inhumane to sell a documentary at the emotional
expense of a grieving family. “As a parent, a fellow human
being, I beg you not to do this,” Pendleton wrote in the first of
many emails to the producers, which she shared with TIME.
But on Jan. 31, Netflix released the second season of the
show to more than 60 million U.S. subscribers, leading with
the episode detailing Mast’s murder. In the first few minutes,
viewers are introduced to Lindsay Haugen, the woman who
pleaded guilty to killing Mast. From a Montana prison where
she’s serving a 60-year sentence, the occasionally tearful Hau-
gen recounts her years in an abusive relationship before she
PHOTO-ILLUSTRATIONS BY NEIL JAMIESON FOR TIME
