FAQ

At the top of his class, Boston University (BU) medical student Philip Markoff (Jake McDorman) falls in love with Megan McAllister (Agnes Bruckner), a senior BU student hoping to get into med school. While they are happily making plans for marriage and unknown to Megan, Philip is living a secret life, incurring gambling debts and, in order to pay for them, robbing masseuses who advertize their 'erotic services' on Craigslist. When Philip kills Craigslist masseuse Julissa Brisman (Leela Savasta) after she attempts to fight him off and he panics, police detectives Bennett (William Baldwin) and Frye (Joshua Close) become aware of his activities and attempt to track him down.

The Craigslist Killer is based on A Date with Death: The Secret Life of the Accused 'Craigslist Killer' (2010), a novel by Michele McPhee. The screenplay for the movie was written by Donald Martin and Stephen Tolkin.

Armed with the email Philip sent to Julissa Brisman just before meeting her, Digital Forensics is able to get an IP address placing the caller in Quincy (a city just south of Boston). The IP address is then traced to Philip Markoff. His profile provides them with an address and photo. Comparing his photo to a blurry photo obtained from the security camera in Trisha Leffler's (Trieste Kelly Dunn) hotel corridor, Bennett and Frye are fairly certain that Markoff is the killer. Now all they have left to do is to tail him, photograph him, and get a positive ID from Trisha.

Proclaiming his innocence while incarcerated at the Suffolk County jail, Philip attempts to unsuccessfully hang himself with a shoelace. Meanwhile, Megan continues to stand by Philip until Detective Bennett lays the evidence in front of her...a 9mm gun found under their bed, the 16 pairs of panties he stuffed under their mattress, and the description he posted of himself on a sexual fetish website. Megan visits him one last time in jail and asks him to level with her, but his only reply is: 'Maybe the person who did this...didn't feel they deserved all that they had.' Megan leaves her engagement ring on the counter and walks out. In the final scenes, while Megan packs away her wedding gown, Philip successfully commits suicide by slitting his wrists with a spoon that he sharpened on the concrete walls in his cell. On his cell wall, he writes Megan's name in his blood, then smothers himself with a plastic bag in which he had stored his toothpaste and other personal items. The movie ends up showing a happy scene from earlier in Philip and Megan's relationship followed by a text epilogue that reads: 'Philip Markoff's suicide denies his victims their only opportunity to see justice done. In 2010, over one year after the brutal murder of Julissa Brisman, Craigslist finally shut down its Erotic Services section worldwide.'

He wrote 'Pocket,' his pet name for Megan. There are two scenes earlier in the film when Megan says that her hands are freezing, so Philip places them in his pockets. After the second scene, he tells Megan that he's going to start calling her 'Pocket'.

'Where The River Bends' performed by Matthew Barber.

Yes. The movie is based on the true story of BU medical student Philip Haynes Markoff, dubbed 'the Craigslist Killer' because he chose his victims from 'erotic services' ads they had placed on Craigslist.

We'll never know for sure. Markoff's case never made it to trial because he committed suicide before he could be tried, and he maintained his innocence up until his death. However, the evidence -- things like his fingerprints on the duct tape, video images of him at hotels, an eye witness who identified him, information retrieved from his hard disc, a gun under his bed that matched exactly with the bullets retrieved from the dead girl, etc. -- strongly suggests that Markoff was indeed the real 'Craigslist Killer'.