Warning: While not graphic, this article discusses pedophilia.“In the true crime genre, the first place you’re going to look is Texas Monthly.”
Producer Elli Hakami made the quip in regard to her search for potential projects. “I started to look through their backlog of articles,” she continued. “I saw an article that was titled ‘The Girl Who Told the Truth’ by Mike Hall. I saw that it was about a young woman who, at one time, accused her family of putting her into a pedophile ring at a swingers club in a small town in Texas. That immediately grabbed my attention.”
Hakami and her creative partner, director Julian Hobbs, have built a career on true-crime documentaries, most recently, with the acclaimed series House of Hammer, which examined the allegations of sexual misconduct against actor Armie Hammer, and his twisted family history. Now the pair dive into yet another story of family, sex, and abuse with the three-part series How to Create a Sex Scandal for Max.
A Scandalous Tale
How to Create a Sex Scandal centers on the small Texas town of Mineola. In 2004, foster parents Margie and John Cantrell took three young children into their home: seven-year-old Shelby, six-year-old Hunter, and four-year-old Carly. Child protective services had removed the kids from their home after it found evidence of drug use by their parents. As the kids settled in with the Cantrells, Margie contacted law enforcement, claiming that the children had told her stories of sexual abuse. Mike Hall documented the investigation and subsequent trials for Texas Monthly.
For Hobbs and Hakami, the story presented a golden opportunity.
“We thought, ‘How can we adapt this and bring it up to date and see where these families are now and see the fallout of these events that happened 10–15 years ago,’” said Hobbs.
“We recognized we were able to bring the viewer into the story in the way that the people in the story experienced it,” added Hakami.
The initial accusations brought by the kids via Margie Cantrell claimed that all three children had been subjected to “sex kindergarten” at the home of Patrick “Booger Red” Kelly, a friend of their parents. The kids further claimed that their parents, Jamie and Shauntel Mayo, then forced them to perform in a swinger’s club for adults, including the grandparents of the children, Jim and Sheila, as well as another family friend, Dennis Pittman.
Local investigators initially declined to bring charges against any of the adults, citing a lack of evidence. That didn’t stop Margie Cantrell from lobbying Texas Ranger Philip Kemp in neighboring Smith County to launch his own investigation, despite him having no experience in dealing with sex crimes against children. Eventually, a court convicted Shauntel, Jamie, Patrick, and Dennis of sex crimes against children. Jim and Sheila took plea deals which also sent them to prison.
Yet in conducting interviews with a number of the case’s key figures, including Mike Hall, Hunter & Carly Mayo, Margie Cantrell, and more, Hakami and Hobbs came to their own conclusion.
Reinvestigating a Mystery
“This case was improperly investigated,” declared Hakami. “I think it’s fair to say that the investigation wasn’t thorough in terms of fact-finding and evidence-finding, and it was too reliant on simply these children’s testimonies. That’s it. I mean, also, the case was investigated in Mineola and dismissed by the police department. Then it shifted to Smith County, and numerous pieces of evidence were never transferred and never released to the defense.”
For starters, no charges were ever brought against the owners of the swingers’ club, nor, according to Hobbs and Hakami, were they or any of their patrons ever considered suspects.
“The police were running checks of who was going to the swingers club,” Hobbs notes. “So clearly, license plate checks would have shown if any of these defendants had ever been there. Then this evidence is allegedly destroyed. That’s right. It disappears. And we have on tape the owner of the swingers club saying, ‘Well, yeah, of course, because we had a lot of police officers and Texas Rangers at the swingers club.’ The simple fact is that, if no one’s license plate of those who were accused were ever tied to that swingers club, it would have exonerated them.”
So with such wild gaps in investigative logic, how did six people end up in prison? Two characters in How to Create a Sex Scandal will spark the most debate: Texas Ranger Kemp, and foster mom Margie Cantrell. Kemp, along with all other investigators and prosecutors, declined the chance to appear in the series. Cantrell, on the other hand, sat for extensive interviews.
Hero or Villain?
“I definitely think that it took several conversations,” recalled Hakami of convincing Cantrell to appear. “And by the way, I have to give a huge shout-out to our producing team, Elissa Halperin and Valerie Schenkman, who were really at the forefront of having these conversations with Margie and the Cantrell family.”
“We spent two days with her in California where she now lives,” added Hobbs. “She was nothing if not cooperative and pleasant. And we appreciated her point of view, but we will leave it up to the viewers to determine where they land with Margie. We wanted you to go through the arc of the story as the town went through the arc of the story and reach your own conclusion.”
Viewers will certainly have opinions. How to Create a Sex Scandal evokes the Paradise Lost trilogy and Capturing the Friedmans — two other true-crime documentaries that ignited wild debate over the guilt of the accused, the conduct of investigators, and the hysteria surrounding child sex abuse in rural and suburban America. To Hobbs and Hakami, diving into the haze of memory and muck of sordid subjects isn’t a chance to exploit a subject. It’s a chance to help further justice.
“This is, you know, obviously so dark and can weigh heavily on you, but we always do look for that,” explained Hobbs. “Can this story invoke change? Because it might help right some wrongs. Or it might help justice be served in a way at the end of the day. Then you’re doing it for a reason. So it doesn’t always feel as dark and awful. And these things are dark and awful. But if there is a light of hope at the end of it, I think that’s what helps you fall asleep at night.”
How to Create a Sex Scandal debuts March 23 on Max.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
