Baby Doe

Jessica Earnshaw

Jessica Earnshaw

2025 / USA / Documentary / 100min

True crime + DNA + Motherhood

Victoria-born photo-journalist director, Jessica Earnshaw, earned rave reviews and a Tribeca Festival award for her 2021 documentary, Jacinta (currently on Disney+), an empathetic portrait of intergenerational mother-daughter prisoners against a background of addiction and trauma. Her latest, Baby Doe, which premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival, again proves Earnshaw’s talent for achieving deep access with her subjects in this exploration of a harrowing true crime story, set against the background of the psychological phenomenon of pregnancy denial. Gail Ritchey, a devout middle-aged Christian woman living with her family in suburban Ohio, had a baby when she was 22 years old in 1993. In 2019, Ritchie, now a grandmother, was arrested for murder when DNA evidence tied her to an infant’s corpse found in the woods. When confronted with the evidence by the police, Ritchie said she was unaware that she was pregnant until she gave birth, and had no memory of how she disposed of the baby after it was born, though she asserts it was stillborn. Earnshaw developed a close trust with Gayle, her husband Mark, and three grown children, before the trial took place, and this close rapport helped give Earnshaw access to police interrogations, consultations with lawyers and family reactions in a story that proceeds with a series of jaw-dropping twists. Unlike too many non-fiction films that exploit crime stories for vicarious thrills, Earnshaw is open to compassion and questing the usefulness of punitive justice. – LL