Following the release of Netflix’s The Crash, a former inmate claimed that Mackenzie Shirilla is nothing like the remorseful prisoner she’s depicted as in the true crime documentary.
“When she walked out in the documentary, my jaw literally dropped, because her demeanor and the way that she looked was nothing like the person I was in there with,” Mary Katherine Crowder, who served time with Shirilla at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, told The New York Post in an interview published on Wednesday, May 20.
Instead, Crowder, 27, claimed that Shirilla, 21, crowned herself the head of the “Mean Girls” while behind bars. Shirilla has allegedly embraced a full glam look with makeup and cute outfits, which Crowder said her parents and the sugar daddies she met online have helped pay for.
In July 2022, Shirilla intentionally drove a car going 100 mph into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio. The crash killed her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan. She was convicted of 12 felony charges in 2023, which included murder, felonious assault and aggravated vehicular homicide. She is currently serving two concurrent life sentences in prison.
Shirilla appeared in The Crash, which premiered on Netflix on Friday, May 15, from behind bars and expressed her remorse for the crime. She also speculated that her diagnosed medical condition, particularly postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), caused the 2022 crash. However, Crowder told the outlet that Shirilla was much more put together than how she appeared in the documentary and she also said she never saw Shirilla seek medical treatment for her alleged condition while behind bars.
“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, whose sentence overlapped with Shirilla’s for six months, said. “But in the documentary, 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.”
Crowder added, “Never one time did I ever see Mackenzie Shirilla go for a blood pressure check, take any type of medication or go to sick call, ever experience dizziness. In fact, Mackenzie Shirilla would go out in 100-degree heatwaves with baby oil on her and sit in the prison yard and tan … the girl does not have any medical issues.”
Crowder also claimed that the way she spoke was “completely different” in the documentary. “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,” she said.
“This character in the documentary is nothing like who I saw in there at all, and it was shocking,” Crowder added.
After Crowder was booked into the Ohio women’s prison on outstanding misdemeanor warrants from Tennessee in April 2024, she said Shirilla — who had already been there for eight months — seemed to view herself as a celebrity within the prison.
“Everyone knew why she was there, and she walked around like she was this famous person within prison,” Crowder said. “She definitely carried herself like she was the Regina George of prison … she was very much like an ‘It girl.’”
In addition to talking to the outlet, Crowder shared insight into Shirilla’s multiple romantic relationships with other female inmates in a series of TikTok videos.
“Yes, Mackenzie has had multiple girlfriends … she was walking around with hickies on her neck,” she claimed in one clip. “She’s gone to ‘the hole’ [solitary confinement] for being intimate with girls in prison.”
Crowder then questioned Shirilla’s remorse for the killings by adding, “If she was grieving or remorseful, she would not have gone to prison and jumped into prison relationships over the next six months.”
Shirilla’s attorney did not immediately respond to Us Weekly’s request for comment regarding Crowder’s claims.
