Some stories are so preposterous and delightfully astonishing that they have to be exposed to the masses. Such is the true tale of Joyce McKinney, the former beauty queen who hired a pilot to fly her and an accomplice, Keith May, to England to rescue her boyfriend, Kirk Anderson, from the clutches of the Mormon church. After bringing him to a rented cottage in Devon, where the refrigerator was stocked full of his favorite foods, she bound and seduced him. What ensued was three days of sex, food, and fun, to be forever known as “The Case of the Manacled Mormon”.

It sounds like every man’s fantasy – a beautiful pageant princess waiting on you hand and foot, satisfying your every whim and fancy. However, Kirk, after reading about his own abduction in the newspaper, fled from his captors and alleged to the police a much different account of what happened. The all-American, charismatic blonde was arrested for kidnapping and raping the Mormon missionary and thrown in the slammer to await trial. The British tabloids had a field day with the bizarre incident.

The Daily Express printed Joyce’s side of the story while their rival, The Daily Mirror, delved deep into Joyce’s past and uncovered lurid details of her moonlighting as an S&M model and dominatrix for hire, painting her as a manipulative Jezebel that cast a spell over all of the men she met. The accusation did ring true. She often referred to Keith May as her slave and she had another admirer willing to do anything she asked. Even Peter Tory, a reporter for The Daily Express, seems to have fallen for Joyce’s delusion that she was simply a girl so profoundly in love with her boyfriend, she risked life and limb in order to save and deprogram him from a cult of polygamists.

Unfortunately, Kirk Anderson declined to participate in Morris’s documentary and Keith May passed away in 2004, but there is enough material to fill his absence, like Joyce’s decision to travel to Seoul, South Korea to have her beloved rescue pitbull, Booger, cloned.

The interviews with Joyce, Jackson Shaw (the pilot), Troy Williams (a former Mormon missionary), Peter Tory, Kent Gavin (photographer for The Daily Mirror), and Dr. Hong flow smoothly, with barely any interruption by Mr. Morris. The montage of animated newspaper clippings was a visual treat and the background music fit brilliantly, which normally goes unnoticed in a documentary. The star of the show is Joyce with her animated voice and emphasized gestures. She’s a breed of crazy that is sometimes unsettling, sometimes funny, and always entertaining.

The documentary begins in pitch black with the chilling 911 call made by 12 year old Melissa Repass, conscious after being shot five times. As she counts the bodies on the floor for the dispatcher, three of them children, you realize the murders at the Las Cruces Bowl in New Mexico are truly a nightmare. Minutes before the call, two men stole money from the safe and then shot seven people, execution style in their heads; the youngest of the victims, two year old Valerie Teran, who later died at the hospital. Miraculously, two others survived, Stephanie Senac and Ida Holguin. The cold-blooded killers have never been found.

The film includes interviews with detectives, the 911 dispatcher who took Melissa’s call, the survivors, and the dead victims’ families that will have grown men weeping. Midway, there is an attempt at detective work by questioning the owner of the bowling alley, Ronald Senac, who was out of town during the incident. It’s a notable effort but the interviewer often stumbles over the questions – slightly annoying. A completely unnecessary part of the film is a short blurb of the director, Charlie Minn, and crew, which has some people questioning his motives.

At an hour and 43 minutes, the film stretches on an hour too long. A Nightmare in Las Cruces packs its punch in the first half hour. About mid-point, it starts losing steam and you can sense the desperate attempts to keep the filler going with questions aimed at evoking waterworks, at which point you’re hopeful that the provocation ends soon. How long do these poor people need to be tortured? And are the questions being asked bringing anyone any closer to catching the monsters who looked a two year old baby in the eyes and then shot her in the forehead?

If you watch investigative shows like Dateline and 48 Hours, you’ll like this documentary. It’s an emotional roller coaster ride and, ultimately, there is no closure for the audience or the victims and victims’ families. It’s very depressing.