‘Burden of Proof’ Review: The Painful Search for Peace and Closure
HBO’s four-part mini-documentary series, Burden of Proof, asks many questions. It follows the three-decades-old investigation of 15-year-old Jennifer Pandos, who went missing in 1987. Her younger brother, Stephen Pandos, spent years trying to solve the case, meeting with experts and listening to their theories. He is convinced that his parents might have been involved in his sister’s disappearance or, even worse, her murder. Every theory presented in the mini-series is plausible. But as Stephen and Cynthia Hill, the documentary filmmaker, interview the parents and Jennifer’s close friends and investigate the case for over seven years, the family’s relationship begins to take a toll on them, testing their trust and patience.
Burden of Proof opens with a soundbite of Jennifer’s close friends and family, whose descriptions of her are very different. They clearly have no idea what kind of a person she was. One person describes her driving a scooter in the neighbourhood, while the next person doesn’t recollect her riding it. Somebody else shares that she was an outgoing person interested in makeup and music, while another denies that she wasn’t a “girly girl” and “not one to sit and play with dolls.” Jennifer preferred to be outside in nature, exploring sand, tadpoles and rocks. These stories about who Jennifer was contradicted each other. She kept an intimate journal where she wrote down her personal thoughts. Some letters were passed around with her best friends in high school.
The night before she disappeared from her parent’s house, she argued with her father, Ronald. The following morning, when her mother, Margie, opened the door to her daughter’s room, a suspicious handwritten note was left on her bed as the only clue. This evidence would lead the detectives and Stephen through years of confusing threads to disentangle the truth of Jennifer’s disappearance. Was she murdered? Did she run away from home? Stephen begins to question everything he was led to believe, especially his parents, who might have had a hand in everything that transpired all those years ago.
Hill spends the last seven years documenting Stephen’s own investigation, which implicates his parents at the crime scene. He talks to investigators, relatives, and Jennifer’s friends about how Margie and Ronald behaved during the 72 hours their daughter went missing. Margie and Ronald were investigated thoroughly. She failed the polygraph and the handwriting analysis, which claims that somebody was forced to write it. Stephan believes that his father, a former Vietnam war veteran with a short temper and a history of physically and verbally abusing his family, might have injured Jennifer during an argument, hid her body, and forced Margie to write the note. These are only theories. The only evidence left is the suspicious handwritten note.
As the years pass, new evidence is found. A few suspects are questioned again, and some of the theories are debunked; Stephen begins to question whether he falsely accused his parents. Because of his own investigations, he believed that Margie and Robbie were implicated in Jennifer’s disappearance. Through interviews with his partners and relatives and recorded phone calls between Hill, Stephen explores the possibility of reconciling with his mother. It shows the heartbreaking toll it took on the families, who have been estranged since the investigation.
Hill connects these interviews with Stephen’s frustrations to show how emotionally exhausting this has been for him and everybody else. But what’s interesting is that Hill doesn’t try to manipulate the viewer or over-sensationalise them with new details. She explores them with her subject(s) and gets inside their head to figure out their thoughts to structure a narrative that works well with this four-part mini-series. Also, the documentary series portrays flashbacks played by actors to paint a picture of the last days of Jennifer’s life.
Burden of Proof shows the painful search for peace and closure. Hill provides a sympathetic perspective of the aftermath of Jennifer’s disappearance, which has taken a toll on Stephen’s life. His entire life revolves around finding his long-lost sister. In the last episodes, new revelations and evidence were found that change the investigation’s (many) theories. This evidence might paint the picture regarding Jennifer’s final moments in the world. These emotional moments are captured with compassion, which Hill shows for Stephen. Jennifer’s case is still an ongoing, open investigation. This mini-series will reopen some of the wounds left by the disappearance of his missing sister and the estranged relationship with his parents.
