Powerful Documentary: Dear Zachary - A Letter to a Son About His Father

Andrew Bagby (1973 - 2001)

By Olivia Pierson

Dear Zachary is one of those raw documentaries that are impossible to forget.

Made in 2008, it begins as a memoir for a baby son to be shown the outstanding character of his deceased father, Dr. Andrew Bagby. 

While Andrew was a resident intern of a medical practice in Pennsylvania, he was the victim of a murder most foul at the hand of Dr. Shirley Turner, an ex-lover thirteen years his senior. 

In order to avoid spoiling the profoundly personal style of this documentary’s story telling, the less said about it before watching, the better.

Andrew’s best friend Kurt Kuenne embarked on the making of this film as a private gift to the exceptionally decent Bagby family, but as events unfolded in the aftermath of Andrew’s death and the woman who killed him, it took on another purpose entirely of its own - to expose a monstrously unjust legal system.