Off The Fence (OTF), the Academy Award-winning independent producer and distributor, has sealed a development deal with Emmy Award-winning US journalists Gloria Gomez and Robin Carter, to co-develop and produce new true-crime series based on the access and contacts amassed by Gomez and Carter during their careers as investigative journalists on the US domestic beat.
Celine Ritchie, head of development at OTF, said: “The experiences and perspectives of those who have been on the frontline of stranger-than-fiction cases exerts a powerful fascination — and it would be difficult to find a stranger or more powerful story than Love & Death Row, or two more reliable or insightful witnesses than Gloria and Robin. One of Off the Fence’s particular strengths is its ability to forge creative partnerships with people who have great stories waiting be told.”
The first project to come out of the new partnership is "Love & Death Row: The Rosalie Bolin Story," a true-crime series based by Gomez and Carter’s investigation into one of the strangest and most complex stories in the history of the US criminal-justice system.
The story starts in 1986, when rapist and serial killer Oscar Ray Bolin was convicted of the murder of three women in Florida. Enter Rosalie Martinez, a paralegal married to a prominent defence attorney, who met Bolin in 1995 when she visited his cell on death row to discuss his case. The meeting left Martinez “breathless” and determined to prove Bolin’s innocence. She left her husband and four daughters, resigned from the public defender’s office and embarked on an intense relationship with Bolin, becoming his wife in 1996 via a speaker-phone ceremony. They remained together until his execution in 2016, since when Martinez has rebuilt her life as a private investigator and death-penalty mitigation specialist.
Gomez, a general-assignment reporter specialising in court cases and the criminal-justice system, has worked with the Tampa Bay FOX 13 News team for the past 20 years. Carter, a photojournalist with three decades of experience at news stations in Virginia, Texas and Florida, joined NBC 5 in 2019. She has worked in all facets of television, including news production, medical reporting, consumer affairs and special projects.
In another US co-development partnership, OTF has joined forces with Makuhari Media on feature documentary "King of Kandahar." The three-part series chronicles the life of Lieutenant Colonel Mohammed Iqbal Selanee, a teenage interpreter for the US forces in Afghanistan who rose to command an elite, CIA-directed paramilitary unit. An unsung hero of modern warfare, Selanee saved the lives of two US journalists and shielded hundreds of Afghans stranded at Kandahar Air Base, jeopardising the lives of own family to ensure the safety of his American comrades.