Doc Zone

Embracing Bob's Killer (1x12)

Air date: Feb 22, 2007

If someone killed a member of your family, would you be able to forgive the killer? Embracing Bob’s Killer is the story of Katy Hutchison, a vivacious 45-year-old widow with two children, and Ryan Aldridge, the young man who killed Katy’s husband, Bob. Bob was trying to break up a drunken house party near his home in Squamish, B.C. on New Years Eve 1997, when Ryan kicked him four times in the head, severing a major artery and killing Bob almost instantly. The documentary follows Katy and Ryan, as she seeks to forgive her husband’s killer and bring him into her life. It’s a complex psychological portrait of two people whose lives came together through tragic circumstance. How can Katy forgive, and why? Can Ryan forgive himself, and should he? What does the range of reactions to their story, from adulation to anger, say about the choices we make when faced with loss and tragedy?