How ‘The Passion of the Christ’ led to a murderer being caught
Occasionally, a religious movie will be released in Hollywood, reminding studios just how lucrative the market can be. Alongside the 1988 Martin Scorsese movie The Last Temptation of Christ, the most famous of such films is Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, a violent retelling of the final twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth’s life before he was crucified in Jerusalem.
Nominated for two Academy Awards whilst earning over $600million at the box office, the movie was a considerable success but is perhaps better known in cinephile circles for its supernatural on-set incidents. Among many other odd occurrences, lightning struck the set of the movie three times, sending the cast and crew, which included Jim Caviezel and Monica Bellucci, into wild superstitious speculation.
Speaking about the incident, Caviezel recalled how he was “lit up like a Christmas tree” while filming the Sermon on the Mount scene, “I knew it was going to hit me about four seconds before it happened…I thought, ‘I’m going to get hit.’ And when it happened, I saw the extras grab the ground”.
Yet, another strange occurrence happened after the film was released, with the movie prompting a murderer to go to the police to confess his crime.
Such happened after the tragic death of 19-year-old Ashley Nicole Wilson in 2004. Wilson was found dead in her apartment in Texas and thought to have taken her own life after having come off of medication to treat her depression. The reality of the death was that her boyfriend Dan R. Leach, had actually killed her and afterwards staged the scene to make it look like a suicide.
Less than six weeks later, Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was released, and the religious Leach purchased a ticket for the movie. Shortly after coming out of the cinema, he went to the Fort Bend County sheriff’s office and turned himself in for the murder of his former girlfriend.
Speaking about how the movie convinced him to have a change of heart, he told CBN: “I went and saw the movie with a couple friends. It was very intense, and having that visual stimuli really helps to focus; it does move you. After watching that movie, I was very emotional. I thought about the things I had done, and I was upset that I hadn’t repented yet.”
He continued: “Being guilty, I knew I couldn’t repent to God for it and be forgiven spiritually without going to the law and allowing them to take their course of action.”
Take a look at the trailer for Gibson’s religious epic, The Passion of the Christ below.
