Mackenzie Shirilla, convicted of murdering her boyfriend Dominic Russo and her friend Davion Flanagan in a 2022 car crash, has seen her Instagram following surge sharply since the release of the Netflix documentary The Crash. Before the film dropped on May 15, her account had only a few thousand followers. It now sits at 44,200, a gain of well over 40,000 in just over two weeks.
The most significant growth came during the documentary’s opening weekend. In those first four days alone, she gained approximately 25,000 followers. According to InstaStatistics data detailed by The Tab, she is projected to reach 50,000 followers within days and potentially 100,000 within three weeks if the pace holds.
The account is not sitting idle. Her profile is being actively managed by what she describes as a support team, and she has reportedly made specific requests from prison about its upkeep. As covered by Netflix’s Tudum, the documentary features her first-ever on-camera interview, conducted with her lawyer present for the duration.
Her prison calls reveal how closely she’s managing her image
During a recorded phone call with her mother, Shirilla was direct about what she wanted done with her account. She told her mother, “Please don’t forget to change my Instagram bio. Try and get into that one Instagram account and change my name.” Her mother expressed hesitation, saying the changes might look bad, before Shirilla pushed for a specific look, requesting hashtags reading “free Kenzie” and “innocent.”
Her social media history is a central thread in the documentary itself. During the original legal proceedings, prosecutors introduced several of her TikToks, which showed her appearing to go about her life normally in the months between the crash and her arrest. Assistant prosecutor Tim Troup argued those posts demonstrated a “shocking lack of remorse.” Shirilla, in her documentary interview, pushed back, saying, “I feel like anybody’s social media isn’t really them. It’s how they want the world to see them.”
The film, directed by Gareth Johnson and produced by Angharad Scott, reconstructs the incident in Strongsville, Ohio, and includes a candid moment toward the end of the interview. With her lawyer present, Shirilla checks herself mid-response, saying, “I don’t want to force anything and just say too much or sound crazy,” before pivoting back to the camera to state, “I’m big on the no intent. There was no intent whatsoever there. I have excessive amounts of remorse for Dominic, Davion, both of their families.”
Shirilla maintains she has no memory of the moments before the crash, pointing to a 2017 POTS diagnosis, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, as a possible explanation for a medical episode. Amid wider public debate over her claimed blackout defense, a TikTok video recreating the crash route drew widespread attention from viewers who argued the road’s layout made her claims physically implausible. Johnson said the choice to include the lawyer moment in the film was deliberate, wanting viewers to understand the context of the interview.
Shirilla was sentenced on August 21, 2023, to 15 years to life. Her first parole hearing is not scheduled until September 2037. Her mother Natalie continues to gather evidence in hopes of overturning the conviction, and the family has revealed Shirilla’s plans after release, though her first appeal has already been denied.
Published: Jun 4, 2026 09:45 am