The Witmans

The Witmans is a short documentary directed by Joe Lee that follows Ron and Sue Witman fifteen years after their family was shattered. When their oldest son was convicted of murdering his younger brother. Rather than retell the case as a whodunit, the film stays with the emotional reality left behind: two parents navigating an impossible contradiction, mourning one child while fighting for the other.

Structured as a quiet road-story, the film accompanies Ron and Sue on the long drive they make to visit their son in prison, an ordinary routine that becomes a devastating portrait of endurance, love, and unresolved grief. I served as producer, helping bring the film to life with a guiding principle: treat the subjects with dignity, and let restraint do the heavy lifting.

The film received notable attention online, including features from Short of the Week, Film Shortage, The Atlantic, and IndieWire, in part because of the case's connection to broader cultural conversations around true crime.

So much true crime storytelling forgets the people who have to keep living after the "story" ends. The details of a case can become spectacle (argument, conspiracy, entertainment) while the human cost turns into background texture. The Witmans was made as a corrective: a film that refuses the usual hook, and instead holds on the quiet, unbearable long-term aftermath.

Joe grew up with the story close to home, and what stayed with him wasn't the sensationalism. It was the way a mother who effectively lost both children in one day was expected to "move on." This film is an attempt to honor what doesn't resolve: the emotional residue, the weekly rituals, the love that persists even when certainty is impossible. At its heart, it's not a film about crime. It's a film about what grief does to time, and what it means to keep showing up anyway.