Marie Adler Biography

Marie Adler is the woman whose true-life story has been featured in the Netflix TV series ‘Unbelievable’. She was raped in 2008 but the police didn’t believe her story and claimed they were some inconsistencies. She was later forced to claim that she made up the story and was charged with false reporting and fined  $500. She later successfully sued the city and was paid $150,000 as compensation.

Marie Adler Real Name

Marie’s real name is not in the public domain, the court documents identified her with the initials D.M.

What Happened to Marie Adler – Marie Adler Real Life

In 2008 at the age of 18, Marie was raped and reported to the assault to Lynnwood police on August 11, 2008, where she said that she awoke to find a stranger in her apartment. She alleged that the man threatened her with a butcher knife, gagged her with her underwear, bound her hands with a shoelace from her tennis shoe and raped her.

At the time of the incident, Marie was living in a small House-sponsored apartment after having spent her youth moving among as many as 20 foster homes. She had spoken to a friend on the phone for several hours early Aug. 11, 2008, finally going to bed around 5:30 a.m. She said she left the sliding-glass patio door ajar.

The detectives Jerry Rittgarn and Sgt. Jeff Mason didn’t believe her. Their suspicions were based on comments from three people who said that they doubted her story. One was her former foster mother, with whom Marie had been arguing, and the other a friend who had spoken to Marie on the phone that night, before the alleged attack. The third doubter was an anonymous caller.

Three days after the assault she was picked up in a police car and was taken to the station where Rittgarn told her there were inconsistencies in her story. She claims the officers interrogated her and “put words in her mouth.”

She returned to the police station with Cocoon House representatives and asked to withdraw the denial and insisted that she had been attacked.

She was later charged with false reporting and fined $500 when she later tried to insist the rape did happen.

Two and a half years later the rapist identified as Marc O’Leary was arrested in Colorado. The Colorado detectives found Marie’s photographs and her ID card among O’Leary’s possession. This forced the Lynnwood police reopened their investigation.

According to prosecutors in King and Snohomish counties, O’Leary had been stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord from November 2006 through September 2009, when he moved to Colorado. He admitted to assaulting and raping Marie and three other women. He was sentenced to 327 years in prison.

Marie Adler Lawsuit

Marie later sued the city of Lynnwood. In her lawsuit, she claimed Lymmwood detectives disregarded evidence of the assault. bullied her into saying it didn’t happen and then threatened to have her thrown out of her apartment when she insisted it did. Defendants included Rittgarn, Mason and Lynnwood Police Chief Steven J. Jensen.

She also said that she was forced into counseling when Lynnwood police told managers of Cocoon House they didn’t believe she’d been raped. The lawsuit also alleged that she was required to stand up in front of other program participants and say that she had lied about being raped or risk being evicted.

Marie Adler Settlement

According to The Seattle Times, the city of Lynnwood paid Marie $150,000 to settle a lawsuit that she filed against the police after they charged her with filing a false report after they didn’t believe that she had been raped. The paper also notes that she reached a settlement with an at risk-youth program called Cocoon House, which oversaw where she was living at the time of the assault. The settlement is confidential and wasn’t shown in the series. She was threatened with eviction unless she received counseling and told others in the program that she lied about being raped.

Marie Adler Unbelievable

Unbelievable is an eight-episode Netflix original which is an adaptation of the 2015 Pulitzer-winning ProPublica and Marshall Project in-depth story about Marie’s case. Kaitlyn Dever plays Marie, a young Washington woman with a tough life who experiences a horrific ordeal: The first episode depicts Marie’s rape, an attack by a knife-wielding man wearing a mask, in flashbacks.

Because she isn’t believed when she comes forward, that rapist goes on to rape several other women in Washington and Colorado.

That rapist was later caught, once two tough female detectives take the case on with dedication and care. In the show, his name was Christopher McCarthy.

Marie Adler Now / Where Is Marie Adler Now

Marie is now a long-haul truck driver who has a commercial driver’s license. She is married and has two children. She, however, doesn’t want more details including where she lives released to the public.