How Did Mackenzie Shirilla Get 36 Prison Violations and Still Think She Doesn’t Belong There?

**Tony Brueski** (0:00)
This is Hidden Killers With Tony Brueski. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:07)
There's a recorded phone call from inside the Cuyahoga County Jail. Recorded, monitored, kind of call every inmate knows is being listened to. Almost everybody. Where Mackenzie Shirilla tells her mother she does not need to be rehabilitated. She has been convicted of killing two people. Dominic Russo, 20 years old, Davian Flanagan, 19 Both pronounced dead at the scene after Mackenzie drove her Toyota Camry into a brick building at 100 miles an hour, foot to the floor. Without ever touching a break, a judge looked at the evidence and called her actions controlled, methodical, deliberate, intentional and purposeful. A judge said she had a mission. And she executed it with precision. The mission was death. And look, whether or not that's the mission or not, on jailhouse phone calls days after the conversation, Mackenzie Shirilla tells her mother that rehabilitation is just not for her.
And mom, rather than like, look, you know, maybe you don't feel that way, but you gotta go along with this so you can get out and you can be free someday. You know, giving advice that would actually be helpful, not just reaffirming to herself that she's a good mother, did everything right and her daughter is a little angel and that she's being persecuted. You know, rather than tamper that down for half a second for the benefit of her daughter playing the long game, not immediate gratification game, which seems to be the only game these fucking idiots know how to play, she doesn't say anything. She's like, hey, honey, just go along with it. Just go along with the program. Maybe maybe you'll get something out of it. Just just do it. Just take a breath. No, no, no. Mom agrees. Mom agreed. You don't need that. I'm paraphrasing Natalie Shirilla tells her daughter that prison programs are meant for people that have been convicted of crimes like actual criminals, not Mackenzie, because Mackenzie can't possibly be an actual criminal. She only killed two people, you fucking nimrods.
Mackenzie is different. Mackenzie had a car accident.
That's the phrase that Natalie uses. This is the framework the Shirilla family has built around this conviction, and it has not moved one inch since the day the verdict came down. And that exchange, a convicted killer saying she does not need to change, and her mother confirming it on a line she knows is being recorded, tells you everything you need to know about why Mackenzie Shirilla is the way she is, why she will remain the way she is, and why absolutely nothing she has done since entering the Ohio Reformatory for Women should surprise a single person paying attention. Welcome to the program. Give me your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube. The links are in the description. Quick context for anyone just coming into this. July 31st, 2022, Strongville, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. Mackenzie Shirilla, 17 at the time, is behind the wheel of a 2018 Toyota Camry in the early morning hours. Dominic Russo is in the passenger seat. That's her boyfriend. Davion Flanagan, a friend, in the back. Surveillance footage shows the car accelerating down the dead end road. In a corporate park on a road, Mackenzie did not routinely use but had visited days earlier and slamming into a brick wall of a building at roughly 100 miles per hour. The vehicle's event data recorder confirmed the accelerator was pressed full capacity. In the moments before the impact, the brake never applied. No mechanical failure was found. Russo and Flanagan were pronounced dead at the scene. Mackenzie miraculously survived.
That sounds familiar. Sounds like a Netflix doc. It is. It's called The Crash. In case you'd like to fully get yourself up to speed on it. That's why everybody's talking about this right now. She was arrested in November of 22 and convicted in a bench trial in August of 2023 and all 12 charges, including four counts of murder, Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, no relation to the victim, sentenced her to two concurrent terms of 15 years to life. She is currently incarcerated at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Ohio. She will not be eligible for parole until October of 2037 If that sounds like a long ways away, it's not. It's about 10 years. I know. For those of us of a certain age growing up, like 2037, like that's way in the future. It's not. The Netflix documentary, The Crash, released in May of 2026, put Mackenzie back in the national conversation. She sat for her first on camera interview from prison. She maintained her innocence. She said she does not remember the crash. She blamed a blood pressure condition called POTS. But what has come out since that documentary, the prison phone calls, the conduct reports, the public statements from her parents, has done more to reveal who Mackenzie Shirilla actually is than any documentary ever could. It's like so many crimes. So much damage is done after the fact.