Without judgment, Crimes of Passion will unravel the events that take love to its darkest place. Not that we might ever be able to explain, only that we might find a way to understand how someone, who seemingly functions in other areas of their lives, might lose their balance enough to commit the unthinkable in a passionate rage.

These crimes are not pre-meditated. In all stories, the perpetrator has no previous convictions, and has shown no violent tendencies. Driven by love or in most cases, the potential loss of love, these people lose themselves for a deadly moment of time to all logic or sense of right and wrong. For some it’s only a moment, for others a slow walk into the halls of what many a defence attorney would define as insanity. Less a study of the criminal or pathologic mind, the series is about people like you and me who venture away from themselves.

We can all recall moments in our lives when driven by an intensely dark and passionate moment, we might have been capable of anything. We like to think it could never happen. We wrap ourselves safely in the knowledge that our better selves, our logical mind, will always win out. That no matter what we might be thinking, in any given moment, our choice to act or not act is always within our grasp.

On 21 January 1995, RCMP in Cochrane, Alberta, responded to a call at 143 Country Club Lane, in the rural upscale district of Bearspaw. They found Earl Joudrie on the floor of the garage, bleeding from six bullets fired at him from a small-calibre handgun - a Beretta. Joudrie, then chair at Gulf Canada Resources and the Canadian Tire Corporation, was taken to hospital where he eventually recovered.

Dorothy, Joudrie's wife of 30 years, was charged with attempted murder. In the sensational trial that followed, the elegant and exclusive community of oil executives and high flyers was opened for public inspection. The defence successfully argued Dorothy Joudrie was in a ‘dissociative state’ known as the ‘sleepwalker argument’, and a jury found her not responsible. She had known her husband from the age of 15 and enjoyed many years together in the upper echelons of Calgary's community. Theirs was a tumultuous relationship and after 3 children and a temporary separation, during which time Dorothy nursed her husband through a bout with cancer, he announced to her that he was leaving to be with another woman, a younger cousin of hers who had babysat for them... it was at this point that Dorothy reached for the gun.