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.

At 38, Lilian Getkate was a devoted wife, brownie leader and churchgoer. She had two children, a husband and a nice home in the west end of Ottawa. On 8 Dec 1995, Getkate changed her life completely. She loaded her husband's Ruger mini-14 rifle and emptied two shots into the back of his head while he slept.

At the trial, Getkate told the judge that her husband, a 37-year-old RCMP industrial psychologist, was abusive, citing a history of hospital visits and the man's exotic weaponry collection. The prosecution fought hard against her battered wife defence, citing the fact that there was nothing but her word to prove she'd been abused; no friend, neighbour, child or parent had witnessed any abuse. Still, this was 1996 and the battered wife defence was just beginning to get the public's attention. Many people thought this had to be the only reason a woman would ever kill her husband. The jury believed her, sentencing Getkate to two years, less a day of house arrest, and a slew of community service hours.

Getkate moved to Maple Ridge, British Columbia, immediately after the trial to serve her two years in new home she established. Her children live nearby and see her everyday.