A group of female true-crime detectives are the subject of upcoming documentary series Sasha Reid and The Midnight Order, which will follow their efforts to hunt down serial killers and find justice for victims.
The group is led by Dr. Sasha Reid, a scholar and professor at the University of Calgary, who holds a PhD in developmental psychology, as well as two master’s degrees in the areas of applied human development psychology, criminology and socio-legal studies.
Over the course of his career, he has also created one of the world’s largest databases on serial killers, which also tracks a wide range of psychological metrics.
In the first episode, Dr Reid explained that her research has taken into account aspects such as how serial killers develop, their backgrounds, the abuse they have suffered and who their victims are, as well as how to mitigate the risks they pose.
Dr. Sasha Reid, who has a PhD in developmental psychology and two master’s degrees, founded The Midnight Order, a group of women who use their expertise to solve violent crimes.
The Midnight Order uses Dr. Reid’s serial killer database, which tabulates a wealth of psychological metrics to form comprehensive profiles.
In addition to this, it has also developed one of the country’s largest databases on “missing and murdered” persons in Canada.
Dr Reid’s interest in crime and murder originated in her teenage years, when she lost a friend, who was ethnically indigenous, who disappeared and was later found dead.
Over time, she came to recognize how indigenous women were disproportionately kidnapped and murdered in her country, apparently being the “primary target” of serial killers.
Currently, Dr. Reid’s “missing and murdered persons” database contains nearly 12,000 entries, many of which are from marginalized populations.
A major breakthrough for Dr. Reid came when she used her database to correctly identify Bruce McArthur as the serial killer behind the murders of eight gay men, mostly of South Asian descent, in Toronto between 2010 and 2017.
To further her research efforts, Dr. Reid launched The Midnight Order, a club comprised exclusively of female experts with specialties including psychology, data analytics, and forensic science.
“In The Midnight Order, women are the heroes, not the victims,” Dr. Reid described in the group’s first episode.
Describing who she brought into The Midnight Order, Dr. Reid said, “I was looking for people who were truly compassionate and victim-centered.”
Many of The Midnight Order’s members come from marginalized backgrounds and witnessed firsthand the abuse and subjugation of women.
Among the other members of the group is Ayah, a psychotherapist born in Cairo, Egypt, and raised in a fundamentalist religion.
Florence, the daughter of Malaysian immigrants, is a data analyst from Toronto with a long-standing interest in psychopaths and mass murderers.
Then there’s Anjali, a forensic scientist-in-training from a “rough” part of Calgary, who is in her second year of medical school and loves “studying the dark corners of the human mind.”
“I’ve always been very curious about why some people end up going down a really tragic path,” Anjali described, adding that serial killers are on the more “intense” end of the spectrum.
Marina, an aspiring detective, fled with her mother from her abusive father in Kazakhstan. She now lives a “double life” – working in a grocery store during the day and pursuing her “true passion” – forensic psychology – in her spare time, as well as volunteering for the police.
Hasti is a victims’ advocate originally from Iran, where there are “so many closed doors for women,” she said, circumstances that “inspired” her mother to take her and her daughter out of the country.
“A big part of my own advocacy work is listening to people who haven’t been heard before,” Hasti said of what motivates her.
Last but not least, Hana is a database expert specializing in criminal profiling and crime scene analysis, whose thesis focuses on “body disposal in sexual homicide cases.” She is also the project coordinator for Dr. Reid’s serial killer database.
In the first two episodes, The Midnight Order gets to work studying a box of evidence gathered by a woman who is convinced her ex-husband is behind a series of murders of women in the 1980s.
Later episodes follow the gang as they revisit the murders of Robert Pickton, a pig farmer who lived and worked on a sprawling farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.
The farm was also likely the site of the murder of around 50 women, many of them indigenous, addicts and sex workers.
Pickton was eventually convicted of six murders in 2007 and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years. However, he was killed by another inmate in May 2024.
Before Pickton’s death, The Midnight Order was alarmed to hear that police were preparing to destroy around 14,000 pieces of evidence in the cases, which would make it impossible to get justice for his still-unidentified victims.
From there, they began taking stock of the murders likely linked to Pickton, spoke to victims’ families and beyond, and banded together to ensure that outstanding unsolved cases “still have a chance of being solved.”