Hulu’s new true-crime series “Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story” delves into the strange story surrounding Steven Stayner and his family, in three episodes.
This is the story of how a story gets told, and how the media’s magnifying glass impacts the characters caught in the narrative. Siblings Ashley and Steven Stayner Jr. never knew their famous father Steven, the child victim of a shocking California kidnapping, who tragically died in an accident when they were young. In 1972, seven-year-old Steven went to school – and never came home. His mother Kay struggles to keep the media interested in the case and to hold her family together. Then, after seven years, a miracle: Steven returns. The media can’t get enough of the story and frantically descend on the Stayner home – but this isn’t the Hollywood ending it appears to be.
Now fourteen years old, Steven struggles to adapt, and his family grapples with life under the media microscope. Steven’s older brother Cary has mixed emotions: happy to have his brother back, but jealous of how the media has turned Steven into a hero. When Steven’s kidnapper goes on trial, painful truths are made public, and the media coverage takes a dark turn, sending Steven on a downward spiral. Just as he starts to pull his life together – with marriage, kids, and a hit TV movie about his story – the Stayners endure another tragedy. And soon, they’ll be famous all over again, for a very different reason.
Fast forward to 1999, when four women are brutally murdered in nearby Yosemite. Ashley Stayner was fourteen years old at the time and recalls being riveted by the months-long investigation – until she learns that someone close to home had confessed to the crimes. The story thrusts the Stayners back into the spotlight, forcing us to ask how our appetite for these stories drives a demand the media is eager to satisfy.
Directed by Jessica Dimmock, the docuseries premieres exclusively on Hulu on April 21, 2022.
Episodes:
Chapter 1: Steven’s Story
1972: 7-year-old Steven Stayner vanishes from Merced, California. For years, his family searches for him, only to find they’ve been looking for the wrong boy. 50 years on, Steven’s children unearth clues to their father’s mysterious past.
Chapter 2: Steven’s Story, part 2
A heroic rescue. A dramatic family reunion. But the Stayner ordeal is far from over as painful secrets surface and family rifts form. When a hit TV movie rewrites the Stayner story, reality gets stranger than fiction.
Chapter 3: Cary’s Story
Two decades after Steven went missing near Yosemite, three tourists vanish from the same area. As the FBI investigates, shocking ties to the Stayners emerge. The family is back in the headlines – linked to new, horrifying crimes.
