Mackenzie Shirilla killed two people in 2023 when she deliberately drove her car into a brick wall. Now locked up at the Ohio Reformatory for Women and serving two concurrent sentences of fifteen years to life, the 20-year-old has found a new fixation: celebrity status. Newly released jailhouse phone recordings capture Shirilla and her mother, Natalie Shirilla, giggling over worldwide media coverage of the case, floating the idea that Kim Kardashian might take up her cause, and scheming about Instagram branding, all while two families grieve sons who never came home.
The recordings, reported by the New York Post, reveal a mother-daughter pair who sound less like people confronting the gravity of a double homicide and more like aspiring reality-show contestants tracking their Q rating.
In one exchange, Shirilla can barely contain her excitement at the reach of the coverage. "So wait, it's all over the world now, the 'Today' show, like, national news?" she asks. Her mother one-ups her: "OK, wait, I've gotta tell you one more thing, it was published in England."
Shirilla's response: "It's world news?"
Natalie Shirilla replies with a single word, "Yes!", and follows it with what can only be described as encouragement: "Uh huh. Craziness, baby girl."
The conversation then turns to Hollywood ambitions. Shirilla floats the possibility that Kardashian, who has publicly championed certain criminal-justice causes, might reach out on her behalf. "Maybe Kim Kardashian will reach out herself," Shirilla says. Her mother matches the enthusiasm: "That's what I'm saying, I'm hoping. We're getting there. I was gonna do this anyways, so this is great."
A source close to Kardashian reportedly told TMZ that the Shirilla case "is not exactly the type she would get behind." The families of the dead might take cold comfort in that.
Shirilla's celebrity daydreams did not stop with Kardashian. In another recorded exchange, she referenced a man who parlayed a viral mugshot into a modeling and acting career. "Remember that one guy who got arrested for murder and he became like a model because he was just like... everyone was like, loving his mugshot?" Shirilla said. "He's an actor and s, t now. I watched a movie with him in it."
Her mother's reply: "H***, yeah, that was hot. I remember that guy."
Natalie Shirilla did offer one brief flash of caution. "Kenzie, that may look bad right now," she told her daughter, a remark that landed somewhere between maternal concern and public-relations advice. It did not slow the conversation down.
Shirilla also instructed her mother to update her Instagram bio. "Please don't forget to change my Instagram bio. Try and get into that one Instagram account and change my name," she said. The US Sun reported the requested new bio included the hashtag "#freekenzie." The notion that a convicted killer serving time for intentionally taking two lives would brand herself as a wrongly imprisoned cause célèbre tells you everything about the moral compass at work.
The recordings are not the only window into Shirilla's mindset behind bars. Former inmates who served time alongside her at the Ohio Reformatory for Women painted a picture consistent with the phone calls. Shyann Topping, who said she briefly dated Shirilla for a couple of weeks inside the facility, described a woman consumed by her own notoriety.
"She said she was just gonna live it [up] if she gets out. Like, she's gonna go back to concerts. She's gonna travel. She's gonna be an influencer and write a book when she gets out about everything that happened."
Topping added bluntly: "She was just trying to grab a piece of fame."
A second former inmate, not named in reporting, offered similar observations. Neither described anything resembling remorse. The picture that emerges is of a young woman who views two deaths, the deaths she caused, primarily as content.
High-profile criminal cases have a way of generating bizarre sideshows. The recent reversal of Alex Murdaugh's murder conviction in South Carolina showed how public fascination with violent crime can sustain itself for years. But fascination from the outside is one thing. Fascination from the convicted killer herself, directed at her own brand, is something else entirely.
The celebrity chatter is grotesque precisely because of what Shirilla was convicted of doing. In 2023, she intentionally plowed her car into a brick wall, killing her ex-boyfriend Dominic Russo and her friend Davion Flanagan. Both were passengers. Neither survived. A court found the act deliberate.
Shirilla was convicted of double murder and sentenced to two concurrent terms of fifteen years to life. She is now appealing her conviction for the second time. The specific charges and the grounds for her latest appeal were not detailed in available reporting.
Netflix has since produced a documentary about the case titled "The Crash." The release date was not specified. That a streaming giant turned the deaths of two young men into programming is its own commentary on the incentive structure Shirilla is now trying to exploit. She sees the attention economy. She wants in.
The willingness of media platforms to turn violent crime into entertainment is not new, but the speed at which a convicted killer can try to monetize her own infamy from a prison phone is a distinctly modern problem. When disruptions and spectacles overtake serious news coverage, the line between accountability journalism and fame manufacturing gets dangerously thin.
Natalie Shirilla's conduct in these recordings deserves its own scrutiny. She is not a passive listener. She feeds her daughter's fantasies, tracks international press coverage, and speaks of a plan she was "gonna do anyways." What that plan entails is not spelled out. But the tone is unmistakable: she views the media storm as an opportunity, not a consequence.
Natalie Shirilla has reportedly faced public outrage and backlash. Whether she has responded to that criticism or declined comment is not clear from available reporting.
The contrast between the Shirilla family's giddiness and the silence of the victims' families could not be sharper. Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan do not get jailhouse phone calls. They do not get Instagram bios. They do not get Netflix documentaries. They are dead because a woman now plotting her influencer career decided to drive a car into a wall.
In an era when criminal threats and violent acts generate headlines that can spiral into their own media ecosystems, the Shirilla recordings are a case study in what happens when accountability takes a back seat to attention. The system convicted her. The system sentenced her. But the system also records her phone calls, and those calls show a woman who believes the story is about her, not about the people she killed.
Several details remain unresolved. How the jailhouse recordings were obtained and released to media has not been explained. Whether Shirilla knew the calls were being recorded, standard practice in most correctional facilities, is not addressed. The status of her second appeal is unclear. And the identity of the second former inmate who described Shirilla's behavior has not been made public.
What is clear is the gap between what Shirilla did and how she talks about it. She drove a car into a wall and killed two people. She is serving time for it. And from behind bars, she is workshopping her brand. Her mother is helping.
Public figures who court celebrity while trading on controversy and provocation are common enough. But most of them haven't been convicted of killing anyone. Shirilla has. The families of Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan deserve better than to watch their sons' killer audition for fame from a prison phone.
Two young men are in the ground. Their killer is on the line, asking her mom to update her Instagram. That tells you everything about where accountability stands when the culture rewards notoriety over conscience.
