Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 14, 1993 TAG: 9305140142
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TOM JICHA KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
"Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story," airing on NBC, exonerates Bembenek of a murder for which a jury found her guilty and, given a second chance, to which she pleaded no contest.
However, the fact-based miniseries does present convincing arguments on behalf of her innocence in an entertaining manner.
Bembenek, Tatum O'Neal's comeback role, is a former Milwaukee policewoman who served almost a decade in prison for the murder of the former wife of her then-husband.
The case against Bembenek is circumstantial and dubious. Evidence is tampered with, prosecution witnesses lie, and an eyewitness who says Bembenek didn't do it is ignored.
The Milwaukee police, it is implied, had it in for Bembenek because she had filed a sex discrimination suit against the department after being fired for questionable reasons and she followed that with a series of charges of misconduct against former co-workers.
If the story sounds familiar, you might have seen it dramatized in an ABC movie last fall starring Lindsay Frost. That film was based on published accounts and court records. "Woman on the Run," which is more stylishly done, is Bembenek's personal version of events, which contributes to the slant it takes.
Bembenek's experience contradicts the bromide that crime doesn't pay. Forget that she is profiting from the movie and the book on which it is based. If she hadn't committed an additional crime, breaking out of prison, she probably still would be sitting out a life sentence and there would have been no book or movie.
Eight years into her incarceration, frustrated at the repeated lack of success of her appeals, she goes over the wall and flees to Canada with a boyfriend she met in jail.
Her bold escape fires public imagination and spurs newspaper stories questioning the inconsistencies in the state's case against her.
A job she held briefly as a Playboy Club waitress and the fact that she once was a calendar girl (with her clothes on, a fact conveniently omitted in some accounts), contributes to the public's fascination.
"Run, Bambi, Run!" T-shirts become a hot item as she becomes a folk hero of sorts.
The story takes one more bizarre made-for-TV twist four months into her flight. Thanks to a tip from someone who saw her profiled on "America's Most Wanted," she is tracked down by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
However, Canadian authorities are more open to her side of the story than the Wisconsin justice system. Before they will extradite her, they demand that she be given a fair hearing. This spurs a new investigation, which leads to an offer to plea-bargain her case down to a lesser charge with a sentence of time served.
"It was a compromise," Bembenek said. "It certainly was not the perfect solution. Of course I would have preferred a new trial with an acquittal."
Michael Armitrage, an investigator who worked on Bembenek's behalf, said it would have been foolhardy to wait to have her name cleared when immediate freedom beckoned. "If we had been granted a motion for a new trial, she was looking at another three years in prison."
O'Neal does a surprisingly efficient job, given her long hiatus. At times the rust from her layoff shows, but she manages to elicit sympathy for her character, which is the intent of the piece.
Moreover, Bembenek is an extremely demanding role for O'Neal, whose marriage to tennis player John McEnroe collapsed when she made this return to acting.
Bruce Greenwood, as Bembenek's husband, Fred Schultz; Alex McArthur, who looks like a young Edward James Olmos as Nick Gugliatto, the boyfriend who goes on the lam with her; Peggy McCay as Bembenek's mother, Virginia, and Colin Fox as her father, Joe, have substantial roles. However, they disappear for extended periods.
O'Neal is in virtually every scene. Her performance guarantees that she will be in as many more scenes as she chooses to handle.
"Woman on the Run: The Lawrencia Bembenek Story" airs 9 p.m. Sunday and Monday on WSLS (Channel 10).
by CNB