Naman Shrestha
Helmed by Manu Boyer, Lifetime’s ‘Girl in the Garage: The Laura Cowan Story’ acquaints us with a woman named Laura Cowan in distress after her husband is arrested for trafficking illegal firearms. Struggling to get by, the mother of two is offered a helping hand and shelter by a family friend named Musa. However, soon after moving into his house, Laura realizes that she and her children are hostages in Musa’s garage and not esteemed guests.
Over the following months, she is subjected to sexual abuse by Musa while her children are physically assaulted brutally. The pattern of abuse comes to a halt when Laura manages to let the outside world know about her situation. Led by Paige Hurd and Stephen Bishop, the crime thriller drama movie taps into several realistic subject matters, including abduction and abuse, generating questions about the story’s origins and its authenticity.
Girl in the Garage is Inspired by the True Experiences of Laura Cowan
As the title suggests, the Lifetime thriller is actually a dramatized version of the harrowing true story of Laura Cowan and the years of abuse she endured while she and her two children were held captive in a California garage in 1998. Keeping the case in mind, Avery O. Williams penned a script that shadows nearly every aspect of Laura’s experiences, including the fact that her husband was taken into custody, and in 1995, she struggled to take care of herself and her two kids due to financial restraints.
‘Girl in the Garage: The Laura Cowan Story’ is also accurate in representing the character of Musa, who is based on Laura’s husband’s actual friend — Mansa Musa Muhummed. In the film, Musa offers Laura to stay in his house until she can get back on her feet. This is where it deviates from reality as the real-life Laura was reportedly manipulated into marrying Muhummed, despite him having another wife and his own 12 children. Over the next few months, he started being excessively controlling and violent towards her. In 1998, things got worse for her and her children as Muhummed locked them inside his garage for several months with the door nailed and chained shut, which is what is portrayed in the movie.
Unfortunately, the portions about Musa physically and sexually abusing Laura and her kids for months on end happened in real life. Not only that, the captor took away their access to running water, heat, and a bathroom, forcing the victims to sleep on thin mattresses and urinating in buckets. As part of the daily torture, they were also provided with a limited amount of food. By then, he had married yet another woman. According to her, Muhummed used to beat, torture, and starve his other two wives and kids as well. During a conversation with News 5 Cleveland, Laura Cowan opened up about it: “The children would steal food because they were hungry, and he would only feed them at certain times. Sometimes he wouldn’t feed them at all and that was a punishment.”
His first wife, Marva Lewis Barfield, tied the knot with Muhummed at the age of 18 and had been married to him for more than 25 years. During the course of their marriage, she claimed that she was subjected to beatings and death threats by her husband. As per Laura’s claims, he had control of her finances and bank accounts too. One of his children, Sharon Boddie, claimed that he forced them to lie to social workers when they came to check up on their welfare. There were also times when Muhummed used to tie her upside down in the dark basement for several hours.
The Real-Life Perpetrator Was Brought to Justice in 2008
The manner in which the agony of Laura and her kids came to an end is also portrayed quite accurately in the Lifetime movie. In November 1999, she accompanied Mansa Musa Muhummed to the post office, where she managed to slip a note to one of the employees. On that note, she had written all the details about her experiences in her captor’s garage. A couple of days later, around 5 or 6 in the morning, the police showed up at his property and arrested him for the crimes. However, he pleaded not guilty to charges of falsely imprisoning his wives and abusing and torturing them alongside their kids. For several years, the trial of Muhummed, also known as Richard Boddie, got delayed for different reasons, postponing the justice deserved by his victims.
Marva testified against him in court and claimed that he used to make her beat some of her own children, threatening that he would kill her if she didn’t comply with his orders. For this, she was incarcerated for 17 months after pleading guilty to one count of child endangerment and testifying against him. Finally, about nine years after his arrest, in June 2008, the perpetrator was convicted of a total of 25 counts, including abusing children, falsely imprisoning his wives, and inflicting torture on them. A few months later, in February 2009, he received seven consecutive life sentences for his crimes.
Paige Hurd, who takes on the challenging task of portraying Laura Cowan, reportedly pulled inspiration from her character’s real-life counterpart, who worked closely with the makers of the film. In an interview with TV Insider, Paige talked about the process that helped her represent such a strong character. She opened up, saying, “I feel when you’re playing someone like Laura, who went through something, there is not much I could ever put together that would equal the amount of torture and pain she endured. It was important for me to have conversations with her to see what exactly went through. It was also about going to work and my hotel and not doing too much and not being too active because I still wanted to feel the sense of being locked in somewhere and not having an out per say.” Thus, it is the combined efforts of the cast and crew members that breathed life into the Lifetime production and carefully packed it with layers of authenticity.
Read More: Where is Laura Cowan’s Family Now?
