NETFLIX VIEWERS are spoilt for choice when it comes to true crime documentaries.
However, the chances are they’ve never seen anything like Abducted in Plain Sight before.
First released in May 2017 in the US, the 90-minute documentary arrived on Netflix in the same week as Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened.
But while the behind-the-scenes look at the spectacular unravelling of the infamous Fyre music festival grabbed the headlines, it’s Abducted in Plain Sight that’s got people talking.
A stranger-than-fiction tale that’s dark, disturbing and astonishing in equal measure, Abducted in Plain Sight really does need to be seen to be believed.
It centres on the experiences of a young girl called Jan Broberg and her experience of being abducted – twice – by the same man.
It all starts in the 1970s when the seemingly ordinary Broberg family strike up a friendship with neighbour and father-of-five Robert B. Berchtold.
All is not as it seems though and as time passes Berchtold begins to develop an unhealthy interest in the family's 12-year-old daughter Jan though.
An unhealthy interest that eventually sees him seduce both of her parents, Mary Ann and Bob, in a bid to gain access to Jan.
Things eventually come to a head when Berchtold kidnaps Jan in October 1974.
Escaping to Mexico with the young girl, he then succeeds in brainwashing Jan into believing she is an alien that needs to conceive a baby with him before she turns 16 in order to save Earth.
Five weeks later, Berchtold is arrested and Jan returns to her parents – but the story doesn’t end there.
Still believing herself to be an alien that needs to keep her mission secret in order to ensure her family remain safe, Jan insists to her parents and the authorities that nothing happened.
And while Berchtold is initially arrested, he is soon released after blackmailing Mary Ann and Bob into signing affidavits claiming he had permission to leave the country with Jan.
Threatening to reveal his secret sexual relationships with the two parents, Berchtold eventually succeeds in avoiding a lengthy prison term.
He keeps his distance but remains in touch with Jan, eventually kidnapping her again in 1976.
This time he flees to California where he succeeds in enrolling her in an all-girls Catholic school, posing as her father and visiting her on weekends.
Believing their daughter to have run away from home, Jan’s parents suffer for 100 days before the truth is revealed.
And yet for all of the astonishing revelations detailed above, the documentary chronicles even more shocking details of a case unlike any other seen before or since.
It's a documentary that has sparked some astonishing reactions on social media with one Twitter user branding it the "craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life".
Currently watching Abducted in Plain Sight on Netflix and it just keeps getting stranger and stranger. Every five minutes I’m like pic.twitter.com/5GPUOvRjG6
— katie ☆ (@thatlasskatie) January 18, 2019
This “Abducted in Plain Sight” documentary is MAD. I’m shook. They let this man into their lives, the father and mother both got with the predator and when she disappeared they didn’t report their daughter missing for FIVE DAYS??! Craaazy
— Paf (@pppaigex) January 17, 2019
Currently watching this crime documentary (my fave) called Abducted in Plain Sight and I am SHOOK ... the kidnapper was a family friend who not only had sex with the mother of the child he took but also finessed the husband to give him a hand job 😭
— Alyssa (@TheAlyssaJunek) January 19, 2019
Me literally the ENTIRE time watching Abducted in plain sight pic.twitter.com/EtihHJP9cc
— Sam Polly (@sam_pollly) January 21, 2019
I just watched Abducted In Plain Sight on Netflix and holy shit i almost threw my fuckin TV out the window. That was, by far, THE WILDEST documentary i have ever watched.
— C. Blake (@Casey_Hendrix) January 19, 2019
In the 90 minutes it took to watch @netflix’s Abducted in Plain Sight,” my girlfriend and I together said “WTF” out loud 73 times.
— Nick DiMarco (@NickDiMarco) January 15, 2019
Abducted in Plain Sight on Netflix is probably the craziest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire life.
— Joe Gatto (@JGatt33) January 18, 2019
Abducted in Plain Sight chronicles the entire jaw-dropping saga and features interviews with Jan, her sisters, Mary-Ann, and Bob along with an FBI investigator.
It’s essential viewing and comes highly recommended.
