Who Killed Tessie Durst & Cleo Johnson In Apple TV+’s Lady In The Lake?

Spoilers are ahead for Laura Lippman’s novel, Lady in the Lake, as well as Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake episodes 1 and 2 ONLY.

Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake already has viewers spinning theories about who killed Tessie Durst and Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram). Based on Laura Lippman’s 2019 novel of the same name, Lady in the Lake is set in Baltimore in 1966and follows homemaker-turned-investigative-journalist Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman in her first leading TV role) as she tries to unravel the truth behind the killings: Tessie, an 11-year-old Jewish girl, and Cleo, a Black woman whose disappearance goes largely unnoticed by white Baltimore. Maddie, meanwhile, thinks the stories of Tessie and Cleo are hers to tell.

A seven-episode miniseries, Lady in the Lake debuted with a two-episode premiere, setting up its many threads, characters, themes, and mysteries. Much like Lippman’s novel, which opens with narration from Cleo, the series doesn’t shy away from revealing apparent clues upfront, though they may be glaring red herrings. For Maddie, piecing together Tessie and Cleo’s stories means looking for moments of serendipity. Unhappy with her marriage and eager to begin a career in journalism, Maddie sees everything as a clue or piece of a story, which makes it hard to tell where Lady in the Lake is headed.

Lady In The Lake’s Opening Scene Explained: Cleo’s Death & Who Put Her In The Lake

Reggie Might Be The One To Dump Cleo’s Body But The Scene Obscures His Face

For a crime drama that wants viewers to be consumed by its many mysteries, Lady in the Lake features a rather disarming opening scene. While the imagery — a woman’s dead body — isn’t anything new for the genre, the way Cleo Johnson narrates, seemingly from beyond her watery grave, puts the story back in her hands. “Until the lion tells its story, the hunter will always be the hero,” Cleo tells Maddie, who flips through crime-scene photographs and examines a newspaper clipping about Cleo’s funeral service. The titular lady in the lake isn’t letting go of her story.

Although the opening scene is straight-forward, the nighttime darkness obscures the details, including Lady and the Lake‘s characters‘ faces. If viewers pause and lighten the scenes, the man dumping Cleo’s body into the lake bears a striking resemblance to another character: Reggie Robinson (Josiah Cross), the ruthless businessman Shell Gordon’s (Wood Harris) right-hand man. A boxer in his spare time, Reggie boasts a black eye in the days leading up to the killings, but the man dumping Cleo’s body seems uninjured. Even if the man in the opening scene is Reggie, he may not have been the one to kill Cleo.

What Happened To Tessie Durst In Lady In The Lake: Disappearance & Death Explained

Maddie Finds Tessie’s Body At The End Of Episode 1

After setting up Cleo’s death, which happens toward the end of the series, chronologically speaking, Lady in the Lake returns to the beginning. Tessie Durst attends Baltimore’s Thanksgiving Day parade with her family, but wanders off from her distracted parents to investigate a tropical fish shop. As evidenced by the book in her hands, Tessie loves seahorses and wants to know if the shop sells them. Inside, she meets Reggie, a fellow fish lover, and the two admire some rare finds in a fish tank. Notably, Reggie boasts a black eye. Soon enough, the two are interrupted by the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper, Stephen Zawadzkie (Dylan Arnold), is an awkward young man who’s incredibly dismissive of Reggie. The next time Lady in the Lake mentions Tessie, she’s missing, and Maddie is consumed with the idea of finding the young girl. Remembering a spot she used to go to in high school, Maddie treks through the woods at night, eventually stumbling on Tessie’s body — frozen and twisted around branches — in the lake. Although Tessie’s body is recovered by the beginning of Lady in the Lake episode 2, the series doesn’t yet confirm what, exactly, led to Tessie’s death.

Soon enough, Stephen Zawadzkie is arrested in relation to the murder of Tessie Durst after he holds his own mother hostage. Reggie learns that Stephen’s mother remembers “a Black man with a black eye” being in the fish store just before Tessie’s disappearance. Frantically, he gets rid of any marine life that might tie him to the scene of the crime and lies low, sending Cleo on a dangerous drop (and assassination attempt) in his stead. With just two episodes under its belt, it seems like Lady in the Lake is churning out plenty of Reggie-related red herrings.

Related

The True Stories That Inspired Apple TV+’s Lady In The Lake

Apple’s new chilling murder mystery series Lady in the Lake was inspired by two tragic disappearances and murders that took place in 1969 Baltimore.

Who Killed Tessie Durst & Cleo Johnson In The Lady In The Lake Book

The Apple TV+ Series May Not Be A Fully Faithful Adaptation Of Lippman’s Novel

The source material may point to who killed Cleo Johnson and Tessie Durst in the Apple TV+ series, but it’s also possible the adaptation will chart new territory. After all, Lady in the Lake boasts differences from the book from the start, including new surnames for many main characters. In Lippman’s novel, Stephen Corwin, the owner of the tropical fish store, is given a life sentence for his involvement in Tessie’s murder, while his mother, Angela Corwin, is convicted of murder in the first degree. After two episodes, Stephen Zawadzkie and his mother are prime suspects in the show too.

In the novel, the murder of Cleo Johnson (Cleo Sherwood in the book) is much less clear-cut. Shell Gordon orders Thomas Ludlow to kill Cleo because of her relationship with senate hopeful Ezekiel “EZ” Taylor. However, when Cleo’s roommate, Latetia Tompkins, overdoses a few days before Christmas, Cleo and Tommy decide to dress Latetia in Cleo’s clothes and dump her body “someplace where she wouldn’t be found for a while.” Since Latetia allegedly eloped and left Baltimore, Cleo ends up assuming her roommate’s identity. In a sense, Cleo Sherwood dies, but she isn’t the titular Lady in the Lake.

New episodes of Apple TV+’s Lady in the Lake premiere on Thursdays through August 23, 2024.

Lady in the Lake

BASED ON THE NOVEL BY LAURA LIPPMAN, LADY OF THE LAKE IS A FICTIONAL DRAMA MINISERIES BASED AROUND THE REAL DISAPPEARANCES OF A YOUNG GIRL AND A WOMAN, COMING TO APPLE TV+. THE STORY CENTERS AROUND MADELINE SCHWARTZ, A DISSATISFIED 1960S HOUSEWIFE OF TWENTY YEARS WHO ENDS HER MARRIAGE IN SEARCH OF A LIFE WITH MEANING. MADELINE, BETTER KNOWN AS MADDIE, SEEKS TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN THE WORLD – TO DO SO, SHE HEADS DOWN THE PATH OF AN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST AFTER SOMEHOW HELPING THE BALTIMORE POLICE FIND THE BODY OF A YOUNG GIRL IN THE LAKE, CLEO SHERWOOD. LADY IN THE LAKE HAS NOIR ELEMENTS AND EXPLORES STATUS AND RACE IN A MURDER MYSTERY IN A DIFFERENT PERIOD. THE SERIES HAS BEEN DELAYED DUE TO AN INCIDENT IN LATE 2022 BUT IS STILL SET TO COME TO APPLE TV+ IN THE FUTURE.
 

Release Date

July 19, 2024

Seasons

1

Writers

Laura Lippman

Production Company

Crazyrose, Bad Wolf America, Zusa, MountainA, Endeavor Content

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