In 2019, Taylor Hazlewood posted a photo of himself with a friend’s ax on Instagram as a tribute to his childhood favorite “Hatchet,” a wilderness survival novel for young adults by Gary Paulsen.
Now that image has surfaced in a completely different genre.
Mr Hazlewood is suing Netflix for using his photo in ‘The Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker’, a true crime documentary about a hitchhiker turned convicted murderer. Mr. Hazlewood, a 27-year-old respiratory therapist from Kentucky, has never been linked to a murder, let alone convicted of a murder, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Dallas district court.
He is seeking $1 million in damages for defamation and misappropriation of his image.
Mr Hazlewood, contacted by telephone on Tuesday, referred requests for comment to his lawyer, Angela Buchanan. In a statement, Ms Buchanan said “there shouldn’t have been any confusion” had Netflix done “its homework”.
“Because of the lack of due diligence,” she said, “Mr. Hazlewood is in constant fear of the impact the film will have on his personal relationships, his job and his reputation in general.”
It was unclear why Mr. Hazlewood, who lives in Kentucky, had filed a lawsuit in Texas against California-based Netflix. Netflix declined to comment.
The Netflix documentary, which premiered in January, follows the story of Caleb Lawrence McGillvary. In February 2013, Mr. McGillvary was hitchhiking in Fresno, California, when a man who had picked him up hit a utility company with his car. The driver then attacked a bystander who tried to intervene. That’s when Mr. McGillvary took an ax out of his bag and repeatedly hit the driver with it.
An interview with a local television station briefly made Mr. McGillvary, who identified himself only as Kai, into a late-night internet and talk show hero: “Kai the Hatchet Wielding Hitchhiker.”
Three months later, Mr. McGillvary was arrested and charged with murdering a man at the man’s home near Elizabeth, NJ. years in prison.
The Netflix documentary features side-by-side footage of Mr. Hazlewood and Mr. McGillvary, with a voiceover saying, “stone cold killer,” and the text of a tweet saying, “You can never trust anyone.”
According to the lawsuit, Mr. Hazlewood first received notice of the image’s use in the film from a friend who texted him a few days after the premiere. And then another friend texted. Then another.
“Did you see this? They’re posting your picture to a killer lol,” one friend wrote. “I’m shocked they didn’t ask for a release. Pray your employer is okay with it.
A friend wrote that she was “watching this murder documentary and they started flashing some pictures of people and I said that’s Hazlewood.”
“Did they steal your picture?” she wrote. “How did you get there?”
Another friend’s mother said she asked if Mr. Hazlewood and Mr. McGillvary had anything to do with each other.
The lawsuit accuses Netflix of inflicting “reputational damage, stress, fear and anxiety” on Mr. Hazlewood and giving him “constant fear of losing future jobs or relationships because people think he is dangerous or untrustworthy”.
The use of Mr. Hazlewood’s photo is the latest example of a true crime show, said Bobbi Miller, who hosts a pop culture podcast called “The Afternoon Special”.
“This is a song and dance we’ve heard before,” she said. “There have been so many cases where I think because of the thrill of being first and the thrill of having the most compelling story, you end up not doing the journalistic due diligence of fact-checking and triangulation.”
Nathaniel Brennan, an adjunct professor of film studies at New York University who teaches true crime, said he was surprised “Netflix would blunder like that” given “how much money they’ve invested” in true crime series. But the speed of production may have diluted the final product, he said.
“I don’t know if Netflix would consider themselves a journalist,” he said. “I don’t know if they adhere to a different standard.”
