Meet the real-life mother behind the heartbreaking ‘Three Billboards’ story

FRANCES McDormand won an Oscar for her performance in ‘Three Billboards’. If you thought the film was devastating, the real life story will floor you.

‘THREE Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ is this year’s film everyone can’t stop talking about.

The critically acclaimed movie was up for a whopping seven Oscars at this year’s awards, with Frances McDormand taking home the coveted Best Actress gong, and Sam Rockwell landing Best Supporting Actor for his turn in the film.

Frances McDormand stars in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. Photo: Merrick Morton/Fox Searchlight

The Martin McDonagh-directed film follows a grief-stricken mother whose daughter’s tragic murder has gone unsolved in a small US town with an ambivalent police force.

Months pass without a culprit, which prompts Mildred Hayes (McDormand) to make a bold move; she rents three abandoned billboards near her home and paints on them: “Raped while dying still no arrests? How come, Chief Willoughby?”

The billboards spark a firestorm of controversy within the town, with Hayes resolutely refusing to take them down.

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Much has been written in recent months about Three Billboards — as the film continues to be an awards-season steamroller — questioning whether or not the film is based on a heartbreaking true story.

In an interview with Variety, McDonagh revealed that he saw something similar to the billboards “about 17 years ago when I was travelling through the southern states”.

Inspired by the story behind the billboards, he says he wrote the script in just five weeks. “Once I decided it was a woman and a mother, the part of Mildred wrote itself,” McDonagh revealed.

But now, in a new interview with the BBC, a woman named Marianne Asher-Chapman claims to be the real life version of McDormand’s character in the Oscar-nominated film.

Her daughter Angela, which is also the name of Hayes’ daughter in the film, was murdered in 2003. Her body has never been found.

Angie’s husband eventually admitted murdering his wife and served just four years in prison.

Marianne Asher-Chapman, whose daughter Angela went missing in 2003. Photo: Courtesy of the BBC

Speaking to Ms Asher-Chapman at her home, the BBC spends time with the mother as she continues to this day to search for her daughter’s remains.

“I like to keep a shovel in my trunk and I have for all these years. In case, I need to dig for Angie,” she tells the publication.

“I really anticipate the spring so much because in the dead of winter, you know, in the ground so frozen, you can’t even get the shovel in. I would just pull over at the side of the road and look for her I just can’t give up and if it means taking the shovel and digging to China I’m going to look for Angie.”

Ms Asher-Chapman says her 28-year-old daughter went missing on November 1, 2003. They realised something was terribly wrong when she didn’t turn up for niece’s fifth birthday party at the house.

“I kept calling and wondering, ‘Where are you? Where are you?’ And her husband came two hours later and said she was gone and said she had run away with another man.

“But we knew that she had not run away with another man.”

Ms Asher-Chapman recalls filing a missing person’s report in the local sheriff’s office the next morning. “I was so scared, I knew instantly something was real wrong,” she said.

Speaking about the billboard she chose to erect, Ms Asher-Chapman admitted they “didn’t help me find Angie in the end but anything that I have done is productive, you have to just keep trying and trying and never give up”.

“It was just a long time, I just kept calling the police department, the sheriff’s department, asking, ‘have you heard anything, is there anything?’

“I really couldn’t get any help, it was almost as if she was dismissed from the get-go. She never even stood a chance but I’ve had to learn over the years how to become more forceful because that’s what you have to do.”

Five years after Angie went missing, her husband confessed to killing her.

One of the real-life billboards for missing girl Angela. Photo: Courtesy of the BBC

He claims the pair had gotten into a fight and Angie fell off the deck and hit her head on a rock and died. He claims he wrapped his wife in a tarp, put her in the car and buried her on an island on a lake.

“He didn’t put her on an island, even the police said that’s impossible,” Ms Asher-Chapman told the BBC.

Angie’s husband served exactly four years in prison.

“He’s been out for year now and Angie is still missing. And he can never be charged again. I even went to visit him in prison and begged him, literally begged him to tell me where I can go collect her remains. He won’t tell me,” Angie’s mother said.

“I have to find her. As her mother, I will never give up.”

The Morgan County Sheriff’s department did not respond to the BBC’s request for information regarding the case.

This article originally appeared on Whimn and has been republished here with permission.