Is Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Based On A True Story?

The plot of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is so strange and offbeat that it seems like it must be true. But is it based on a real story?

Martin McDonagh’s darkly comedic crime drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is so timely and realistic that it could easily be based on a true story. The movie follows Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand), a Missouri woman who becomes so frustrated with the local cops’ failure to catch her daughter’s killer that she rents three roadside billboards to call them out. With the relatable fury of a grieving mother and a simple yet effective form of activism, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is so believable and life-like that it seems as though it has to be rooted in reality with elements of docudrama.

When it was released in 2017, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was widely praised by critics. At the 90th Academy Awards, the movie received seven nominations, including Best Picture, Best Original Screenplay for McDonagh, and Best Original Score for Carter Burwell. McDormand won Best Actress (for the second time) and her co-star Sam Rockwell won Best Supporting Actor. The Academy loves to reward movies based on true stories. While Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri isn’t taken directly from a news headline, the genesis of the movie was inspired by something real that McDonagh came across while searching for a story to tell.

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The Film Is Based On The Story Of Kathy Page

Martin McDonagh’s script for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was inspired by the true story of Kathy Page (via The True Crime Edition). While riding a Greyhound bus across the United States, McDonagh spotted three hand-painted signs on the side of a road in the town of Vidor, Texas, that read: “Vidor police botched up the case,” “Waiting for confession,” and “This could happen to you.” The signs were written by James Fulton who, like Frances McDormand’s Three Billboards character, Mildred Hayes, was frustrated with local police over the unsolved murder of his daughter, who was killed in May 1991.

Page’s car was found in a ditch near her home. She seemed to have died in an accident, but Detective Ray Mosely determined that she was “killed at another location, cleaned up, redressed, and placed back in her vehicle.” The autopsy showed that Page had been sexually assaulted prior to her murder. Her ex-husband, Steve Page, became the top suspect when police discovered he had been spying on Kathy on the night of her murder. The first signs Fulton put up explicitly named Steve Page as his daughter’s killer and claimed that Vidor police took a bribe. Despite the extra publicity provided by the movie, Kathy Page’s murder remains unsolved.

Martin McDonagh Made Changes To The Real Story

Although Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was inspired by a true story, in turning that story into one of his best movies, Martin McDonagh made a couple of key changes to the details. The billboards in the real story were created by a mourning father, but Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is about a bereaved mother. Jams Fulton’s daughter, Kathy, was 34 at the time of her death, whereas Mildred’s daughter, Angela, was a teenager. McDonagh told /Film, “I decided that it was a mother who had taken these [billboards] out. It all became fiction for me – but it was based on a couple of actual billboards.”

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