Cathy gave up her baby for adoption. 30 years later, a letter blew up her entire life.

Charlize Theron has produced a two-part documentary that (mark my words) will be one of the most thrilling and heartbreaking docos you've ever seen.

It's called Into the Fire: The Lost Daughter and it's now streaming on Netflix. The documentary follows the story of Cathy Terkanian, a retired nurse who embarked on an investigative search for her missing daughter.

Cathy's story starts in 2010.

She received a letter in the mail asking if she could provide a DNA sample to police examining a cold case. They suspected the body, found all the way back in 1999, might belong to her daughter.

Alexis was Cathy's biological daughter, who she'd given up for adoption in 1975 when she fell pregnant at 16. Alexis (later named Aundria by her adoptive parents) had reportedly run away from home in 1989, when she was just 14 year's old.

It wasn't until 2010 that Cathy even knew her daughter had been missing all these years.

Three long years later, Cathy heard back that the body had not belonged to Alexis/Aundria. In the meantime, it had become her mission to find out what did happen to her daughter.

Watch: Into The Fire: The Lost Daughter trailer. Post continues below.

Cathy decided to carry out the search herself, as she was unconvinced the police were doing enough.

This was driven by her own experience of running away from her mother at a young age, where she said the police were little to no help in her situation. She wasn't taking any chances with her daughter's case.

Cathy embarked on an incredible investigative journey to find out what had happened. Through contacting the friends and people connected to her daughter at the time, Cathy found that Aundria had alleged that her adoptive father, Dennis Bowman, was abusive.

This was further confirmed by some of her former classmates who had witnessed Dennis hitting her. The allegations were ignored by the authoritative figures in Aundria's life, including the police.

It was assumed that she decided to run away shortly after.

As the documentary uncovers, Cathy became convinced that Dennis had killed her daughter.

She started calling the Bowmans multiple times a day. She had a billboard put up along the main road to their house offering an $11,000 reward for an arrest in the unsolved missing-person case.

The entire documentary, although incredibly heart-wrenching, is also extremely powerful and has you gasping at every turn.

Speaking to People, Charlize Theron said that she was drawn to Cathy's story because of how 'badass' she was.

"Her determination, resilience and honestly how badass she was! She never let anyone tell her no, she trusted her instincts, and she is a true personification of the power of motherhood," she said.

If you don't want any spoilers for what happened to Alexis/Aundria, we recommend you stop reading now and head to Netflix to watch the doco yourself. If you want to know what happened next, keep reading.

Into The Fire: The Lost Daughter on Netflix is the best documentary I’ve ever seen. watching intuition and sheer determination cultivate into justice is so powerful, I had to sit in silence afterward to absorb what I just had seen. please watch if you enjoy true crime!!!

— t (@peachtourmaline) October 1, 2024

As the documentary reveals, Cathy managed to help the police discover the truth: that her daughter had been killed by her adoptive father, Dennis Bowman. But, the reveal came about because he was connected to a second horrific crime.

Dennis was arrested for the rape and murder of a local woman named Kathleen Doyle, after a detective was tasked with reexamining a cold case from 1980.

Kathleen was found dead on her bathroom floor, her cause of death ruled as "mechanical asphyxiation, essentially strangulation." She had been sexually assaulted and had a circular burn mark on her right cheek.

The lack of fingerprints or likely suspects meant the case wasn't solved. Then, advances in DNA testing returned it to detectives.

Investigators built a DNA profile from evidence found on Kathleen's bedspread and, using genealogy matching, compiled a list of 31 possible matches. Dennis, who had a prior criminal record, was on that list.

A chance encounter with another local detective led Detective Jon Smith to investigate Dennis. From court records, he confirmed that Dennis had been in Norfolk at the time of Kathleen's murder for a two-week training camp while he was in the Navy.

He was arrested for her brutal murder in 2019 and confessed to the crime. In a shocking twist, Dennis then confessed to the murder of his adopted daughter.

His confessions were drawn out, with repeated inaccuracies and lies told throughout the process — as documented in the Netflix true crime series.

He admitted that he had a fight with Alexis/Aundria when she tried to run away from home. In one of his confessions, he said she threatened to 'tell people he was molesting her' if he didn't let her leave.

Dennis hit her, causing her to fall down the stairs and die.

He told multiple different stories about what he'd done with her body, before eventually admitting he had buried her in their own backyard, unbeknownst to her adoptive mother.

On December 22, 2021, Dennis pleaded no contest to second-degree murder. He was sentenced to a minimum of 35 to 50 years in prison.

Cathy, who was in court to watch, told reporters "I spent 10 years trying to see that happen."

Into The Fire is now streaming on Netflix.

Feature image: Netflix via IMDb.