Inside the ‘secret society’ of female sleuths who have made it their business to weigh in on violent crimes

A group of female true crime sleuths are the subjects of the upcoming docuseries Sasha Reid and The Midnight Order, which follows their efforts to track down serial killers and seek justice for their victims.

The group’s leader is Dr. Sasha Reid, an academic and professor at the University of Calgary who holds a doctorate in developmental psychology, plus two master’s degrees in the fields of applied psychology in human development, and criminology and socio-legal studies.

During her career, she also built one of the world’s largest databases on serial killers, which also includes a large amount of psychological data.

In the debut episode, Dr. Reid described how her research has considered aspects such as how serial killers develop, what their backgrounds are, the abuse they have experienced, and who their victims are – as well as how to mitigate the risks that serial killers pose.

The Midnight Order uses Dr. Reid’s database of serial killers, which compiles numerous psychological statistics to create extensive profiles

She has also developed one of the largest databases of missing and murdered persons in Canada.

Dr. Reid’s interest in crime and murder began in her teens when she lost a friend of Native descent who went missing and was later found dead.

She eventually discovered that indigenous women in her country were being abducted and murdered at a disproportionate rate, apparently making them a “prime target” for serial killers.

Today, Dr. Reid’s Missing and Murdered Persons database contains nearly 12,000 entries, many of which come from marginalized populations.

An early major breakthrough for Dr. Reid came when she used her database to correctly identify Bruce McArthur as the serial killer behind the murders of eight gay men, predominantly of South Asian descent, in Toronto between 2010 and 2017.

To further her research, Dr. Reid founded The Midnight Order, a women’s club of experts with specialties such as psychology, data analysis, and forensics.

“In The Midnight Order, women are the heroes, not the victims,” Dr. Reid described in the group’s first episode.

Dr. Reid described the people she brought into The Midnight Order this way: “I was looking for people who were truly compassionate and victim-focused.”

Many members of The Midnight Order come from marginalized backgrounds and have witnessed the abuse and oppression of women.

One of the other group members is Ayah, a psychotherapist born in Cairo, Egypt, who was raised in a fundamentalist religion.

Florence, the daughter of Malaysian immigrants, is a Toronto-based data analyst with a long-standing interest in psychopaths and mass murderers.

And then there’s Anjali, a forensic scientist in training from a “rough” Calgary neighborhood. She’s in her second year of medical school and loves “studying the dark corners of the human mind.”

“I was always curious about why some people end up on such a tragic path,” Anjali described, adding that serial killers are on the “most intense” end of the spectrum.

Aspiring detective Marina fled with her mother from her abusive father in Kazakhstan. Now she lives a ‘double life’, working in a supermarket during the day and in her free time following her ‘real passion’, forensic psychology, and doing volunteer work for the police.

Hasti is a victim advocate originally from Iran, where she says “so many doors are closed to women.” These circumstances “inspired” her mother to get her and her daughter out of the country.

“A big part of my work as an advocate is listening to people who haven’t been heard before,” Hasti says of her motivation.

Finally, Hana is a database expert specializing in criminal profiling and crime scene analysis. Her thesis focuses on “disposing of bodies in sexual homicide cases.” She is also the project coordinator for Dr. Reid’s serial killer database.

In the first two episodes, The Midnight Order examines a box of evidence collected by a woman convinced that her ex-husband was behind a series of murders of women in the 1980s.

Subsequent episodes follow the gang as they investigate the murder of Robert Pickton, a pig farmer who lived and worked on a massive farm in Port Coquitlam, British Columbia.

It is believed that around 50 women were also murdered on the farm, including many indigenous women, addicts and sex workers.

Pickton was eventually convicted of six murders in 2007 and given a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 25 years. However, he was murdered by another inmate in May 2024.

Before Pickton’s death, The Midnight Order had been alarmed to learn that police planned to destroy some 14,000 pieces of evidence in the cases, making justice for his unidentified victims impossible.

From there, they catalogued the murders that were likely connected to Pickton. They spoke to the victims’ families and others. They tried to make sure that the cold cases that were still open “still had a chance to be solved.”