About the Filmmaker
![]()
Filmmaker Mike Dorsey has produced six distributed documentaries, including 2018's hit Demon House and 2015's Murder Rap: Inside the Biggie and Tupac Murders, the latter of which led to Mike co-producing the 2018 USA Network scripted series, Unsolved, starring Josh Duhamel, Bokeem Woodbine, and Jimmi Simpson. Mike also made the extremely popular documentary The Six Degrees of Helter Skelter about the Manson Family, which BuzzFeed readers ranked the 4th-scariest documentary ever made.
For DEAD RUN, Mike turns to another crime story as his subject, this time with a personal story that takes place in the small Colorado town where he spent much of his childhood and graduated from high school. He grew up roaming the country roads where this story takes place, was there during the manhunt, and knew some of those affected by it personally.
This campaign is just the start of a journey that will bring this story to life with interviews with central figures, and beautiful cinematography of one of the most rugged and storied regions of the world in the great American Southwest, where real life modern cowboys still herd cattle past ancient Native American ruins.
NOTE: If you are interested in making a contribution of $1,000 or more, please contact us - we can offer you an investment opportunity, instead, if you prefer!
The Story
![]()
It’s 1998 – the waning years of the Clinton Era, just five years since the Waco Siege and three years since the Oklahoma City Bombing. On the last day of the school year in a small town in Colorado’s rugged Four Corners region, three anti-government “militia misfits” are pulled over in a stolen tanker truck. They react by shooting a heroic police officer 18 times with a fully-automatic rifle. What ensues is a police chase like something out of the Wild West, resulting in more wounded cops and the complete disappearance of the three suspects into the desert canyon wilderness along the Colorado/Utah border. In the political climate of the late 1990s, this sparks “The biggest manhunt in FBI history” as 500+ agents from 72 agencies, supported by the National Guard, descend on the region to look for the cop killers. The shocking result of this years-long manhunt leaves a mystery that some claim is yet to be fully solved, namely: Were these guys small-town crooks just looking to rob a local casino? Or were they extremists planning something larger and more sinister?
The Plan
Mike Dorsey's production company has optioned the documentary rights to the book Dead Run: The Murder of a Lawman and the Greatest Manhunt of the Modern American West, which this project will be partially based on. Your contributions will got toward capturing all of the necessary interviews and supporting footage needed to tell this story.
Mike has a long track record of completing films and getting them distributed; his films have shown all over the world on platforms that include Amazon Prime, iTunes, Discovery Military, Reelz Channel, Google Play, UKTV in the UK, History in Australia, and many more. We are confident that Dead Run will be the next big true crime documentary obsession upon its release! That journey starts with YOU, right now.
