CONVICTED murderer Mackenzie Shirilla showed tell-tale signs she was trying to force emotion during her arrest and in her bombshell Netflix interview, a body language expert has claimed.
Shirilla, 21, has been languishing behind bars in Ohio after being found guilty of murdering her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and their friend, Davion Flanagan.
Her case has sent true crime fans into a tailspin after the success of the Netflix documentary, The Crash, in which she broke her silence and maintained her innocence.
Shirilla’s TikToks and Instagram posts have resurfaced, showing her regularly posing in the mirror, showing off designer clothing, and even smoking weed in her car.
Text messages revealed by police showed her toxic relationship with Dominic, her boyfriend of four years, whose family claims had tried more than once to break up with her.
She reportedly threatened to harm him during arguments before purposefully plowing into a brick wall while driving her Toyota Camry on July 31, 2022.
Renowned body language expert Logan Portenier, host and creator of the popular YouTube channel Observe, spent hours breaking down her movements in dozens of social media clips and footage.
Here he gives The U.S. Sun his biggest takeaways from the case.
TikTok star
Shirilla was a social media-obsessed teen before the crash and shared daily posts on TikTok of her and Dom, both at home and out and about, as she was often the center of attention.
Reviewing one clip of them in the car together, Logan said, “He doesn’t seem to be as stoked for this video that she’s filming as she does.
“It didn’t seem as though they were quite on the same page emotionally.
“She’s doing her different poses and expressions for the sake of the video and for his side of things, he seems much more reserved and subdued.
“Because he’s not performing as much for the camera as she is, we’re seeing a fair bit of synchronization across the upper half of his face and the lower half of his face, which lets us know that anything that we’re kind of seeing on that is probably going to be forced. It’s performative.
“And he does, a little lackluster kind of asymmetrical smile on the bottom half of his face.”
Uncomfortable posing
In another clip from Shirilla’s TikTok, the couple is at home, and she is trying to get him to pose in a full-length mirror as he is seen hiding behind her.
“Mackenzie is doing a lot of the posing,” Logan said. “She’s hitting her different looks that she wants to do during this.
“In the background, you could see initially Dom’s nonverbal communication.
“He’s doing a self hug. You can see him holding both of his arms there.
“That is misconstrued in a lot of areas as exclusively defensive,” but Logan feels this is more about comfort.
“What I do find more interesting is that he does shift later on to holding both hands in front.
“So both of those clusters there, he has one in front and then he has his hands clasped in front like that. Both of those signal a level of discomfort.”
Logan added, “We’re seeing again this dichotomy between the two of them.
“He’s kind of there and he’s being present, albeit uncomfortable, reserved, and needing to do a little bit of self-soothing to be able to make it through.”
Distracted driving
Shirilla, who made no secret of being image-conscious before her arrest, frequently posed for TikTok videos — even when she should have been concentrating on the road.
In hindsight, clips showing her filming herself while driving are especially unsettling, given that two young men would later lose their lives in a crash while riding in a car with her behind the wheel.
“It’s very focused on the phone and what she appears like on it, hitting her specific facial expressions as well,” Logan said.
“And on those facial expressions, this helps us understand how she will behave and appear when she’s performing.
“There might be some of that lip pursing that we kind of see in there.
“There are some head tilts in there as well as she’s trying to be perceived in a very specific way, so that performative non-verbal communication comes in handy in future situations, because then you can keep an eye out for some of those patterns that may or may not show up in the future.”
Cuffed and anxious
Shirilla survived the crash and police launched an investigation, as evidence slowly proved it was not an accident and she recovered from multiple surgeries.
Fast-forward to November 2022, and Shirilla’s life blows up in smoke as she’s finally arrested and later charged with murder.
“I don’t know that she’s aware that there’s a camera pointed at her, that she’s going to be perceived in this area, and so what we’re going to be able to see is more of her unfiltered nonverbal communication,” Logan pointed out.
“And with this, she is feeling what would be considered in that vein of the universal emotion of sadness.
“There’s grief, there’s panic, and stress, everything that can go into that.
“What really gives it away is the action in her forehead area.
“What we’re seeing predominantly is unit one activation, which is the middle portion of your eyebrows when they go upward during genuine sadness and grief.
“You can see that happening symmetrically, but if it’s more performed, a lot of people will end up having light asymmetrical activation because it’s not genuine.”
Frozen with fear
In further footage of Shirilla in the back of a police car after her arrest, Logan said she appears frozen with fear despite not shedding a tear as she heads to the station.
“She has fairly relaxed eye positioning in general when she’s not panicked,” he said.
“And so this widening of her eyes, it indicates, genuinely, that she’s feeling anxious. This would be considered fear.”
Logan added that while Shirilla “might not be terrified, it would at least trigger as fear to the anxiety levels” as she rides in the police car.
“So we’re seeing both the combination of the grief across the upper half of her forehead and her eyes are showing the fear as well,” Logan said.
“Then when we get down to the rest of her face, some things that show more physiology rather than just physical movements, is a lot of the inflammation around her nose and upper lip,” which Logan claims “[lets] us know that this is coming from an authentic place.”
Putting on an act
Logan explained that emotional states have a profile, and things can usually shift after around four and a half seconds.
During the journey, Shirilla seems to relax, despite the situation that she’s in, and is seen rolling her head back and looking bored.
But as they approach the station, Logan feels she starts to perform as she realizes she should be more upset than she is if she’s not guilty of murder.
“When you’re watching somebody who’s performing, you’ll see a lot of crashes in between,” he told The U.S. Sun.
“So they’ll be emoting a specific way and then it’s almost like they remember like, ‘Oh, I should be sad right now.’ And then they’ll crash into sadness, something like that.
“You can see it start to kind of creep through the cracks of her rather reserved expression beforehand.”
This is where Logan returns to Shirilla’s “eyebrow activation.”
He claims Shirilla’s outer and inner eyebrows are working together at this point to show sadness, stress and anxiety.
Again, the corners of her nose are also activated, not in disgust, but trying to show she is upset, something he says he doesn’t often see.
Oscar-worthy performance
She is later seen sobbing during her trial before being locked up for 15 years to life on murder charges.
Shirilla starts to mix with people from different walks of life, and it’s years later when we see her sit down with film producers for her bombshell interview.
She is seen walking into the frame and sitting down at a table wearing her prison scrubs, her hair tied up in a large bun.
“The fact that she’s sitting down, crossing her arms, immediately lets us know that she’s probably feeling uncomfortable about what’s about to happen there and needs to block off and self-soothing a little bit,” Logan said.
Shirilla then activated her glabella – the smooth area of skin on her forehead located directly between the eyebrows and just above the bridge of her nose, Logan said.
He claims this was to give the impression she is empathetic, but instead of it being symmetrical, she delivered asymmetrical activation.
“Her right eyebrow does not have the same activation as her left eyebrow.
“Her left eyebrow is doing the exact same expression that we saw in the cruiser. Her right eyebrow is not.
“It’s an asymmetrical expression which lets us know this isn’t authentic empathy.
“This isn’t authentic pain or fear or grief that she’s feeling here. It’s forced.”
Logan said this was also visible further down the vein on the bottom half of her face.
She also began pursing her lips – something she would do in her performative TikTok videos, where she wanted to control how she was being perceived.
