The true-crime renaissance marches on with the 2021 entry The Phantom which revolves around the murder of cashier Wanda Lopez. Watching the first 20 minutes or so, the film makes viewers feel totally confident that her murderer was Carlos DeLuna. However, that is soon thrown into doubt.
DeLuna was only convicted based on eyewitness testimony, and director Patrick Forbes does a good job of throwing that all away when years later, the witnesses—conveniently after DeLuna was already executed—begin doubting their own stories. To his credit, DeLuna said the real perpetrator was a man named Carlos Hernandez, but the Corpus Christi investigators checked all possible suspects named Carlos Hernandez and couldn’t connect any to the crime.
Let’s get back to those eyewitnesses. The most damning deals with an item of clothing. One said they saw a man wearing a white shirt. Evidence shows that said man was shirtless. Also, DeLuna was detained with no blood on any of his clothes. Wanda Lopez was stabbed, with a large amount of blood at the scene. The film, while not as grabbing as other similar documentaries, demonstrates the grave miscarriages of justice where several Carlos DeLunas were convicted and punished for crimes they didn’t commit.