In this fascinating chronicle of what happens when a man admits a long-buried secret to his family and friends, a seemingly average professor and father reveals how on one night in 1955, as an unassuming Swarthmore College student, he killed his sleeping dorm mate.

Macky Alston's complex documentary focuses on an incident that happened in our own backyard, though few people still remember it. Long before Columbine, a troubled, mild-mannered boy named Bob Bechtel took a gun and shot fellow student Holmes Strozier in the head while he slept in his bed. He planned to kill more students but at the last minute had a change of heart. After being committed to a hospital for the criminally insane, he was released five years later. (Partially owing to Strozier's parents having written to the presiding judge professing their forgiveness, there was no felony conviction). Bechtel, (now a psychology professor!), contends that he was bullied by Strozier and others but has kept his past from everyone but his wife. When he finally reveals his shameful secret, his two daughters must come to terms with his shocking crime. Alston chronicles the pair as they come to grips with their father's actions through his former classmates and the victim's brother. Was Bechtel really an outcast, tormented by his peers? Or is he a disturbed, paranoid man who snapped and could possibly snap again? For his part, Bechtel bravely subjects himself to comprehensive psychological evaluations and probing interviews. He's an enigma -- soft-spoken, yet strangely detached. How you feel about him, his crime, his punishment and his rehabilitation depends on who you believe.