The Lifetime TV movie Death of a Cheerleader is based on a real-life murder of a popular and rich high school cheerleader in an affluent town in Northern California. She was killed by a jealous obsessive classmate from a lower middle-class family.
In this 2019 Lifetime remake (an earlier version was called A Friend to Die For), Sarah Dugdale plays the pretty cheerleader Kelly Locke, and Aubrey Peeples plays the shy outsider Bridget Moretti. Kellie Martin plays the FBI agent who breaks the case. Interesting fact: Martin played the killer in the original film A Friend to Die For (see link below) with Tori Spelling as the popular, pretty and rich cheerleader in 1994. (The late James Avery of The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air played the FBI Agent in the 1994 film.)
In the real life case, it took the police almost six months to find Kirsten Costas‘ killer, Bernadette Protti, who was sentenced to a maximum of nine years but was released seven years later on parole. Protti was released from prison in 1992 at the age of 23.
The actress Kellie Martin who plays the FBI Agent is best known for her roles in the Hailey Dean Mystery TV movies (Hailey Dean), Army Wives (Army Captain Nicole Galassin), Life Goes On (Becca Thatcher, for which she was nominated for a Primetime Emmy), ER (Lucy Knight), and in the 1995 TV movie The Face on the Milk Carton as Jennifer Sands. Martin currently stars in the TBS comedy The Guest Book as police officer Kimberly Leahy. Death of a Cheerleader premieres on Lifetime on Saturday, February 2 at 8 pm. [More Lifetime movies streaming are always available.]
