Bakersfield, Bakersfield 3, Bakersfield Three, Baylee Despot, Chad Garrett, Cheryl Holsonbake, David Bledsoe, Di Byrne, documentaries, Investigation Discovery, James Kulstad, Jane Parrent, Jennifer Anderson, Jourdain Kominski, Katelyn Parrent, Lance Holsonbake, Maddie Barrett, Micah Holsonbake, Olivia LaVoice, reviews, Ryan Kulstad, Steven Hendrix Jr., The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood, true crime, TV, Will Kanavalov
May 11, 2025
by Carla Hay
“The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood”
Directed by Jennifer Anderson
Culture Representation: Taking place in Bakersfield, California, the three-episode docuseries “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” (based on a 2022 Marie Claire magazine article) features an all-white group of people who are connected in some way to missing or murdered people Baylee Despot, Micah Holsonbake and James Kulstad, who all disappeared in Bakersfield in 2018.
Culture Clash: The parents of these victims worked tirelessly to find answers and get justice.
Culture Audience: “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of true crime documentaries where victims’ family members become amateur sleuths in conducting their own investigations.
“The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” is a true crime documentary that you won’t easily forget. Gripping from start to finish, this three-episode documentary series is a story of persistence in the quest for justice when three mothers united to find out what happened to their missing or murdered adult children. The story has a few twists and turns that will surprise some viewers. “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” is based on the 2022 Marie Claire magazine article “Of Murder and Motherhood” (written by Katya Cengel), with the documentary series having updates that happened since the article was published.
Directed by Jennifer Anderson, “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” tells the story of Cheryl Holsonbake, Diane “Di” Byrne and Jane Parrent—three mothers whose adult children were murdered or went missing within four weeks in 2018, in Bakersfield, California. Holsonbake’s son Micah was 34 when he went missing on March 23, 2018, and was later declared murdered after some of his discovered body parts were confirmed through DNA evidence. Byrne’s son James Kulstad was 38 when he was murdered by gun violence on April 8, 2018. Parrent’s daughter Baylee Despot was 21 when she disappeared on April 25, 2018.
Micah Holsonbake, Kulstad and Despot became known as the Bakersfield 3 because all three cases are connected to each other, for reasons that are explained in the documentary. This review won’t reveal all the details of what’s in the documentary, but it’s enough to say that only one of these cases was solved at the time this documentary was released in May 2025. Sadly, Byrne died of ovarian cancer in April 2024. She was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 2016 and ovarian cancer in 2023. There is a title card tribute to her in the epilogue.
As already revealed in the trailer for “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood,” Despot has been named a suspect in the murder of Micah Holsonbake. At the time she disappeared, Despot was living with her boyfriend Matthew “Matt” Queen, a convicted criminal with history numerous arrests, including false imprisonment by violence, possession for sale of a controlled substance, and illegal firearm possession. Her mother and many other people in the documentary say that they don’t believe Despot would willingly commit murder, but they think it’s possible Despot was a witness to the murder who was then murdered herself. Queen is not interviewed for the documentary, and it’s unclear if he was asked to comment for the documentary.
Episode 1, titled “One Mystery—Or Three?,” details all three cases and why they are connected. Episode 2, titled “The Boogieman of Bakersfield,” gives information on Queen and why he became a suspect in one of the murders. Episode 3, titled “Fights Like a Mother,” shows how the tireless activism of Parrent, Byrne and Cheryl Holsonbake made a big difference in the investigations and the 2022 trial that resulted in one of these cases.
Parrent (who is a single mother) is the most outspoken of the three mothers, who all became close friends. Parrent is shown putting up missing-person flyers of her missing daughter Despot, which is a daily ritual that she says has helped her maintain sanity and motivation during this heart-wrenching ordeal. She was also put in an uncomfortable situation when her daughter was named a suspect in Micah Holsonbake’s murder. Parrent’s friendship with Micah’s mother Cheryl changed but ultimately was not ruined by this legal development because Cheryl also believes that Despot was a victim.
Cheryl Holsonbake and Byrne are more soft-spoken than Parrent but no less determined in seeking justice. According to the documentary, Byrne (who was a divorced mother of six children) she was the first person to make the connection between her murdered son and Micah, who knew Kulstad and Despot. Of the three mothers, Cheryl Holsonbake seems to be the most skilled at being an amateur detective, because she uncovered a lot of important information through diligent research and investigations.
Bakersfield is a city with a population of about 414,000 people, as of 2023. Bakersfield’s largest industries are argiculture and energy production. In an interview for the documentary, Lance Holsonbake (the husband of Cheryl and the father of Micah) describes Bakersfield as having two sides of being both a “nice place” and a “terrible place” to live. “It’s got two personalities,” he adds. “And there’s a lot of people who trickle back and forth between the two worlds.”
Despot, Kulstad and Micah Holsonbake were three of the people who went back and forth between those two worlds. They are described by their mothers as loving and outgoing children who were raised in supportive households and who had bright futures ahead of them. But their health and their futures were damaged because all three of the children became addicted to drugs—mainly painkillers and other opioids.
When she was in her late teens, Despot became a rape survivor, and her unresolved trauma drove her deeper into drug addiction, says her mother. At the time that Despot was living with Queen, she had been separated or divorced from a short-lived marriage, and Queen kept her isolated from her family, according to her mother. Kulstad was an entrepreneur and a single father to a daughter, but he was unemployed and living with his mother at the time he was murdered.
Micah was a U.S. Navy veteran who became a banker and a stockbroker. Micah survived a benign throat tumor that ended his military career, but he became addicted to painkillers after a 2007 car accident that shattered his wrist. Micah was a married father to a son and was a very devoted parent, but his marriage fell apart because of Micah’s increasing drug addiction, according to his mother Cheryl, who says that Micah was very paranoid toward the end of his life.
This well-edited documentary includes interviews with Sgt. Chad Garrett of the Bakersfield Police Department (the lead investigator in all three cases) and former KGET-TV reporter Olivia LaVoice, who has been covering these cases since the beginning. Other people interviewed in the documentary are James Kulstad’s brothers Ryan Kulstad and Steven Hendrix Jr.; Micah Holsonbake’s friends Will Kanavalov, David Bledsoe and Matt Bledsoe; Despot’s sister Katelyn Parrent; and Despot’s friends Jourdain Kominski and Maddie Barrett. “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” is heartbreaking but inspirational in showing how loved ones can legally take matters into their own hands when they are seeking justice for crime victims.
Investigation Discovery premiered “The Bakersfield 3: A Tale of Murder and Motherhood” on May 11, 2025.