A New Hulu Series Sheds Light on Leroy Dulaney's Decades-Old Murder

The true-crime boom won't end, and the latest series to come out attempts to shed new light on a murder investigation that happened decades ago. Where Is Private Dulaney? debuted on Hulu on Nov. 16.

The miniseries follows Private Leroy Dulaney's mother as she attempts to figure out what happened to her son after he disappeared from a Marine Corps base in North Carolina in 1979. So, what happened to Leroy Dulaney? Here's what we know.

As the synopsis for the series explains, Dulaney just completely disappeared from his post at Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune in North Carolina in 1979. Although Dulaney was initially believed to have gone AWOL, it was eventually discovered that he had been murdered by a fellow Marine officer. While that may sound like the end of the story, Dulaney's mother Carol wasn't convinced.

"The series documents Carol's quest for the truth, which led her to uncover a world of drugs, rumored satanic cults, and a possible serial killer," the official description explains. "The docu-series features first-hand accounts from Carol, her sons, Leroy’s wife Brenda, and an interview from prison with Leroy’s convicted killer."

The show's first episode kicks off with a letter that Carol wrote to Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time, asking for help in finding out what happened.

The miniseries is only three episodes long, and every episode is now available to stream on Hulu. Given that the series was filmed so long after the events it's depicting, it's unlikely to come up with a definitive explanation for what happened to Dulaney. Even so, it may shed some new light on the case, and it could become something that folks on Reddit decide to begin investigating themselves.

We may never know the full story of what happened to Private Dulaney, but if his mother's account is to be believed, it's a lot more complicated and sordid than the Marine Corps wanted the public to believe. Like many true-crime docuseries from recent years, Where Is Private Dulaney? will likely be more focused on presenting new information than reaching any definitive conclusion.

Where Is Private Dulaney? is just the latest in a long line of docuseries focused on the sordid details of a gruesome crime from the past. In some rare cases, like The Jinx, the mere existence of the docuseries ultimately wound up solving a case that had gone unsolved for decades. In most cases, though, these docuseries are less focused on solving an old crime than on simply shedding light on it.

This approach can leave some people, who may be hoping for more definitive answers, disappointed by what they actually get. For most people, though, just learning about the case is more than enough. Where Is Private Dulaney? may not be reinventing the genre, but for the true-crime obsessed, it doesn't have to.