Mackenzie Shirilla's prison call allegedly reveals code language to communicate with her mother

Mackenzie Shirilla (Image via Instagram @mackenzieshirilla)
Mackenzie Shirilla (Image via Instagram @mackenzieshirilla)

Mackenzie Shirilla'a case has been inescapable ever since Netflix dropped The Crash, and with newer details coming to light, things have only gotten more and more chaotic. The true crime documentary about Shirilla, the Ohio teenager convicted of deliberately driving her car into a brick wall at nearly 100 mph, who killed her boyfriend Dominic Russo and their friend Davion Flanagan has the internet completely gripped and just when people thought they'd heard everything about the case, a fresh wave of recordings from prison surfaced, revealing something genuinely bizarre: Mackenzie and her mother Natalie apparently had their own made-up language, and they were using it on recorded jail calls.

The calls were obtained by People magazine, and in them, Mackenzie Shirilla can be heard switching mid-conversation into a fast-paced, nearly impossible-to-follow stream of syllables punctuated by extra vowel sounds. The secret language turns out to be a fairly standard form of gibberish each syllable of a word gets the sound "ezza" or "eeza" inserted into it, which makes speech fast and difficult for anyone outside the conversation to follow in real time.


Chilling details from Mackenzie Shirilla's prison calls with her mother

The substance of what the code language was allegedly masking makes that tone even harder to sit with. Investigators were able to decode the calls and present the transcripts as evidence during Mackenzie Shirilla's 2023 murder trial. One of the decoded exchanges allegedly has Mackenzie asking her mother: "Can we tell the police I had a seizure?"

Other clips from the prison recordings reveal different dimensions of Mackenzie's headspace during that period. In one, she and Natalie can be heard getting excited that the case had been covered by The Daily Mail in the UK. "Maybe Kim Kardashian will reach out herself," Mackenzie Shirilla says, laughing. In another, she worries about being "too old" to start a family by the time she gets out. Natalie, for her part, can be heard telling her daughter that her "story isn't done yet" and encouraging her to start writing a book. She also warns Mackenzie to "keep everything on the surface" and not say anything that could be used against her. Given the coded language already on record, the irony of that advice isn't lost on anyone.

The Netflix documentary has brought the case back with full force, and these prison recordings are only adding to the conversation. It is yet to be known what else is disocverec in due time, but if there's one thing that is sure; ythen it's that this case is not ending anytime soon.

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Edited by Nibir Konwar