Fatal Desire 2006

Joe Eric Roberts is a newly divorced, single dad in his forties living in Atlantic City, New Jersey. He earns a solid living as a casino pit boss and loves the time he gets to spend with his son, but he also longs to start a new relationship. So he dives into the world of online dating and, in a chatroom, meets a Pittsburgh woman in her twenties who goes by the handle sexykitten. After months of exchanging messages, they finally meet in person. When she arrives at his casino to surprise him, Joe learns that her real name is Tanya Sullivan Anne Heche and he is instantly drawn to her. She reveals she is married and has a young daughter, but that detail barely dampens their connection.

Over time, their relationship blossoms from a heated, passionate affair into something Joe believes resembles love. Tanya sends him explicit videos of herself, a gesture that both thrills and unsettles him as the bond deepens. The situation grows increasingly complicated as Tanya hints at a life that could be theirs, yet she remains married, and her husband’s presence—real or imagined—casts a shadow over the romance. The pair ride a wave of secrecy and intensity, and Joe clings to the belief that love has found him at last.

Then a bombshell lands. Tanya tells Joe she is pregnant, and that the baby could be his. He wants to leave everything behind for a future together and try to build a life with her, but Tanya resists, insisting her husband is dangerous and would never let that happen. The tension intensifies as Joe starts receiving threatening emails that allegedly come from Tanya’s husband, taunting him and claiming he knows all about the affair. Desperate for proof, Joe asks Tanya to provide evidence of the supposed abuse she has suffered at the hands of her husband, pushing the limits of trust in their fragile relationship.

Before long, another shocking claim surfaces. Tanya insists that, because of her infidelity, her husband and his associates beat and rape her by a pool behind their house, an act that she says cost her the baby—though Joe’s faith in her begins to crumble. At his breaking point, Joe acts with what he believes is righteous purpose. With Tanya’s supposed blessing and directions, he maps out a plan to kill Tanya’s husband at his auto repair shop—and he succeeds, shooting him to death in the darkness of a late night.

In the weeks after the murder, the bond between Joe and Tanya fractures. She stops replying to his messages and even deletes the file containing his emails. Driven by doubt and a growing sense of betrayal, Joe travels to Pittsburgh again to uncover the truth. What he finds shatters everything: Tanya’s stories aren’t true. She was never pregnant; the ultrasound tape she handed him was actually old and misleading. The alleged abuse never happened, there is no pool behind the house, and the house was remodeled with money from the husband’s life insurance. Worse, Tanya has moved on with a new boyfriend.

Devastated, Joe returns to Atlantic City and sinks into a deep depression, drinking again, which takes a toll on his relationship with his son, who leaves to live with his mother. In his darkest moment, Joe contemplates taking his own life. In a suicide note, he asks his friend Paula Kathleen York to ensure a case he kept under his bed makes it to the Pittsburgh authorities. Armed with the evidence Joe left behind, the police arrest Tanya, and the case is brought to a close by a Detective Barry Flatman who helps secure a conviction for first-degree conspiracy to commit murder.

This tense, twist-filled story examines how a relationship built on deception can spiral into tragedy, and how one man’s desperate choices collide with the consequences of truth—revealing how easy it is for romance and danger to blur into a brutal, irreversible act. Through Joe’s unraveling, the film explores themes of trust, manipulation, grief, and accountability, leaving viewers to ponder where longing ends and danger begins.