When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York Doc Review

Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York is yet another disturbing true-crime documentary about a demon preying on a marginalized community. However, the compelling hook of Anthony Caronna and Howard Gertler’s four-part investigation on HBO (July 9) is that it is both a detective novel and a sociological critique of the time and environment in which its story is set: New York City in the early 1990s, whose climate of homophobia facilitated the homicides of its villains. With anti-gay and trans legislation currently sweeping the country, this is an all too relevant story about persecution and violence, and how public rhetoric and inaction fosters hatred.

The Director Caronnas series begins with the 1992 discovery by maintenance workers of a dismembered body in Burlington County, New Jersey. Cut into seven pieces, each wrapped in newspaper (and a shower curtain) and packed in different trash bags, this individual was quickly identified via his briefcase and personal effects as Thomas Mulcahy, a 57-year-old husband and father who happened to be at the space for a business meeting. Detectives also found latex gloves, a compass saw and a sheet of linen in the plastic bags, one of which was eventually traced to the Staten Islands’ sole CVS. Otherwise, however, there was little useful physical evidence obtained from these objects, so cops turned their attention to Mulcahy’s movements in the days and hours leading up to his murder.

As they soon learned, Mulcahy was last seen on July 8, 1992, at Midtown Manhattans Townhouse Bar, an upscale gay watering hole where older affluent gentlemen often met young suitors. Douglas Gibson remembers talking to Mulcahy that evening and seeing a stranger in his vicinity, but he did not look closely enough at this stranger to provide an actual description. The cops, meanwhile, had a hard time convincing people in and around this establishment to talk to them, since in 1992 the relationship between the police and the gay community was defined by distrust, even outright antipathy. and simple, largely born of the ancients. history of harmful harassment and hostility. While this proved a significant stumbling block in the case, law enforcement still lacked interdepartmental communications, and it was this failure that delayed their realization that Mulcahys’ murder was part of an appalling scheme.

A year earlier, in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the similarly dismembered body of Peter Anderson had been found. Like Mulcahy, Anderson was a closeted homosexual, and on the evening of his disappearance on May 5, 1991, he too had visited The Townhouse. When Mulcahys murder investigators heard about it, they knew the two murders were connected. Worse, they were followed by the almost identical murders of 44-year-old prostitute Anthony Marrero (in May 1993) and 55-year-old Greenwich Village resident Michael Sakara (in July 1993), the latter a regular and inescapable well known from the Five Oaks bar. Obviously someone was killing gay people after meeting them in clubs, and due to his modus operandi the attacker was double crossed by New York Daily News as a last-call killer.

HBO

Last call is, on the one hand, a traditional thriller mystery, with various police officers discussing their efforts to piece together clues and figure out the stories of their victims in order to locate a suspect. Equally gripping, however, is a vivid snapshot of her particular moment, told in large part by two people who were on the front lines of the fight for equal LGTBQ+ rights: The New York Gay & Lesbian Anti-Violence Projects Bea Hanson and Matt Foreman. Recalling a time when gay Americans were both emerging from the prevailing shadow (particularly in New York) and facing increased antagonism and threats (including from the raging AIDS epidemic), Hanson and Foreman offer intimate and passionate accounts of cultural and political life. Early 90s vibe. In doing so, they help contextualize these murders as a consequence of the longstanding brutality that gay (and trans) men and women face on a daily basis.

Using numerous archival documents, Last call is both a vibrant and painful look back, his nostalgia for the burgeoning gay movement colored by the fear that so many felt because of homophobia and the mortal danger it represented, as well as the anger that was a direct by-product of being ignored, slandered and oppressed. Director Caronnas’ series honestly and compassionately revisits the past, putting a nuanced face on people who have so often been shunned, shunned and reduced to unflattering stereotypes, including Mulcahy, Anderson, Marrero and Sakara. Featuring interviews with friends, lovers and loved ones of the four men whose lives were horribly cut short by a madman, it remembers them and celebrates them not as statistics, but as flesh-and-blood individuals .

HBO

In separate interviews with different detectives, Last call highlights the ignorance of the police vis-à-vis the homosexual community and their reluctance to link it to these murders. Such blindness, whether intentional or not, seems at least somewhat related to the show’s own willful dismissal that the killer who, through modern fingerprint analysis, has been identified as Mount Sinai medic Richard Rogers Jr. .was also a gay man. There is a lingering sense, from every angle, that intolerance (and fear of defamation) has repeatedly frustrated attempts to resolve and understand this tragedy, and the fact that Rogers never opened up on his motives only makes things even darker.

What remains clear, however, is Rogers’ guilt. Having already been acquitted of murdering his college roommate and years later of assaulting another man, the quiet, soft-spoken medical professional was undoubtedly the serial culprit authorities were looking for. . Regardless of the jurisdictional issues raised at trial, he was rightly sentenced to two consecutive life sentences, ending a reign of terror which, due to his habit of making routine trips across the country , may have included many other unknown victims. He was, by all accounts, a seemingly remorseless monster, and Last call is most pointed when he posits it as the result of a society that demonizes with malevolent intent (whether that’s Anita Bryant in the ’70s or Ron DeSantis today) and, in doing so, inspires inevitable cruelty.