Crime Scene S02: "the true terrors of the place"
Plus Dean Stockwell gets Bet-Crapped
the true crime that's worth your time
The crime
“In 1970s NYC, the ‘Torso Killer’ preys on women to fulfill his grotesque fantasies while eluding police” in (at least) two states.
The story
Joe Berlinger’s Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer is the second installment of the Crime Scene series for Netflix, and based on the first installment — a look at the death of Elisa Lam at Los Angeles’s Cecil Hotel — I will tell you frankly that I didn’t expect much from the second three-parter, which dropped last Wednesday. I didn’t hate the debut “season,” but it did feel unfocused and lazy:
Crime Scene … is the first installment in an anthology that, per Berlinger, aims to explore the role of place in notorious crimes and cases, and it's a smart concept that lets Berlinger put those cases into larger historical and social contexts. That's what sets great docs like OJ: Made In America or Ken Burns' Prohibition apart. There's a ton of potential material, too — from New York's Chelsea Hotel, to H.H. Holmes's "murder house" and beyond. But while Berlinger uses local tour guides and Skid Row historians for informative interviews, Crime Scene doesn't dig into the concept of the Cecil as the center of its story until the second episode. Before that, the series jumps around in the timeline of Lam's case, which feels like stalling until Berlinger is obliged to reveal Lam's death was likely not a crime at all.
Starting with a “case” that probably isn’t one; devoting as much talking-head time as the Cecil version did to self-professed “experts” whose bona fides are YouTube likes…the result was scattered and cheesy, and in retrospect, Berlinger’s defensiveness about the first docuseries suggests that maybe he agreed and had been hoping not to get called on it.
In any event, and I apologize for burying the lede, but I found the Times Square Killer iteration leagues more watchable and worthwhile than Cecil Hotel…and I admit that I’m not entirely sure why. It’s not doing anything that different: it still has a handful of talking-head interviewees whose pertinent c.v.s seem to consist of “agreed to do it”; it’s still structured with “reveals” in the last five minutes of non-terminal episodes, now a standard feature of streaming true crime. But TSK has a much stronger sense of engagement and sure-handedness from behind the camera, and as a result, that logline idea behind the series as a whole — that you can iris out from what happened to look at the broader influences of where it happened — is much more alive. Part of that is the irresistible footage of Times Square in the 1970s, all those grimy marquees and all that burnt umber, in which you can almost taste the ozone and soot and from which you can’t look away. Part of it is that this isn’t a well-known case; I’ve spent most of my life within 20 miles of every crime scene in it, was alive when it happened, and had only heard of it in the vaguest of passing. But mostly, I think, it’s that the bigger picture of Times Square in the disco era has so much more to tell us about crime, from victimology to profiling to community policing to the commodification of vice, and that the production team was legit interested in and listening to those stories. Cecil Hotel by comparison kind of lands like someone at Netflix insisted it would beast the SEO, so that season went first.
TSK should have led, and it’s not perfect, but I recommend it. It devotes a lot of time to “challenging” bygone terminology for and ideas about sex work and workers; it foregrounds the testimony of sex workers, sex-trafficking survivors, and performers from the era (someone needs to do a doc just on Michael Lawrence, who used to do “eight [live sex] shows a day” with his wife); the on-camera cops and detectives understand the gig and give solid, groundwork-laying soundbite without coming off glib. I wasn’t five minutes into the first episode before I started 1) thinking about Fear City, the Netflix seventies-Mafia doc we talked about in Blotter Presents 152 and 2) bracing for the inevitable disappointment when TSK wasn’t as good, and I think it isn’t quite as good, but it does hit a lot of the same sweet spots for me, looking back at that New York City of my childhood, the terrifying noisy skeezy pit my parents left so they could have and raise us kids, and getting to learn, now that I’m old enough, what was really up — the true terrors of the place. And I wasn’t tempted to look up the prime suspect or Google “the Torso Killer” while I was watching, but I was writing down a lot of names and book credits from the chyrons, for further reading about Marty Hodas and crime reporting of the era and so on.
Crime Scene’s second season has its issues. A couple of interviewees get a little too much time, with stories that are a little too neat. Contemporary news accounts are visually compelling but can go on a little too long. If you thought you’d give this a miss because the first one was a mess, The Times Square Killer isn’t essential, but it’s much more interesting and interest-ed, and much closer to what the overarching concept has to offer. — SDB
Still time to vote for the January bonus review! It’s a VERY close race this month and I need you to tie-break the top picks for me; remember, you can pick as many options as sound appealing, not just one!
I’ve had “Bet-Crap Dean Stockwell” on my to-do list for two months now, and I really don’t remember why. I mean, the proximate “why” is that Stockwell died in early November, but I can’t recall which line in which obituary made me think he’d have a BET-CRP number high enough to talk about. (Just a reminder about how the BET-CRP arithmetic works:
1 point for each true-crime property, regardless of size/nature of role
2 points for playing a “name figure” in case
1 point if the role received awards attention (i.e., Emmy, Globes, or Oscar nods)
1 point if the property is considered a hall-of-famer
all points divided by number of IMDb credits —> the Bet-Crap)
The late Stockwell’s c.v. is an interesting Bet-Crap prospect, because it’s really a long one on the acting side (204 credits, woof), so we might expect quite a low number, like 4-6 percent — but is that number artificially depressed thanks to certain mid-century DuPont Chain-Smokers’ Theatre-type teleplays, which were based on true stories and I just missed it based on their IMDb write-ups? And did I score a couple films too generously?
Here’s the list of qualifying roles; let’s run the numbers.
Compulsion — full 5 (Stockwell only got acknowledged at Cannes, but this is a big enough picture, and case, that I’ll count it)
The Last Movie — a possibly controversial 1; Stockwell’s playing a guy playing Billy the Kid (I…think?)
She Came To The Valley — 1 (Stockwell’s character I believe gets killed by Pancho Villa)
Born To Be Sold — an adoption-black-market TV movie starring Wonder Woman; it IS a true story but it’s not clear to me whether Stockwell is a composite, so: 1
Fatal Memories — the buried-memories one with Shelley Long as Eileen Franklin; Stockwell plays a real detective whose name is mentioned in many accounts of the case, which notches this one a 3
Quantum Leap — I know, I know, but they did “leap” into true stories, including the one at Dealey Plaza, so…1, fight me if you feel strong (hee)
In The Line Of Duty: Price Of Vengeance — can’t verify that this is based on a true story; no points awarded
Justice In A Small Town — ostensibly based on a true tale of small-town Georgia corruption; not sure if Stockwell’s character really existed, so: 1
Deadline for Murder: From the Files of Edna Buchanan — well, I definitely have to BET-CRP Elizabeth Montgomery, because she keeps showing up in these, but should this count towards her OR Stockwell’s total? I’ll give it a point: Buchanan was real, I do carry her work at Exhibit B., so I’ll allow it on the t.c. merits
Unabomber: The Real Story — his character’s name IRL was probably not Ben Jeffries but I’ll award the two points anyway for a total of 3 here
Again, several instances where points could have gone either way, but if we’re dividing 17 total points by 204, that’s 8.3 percent true crime — higher than you might think given the sheer volume of roles, but perhaps lower than you might expect given Stockwell’s…agnosticism re: quality? Or maybe I missed a few points; let me know!
“I mean, isn’t participating in Mr. Wrong a crime, technically?” I could act like I didn’t think the same thing, but I totally did. Anyway, if you have a likely BET-CRP subject, or want to pitch writing one up, you should! Not least because… — SDB
…we just kicked up our freelance rates for 2022! I regret to say that it is still a pittance, but we do pay our contributors, and if you were fixing to unleash a stemwinder in the comments, you could pick up some gas money by pitching it to us instead. That’s editorial at bestevidence dot fyi for those pitches.
And not for nothing, but paid subscriptions help us share the wealth, plus you get extra content, like my most recent bonus review of the Captive docuseries! So if you’re not too pinched after the holidays, consider a sub! — SDB
This week on Best Evidence: American Greed, five-finger discounts, Eve visits the Crime Scene, and more.
What is this thing? This should help. Follow Best Evidence @bestevidencefyi on Twitter and Instagram. You can also call or text us any time at 919-75-CRIME.