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Cruising & The Bag Murders

MrRING

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So I guess many folks have heard of the infamous and still controversial Al Pacino/William Friedkin film Cruising - but I had never heard of the Bag Murders or any of the other strange connections of this film and various crimes. In case you haven't heard of it, here's a description from IMDB:

A serial killer brutally slays and dismembers several gay men in New York's S&M and leather districts. The young police officer Steve Burns is sent undercover onto the streets as decoy for the murderer. Working almost completely isolated from his department, he has to learn and practice the complex rules and signals of this little society. While barely seeing his girlfriend Nancy anymore, the work starts changing him.

The film was based on the novel Cruising by journalist Gerald Walker, based on a real serial killer. In a weird twist of fate, Friedkin may have consulted with the killer, as he had cast him in a minor role in the Exorcist! From IMDB's trivia:
In 1972 director William Friedkin-huge after The French Connection (1971)--was shooting his spiritual/psych-horror The Exorcist (1973) in downtown New York. For a scene requiring mock brain-scans of the possessed lead character, he shot a real-life radiologist and his assistant, Paul Bateson. In 1979 Friedkin was planning an adaptation of Gerald Walker's novel "Cruising", inspired by a real-life serial killer who was carving up "leather boys" in the city's underground gay bars and dumping their body parts in the Hudson River, wrapped in black plastic bags. When Friedkin learned that his "Exorcist" radiologist assistant Bateson was awaiting trial for the post-coital slaying of gay film critic Addison Verrill, Friedkin decided to pay him a visit to do a little research into the psyche of his cruising killer. Bateson was later sentenced to life in prison for the Verrill murder, but not before dropping hints while in custody that he was also the body bag killer. Those cases remain unsolved, but there's a good chance that Friedkin had not only inadvertently consulted the actual killer responsible for the murders that were the subject of both the novel and the film it was based on, but that Friedkin had also cast him in a film he made years before.

More about the actual crimes of Paul Bateson from the Wikipedia:

Murder of Addison Verrill​

On September 14, 1977, Addison Verrill, a reporter who covered the film industry for Variety, was found dead in his Horatio Street apartment.[4] He had been beaten and stabbed; there were some signs of a struggle. However, nothing of value had been taken. Police believed that if the killer's motive had been robbery, he might have been looking for cash or jewelry since those could be taken quickly.[11]

There was no evidence of forced entry. Verrill had likely let his killer in to the apartment; there were several empty beer cans and half-full liquor glasses at the scene. Gay activist and journalist Arthur Bell, a friend of Verrill's, wrote an article about the case in The Village Voice setting it against the larger issue of how murders of gay men, several of which occurred yearly in the Village, were rarely taken seriously by police or reported on in the media since they were seen as the results of sexual encounters gone wrong. The police, Bell wrote, had learned that Verrill had been at the Mineshaft, a popular leather bar, until 6 a.m., talking to many other patrons.[11]

According to Bell, Verrill's friends said that while he did not seek the kink that was abundant at the Mineshaft, he nevertheless "liked the attitudes" of many of the customers. He was considered a regular, holding court at a corner table, not only at the Mineshaft but the Anvil, another popular leather bar, and other popular gay bars of the era. His presence was seen as making those bars popular.[11]


Phone calls, confession, and arrest​

Bell ended his article by giving the phone number of the New York Police Department's homicide bureau and asking anyone with information to call them. However, eight days after the killing someone called him claiming to be the killer, apparently to correct Bell's assumption that the killer was a psychopath who targeted gays. "I like your story and I like your writing", the caller told him, "but I'm not a psychopath".[12]

In a story that ran on the Voice's front page, the caller recounted the events of the night that ended in Verrill's murder. "I'm gay and I needed money and I'm an alcoholic", he said. After three months of sobriety, he claimed, he had gone out to Badlands, a Christopher Street bar, in the early hours of September 14 where Verrill, whom he did not know, offered to buy him a beer, a proposition the caller accepted. That beer became several, with the two consuming poppers and cocaine in addition to the drinks.[12]

At 3 a.m., they left Badlands and went to the Mineshaft, where they continued their alcohol and drug consumption. The caller told Bell he was impressed by how popular his companion was. "I didn't realize he was such a superstar, and I wanted to go home with him". After two hours, they took a taxi to Verrill's apartment, something the caller said Verrill was reluctant to do because he had to get up early and work on a story.[12]

There the two had more alcohol and cocaine, followed by sex at 7:30 a.m. The caller said that afterwards he realized that was as far as Verrill had wanted the relationship to go. "I needed money and I hated the rejection", so, still intoxicated, "I decided to do something I'd never done before". After incapacitating Verrill with a frying pan from his kitchen, the caller recounted, he stabbed the journalist with a knife, although he said he chose the wrong part of his chest.[12]

After the killing, the caller said, he took cash, totaling $57 ($255 in modern dollars)[13] and Verrill's Master Charge card, passport, and some clothes. He used the money to buy liquor and was consequently drunk for the entire next day. Bell confirmed with another source that the man had been seen at a popular bathhouse that night.[12]

The caller offered some information about himself besides that relevant to understanding the crime. He claimed to be the son of an orchestra leader, to have a wife in Berlin who did not understand his homosexuality, and a teenage son. He had an interest in the arts, and had wanted to be a dancer when he was younger.[12]

Bell noted that he talked about wanting to "atone" for the crime several times, which he connected to the conversation taking place on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. "but I don't want to give myself up. I wouldn't be able to practice again. I'd lose my license". He declined to tell Bell what sort of practice the license was for, suggesting that would help identify him.[12]

When Bell contacted police about the call, they told him that it seemed like the first solid lead in the case. The caller had known about the stolen credit card, a detail police had not made public, and described a white substance found on the floor of Verrill's apartment as Crisco, a shortening frequently used at the time by gay men as a sexual lubricant. Police had not thus far been able to identify it and had also not made the information public.[12]

Detectives suspected the caller would call Bell again, and went to his apartment to wait with him. At 11 p.m. his phone rang; it was not the original caller but a man who identified himself as "Mitch". He told Bell the killer was Paul Bateson, whom he had gotten to know while the two were drying out at St. Vincent's Hospital a few months earlier. While he believed Bateson was not the man's real name, since he knew the man to have used the pseudonym "Johnny Johnson" at one point, he said Bateson was an unemployed X-ray technician and that he had called him earlier and confessed to the crime.[12]

Mitch asked to meet Bell in person, but the police told Bell not to do so.[12] Instead, they just arrested Bateson at his East 12th Street apartment, where he was lying around drunk;[5][14] when he was asked if he knew why he was being arrested, he pointed to an open copy of the Voice with Bell's article and indicated that that was probably why. A detective went to the bar and brought Mitch in for questioning as well; he was released after a few hours. Bateson eventually gave police a handwritten confession that was consistent with what he had told Bell.[12]



Arrest and jailhouse conversations​

Bateson was charged with second-degree murder and detained while awaiting trial. Bell interviewed Bateson in person a month later, visiting him at Rikers Island. Bateson talked generally about his life, something he said he did often[7] (as did other acquaintances of Bateson whom Bell spoke with[12]). Jail, he said, was helping him to again get sober; his biggest regret about being in custody was missing the new season of the Joffrey Ballet, at the time based in New York. Bell admitted that he, too, might have taken Bateson up on an offer to go to his apartment if he had met him in a bar rather than a jail.[7]

While Bateson avoided talking about the crime he was charged with (on what Bell supposed to be advice from his attorney) he did talk about the trial. He had pleaded not guilty and expected that to be the verdict after a long trial. "A lot of people will be hurt—parents, friends ... Then, I'll tear up my roots and settle somewhere else".[7]



Suspicion in serial killings​

Main article: Bag murders

At the time of Bateson's arrest, police had also been investigating a series of murders of gay men over the previous two years which they believed were committed by the same person due to similarities in the killings' modus operandi. Six corpses of men had been found, dismembered, in bags floating in the Hudson River. None of them have ever been identified, but police traced the clothes on them to shops in Greenwich Village that catered to the gay community.[4] Since the bags reportedly had wording on them connecting them to NYUMC's neuropsychiatric unit,[15] and the dismemberment of the bodies appeared to have been done by someone skilled in using a knife, investigators began to suggest publicly that Bateson might be a suspect in, as they were referred to officially, the "CUPPI" killings, for "Circumstances Unknown Pending Police Investigation",[1] as well.[5]

Those killings were the subject of another interview Bateson gave, although it would not be made public until 2012. Friedkin, who recalled him from both his initial visit to NYUMC and the filming of the angiography for The Exorcist as a "nice young man" who stood out due to the earring and studded bracelet he wore, neither of which were common accessories for men at the time, read a long story about the case in the Daily News. Surprised that the gentle Bateson he recalled could have even been accused of a murder, Friedkin came to Rikers to talk with him after getting permission from Bateson's lawyer.[15]

In an interview with Mubi's The Notebook that coincided with the release of his film Killer Joe, Friedkin said Bateson admitted killing Verrill, although the director then incorrectly stated that Bateson had dismembered the body and thrown the bagged body parts in the river. Bateson said that the prosecutors were offering him a deal whereby if he confessed to the bag murders and some other unsolved killings he would receive a shortened sentence. He told Friedkin he was not sure if he would accept it.[15] In a 2018 episode of The Hollywood Reporter's "It Happened in Hollywood" podcast, Friedkin attributed to Bateson a confession to the unsolved murders.[1]

As a result of his conversation with Bateson, Friedkin decided it was time to make the film adaptation of New York Times reporter Gerald Walker's 1970 novel Cruising about a police officer going undercover in the gay community to catch a serial killer.[5] Life had already imitated art, with an NYPD officer, Randy Jurgenson, going undercover in gay bars since he was similar in appearance to the victims of the bag killer. Intrigued by the leather subculture Bateson had told him about, Friedkin knew Matthew Ianniello, the mafioso who owned the Mineshaft and other Manhattan gay bars of the era, and was able to visit the bar himself. He later added scenes set there to his film,[15] released in 1980 to mixed reviews after heavy protests by the city's gay community during production.[5]


There was a murderous outburst around the film as well. From the current Wikipedia writeup:

According to a 2013 book by film professor R. Hart Kylo-Patrick,[37] "Two months after the film's release, a bar prominently displayed in the movie came under attack by a man with a sub-machine gun, killing two patrons and wounding 12 others. Friedkin refused to comment on the attack." A 2016 article in The New York Times identifies the culprit of this shooting as Ronald K. Crumpley, formerly an officer with New York City Transit Police.[38] He first shot two people outside a delicatessen with an Uzi, then walked a few blocks where he shot into a group of men standing outside The Ramrod, a gay bar. In total, he shot eight persons, two of whom died. Crumpley was said to have stated to police after his arrest: “I'll kill them all — the gays — they ruin everything." He was found "not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect" and spent the rest of his life at a psychiatric hospital, dying at the age of 73 in 2015. The New York Times article from 2016 does not mention Cruising or Friedkin, and it is not clear if the film played any role in the attack.

Having read about the Bag Murders now, I'm reminded of the Cleveland Torso Murders...
 
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