I had run across this, rerun on Reelz (5/22/18), after it had begun, but on hearing the killer's name had had a "hmmm" moment of familiarity. I was about to do a search through my VHS tape indexes when the location's logo was shown, and though long it had been since I heard tell of it, instantly a recollection of that 27-year-old horror came back - along with personal angst at the revelation of the
date, on which my father passed 22 years later. Still, aside from the must-be-Patent Pending superannoying line delivery of "Dr. Jaybuzz" - who frequently cannot speak a whole sentence without leaving 3-second gaps between words - and the inappropriate smirking of another interviewee (whose name I didn't catch), I found much of the information in this take on that hellish horror so long ago enlightening; in fact it had been 12 years since it had been recounted on TV that I know of. But then the smirker started on - and the accompanying reenactment blew up - a shockingly, utterly bogus scenario that purported to supply some kind of reasoning behind the yet-again senseless massacre. It was said that at some point the mass murderer had taken a girl on a trip all the way out to San Ysidro, California, where the July 1984 McDonald's massacre had occurred, and that the killer was practically obsessed by that incident. That as may have been, but what was not at all true was the misbegotten loser telling the girl they were eating "in this restaurant" where it had taken place - because, although the Big Mac Shack execs had outrageously had that charnel house cleaned and repaired (by its own workers, demonstrating jawdropping insensitivity as well as cheapness in not hiring professionals) so that it could actually be reopened, that coldhearted corporate fantasy had got swept away by community uproar, and only 10 days later it was completely destroyed. I remember my own red-hot fury at the news accounts of this sickmaking the-show-must-go-on proposal, as if any parents in that community would permit their children to go into the place having to tread over the "cleaned" outside spots where 2 little boys had been cut down by a true monster, much less the far worse bloodshed on the inside. Disgusting. These days social media would've broken out like a wildfire in searing protest over that. But then I wept anew a few days later on reading the headline WON'T REOPEN, which crazy idea never should have farted out in public to begin with. That site was empty except for temporary memorials for the next 5 years, until plans for a more permanent one were initiated, and later achieved. So there is absolutely no way, except in some parallel universe, that there had been a "restaurant" scene in which the girl was said to have been "creeped out" by being in a place where such slaughter had happened - although that's exactly what they did with the massacre site here, which they clearly ignored the lessons of San Ysidro with that repaired-and-reopened move (as if likewise there was noplace else in that town to build another one). It's interesting to speculate on the differences between the locations that the peoples of Killeen would not only allow the slaughterhouse to be reopened for Business As Usual but to again patronize it - for 9 years, until it finally closed. I know I wouldn't even go near such a place if possible - I gave an apartment building in Washington where a friend of mine was horribly murdered a wide berth for about 5 years, and for more years afterward when I had to pass it by didn't even look at it. But of more moment, in the context of these true-crime presentations, is that given the fantastic falsehood portrayed here (all too easily verified by wikipedia & other sources), what other lies so large might be smacking the viewers upside their eyes & ears on other shows, unsuspecting? This isn't after all a case, for example, of a reenactment white Chevrolet standing in for an actual blue Honda or even, as in a 2015 episode of Love Kills, a short guy with a mustache being portrayed by a taller one without a single whisker on his mug; as they say in legalese, this is a "material fact" being so badly (and transparently) misrepresented. Now it's a matter of what else just in CopyCat Killers is also made up out of air so thin it might as well have come from the Moon - which, since from its formal name the term "lunatic" originates, is pretty appropriate for a move this nutty that manages to disrespect the memory of not only the 44 original fatalities but however many survivors may sadly, though inevitably, have since gone on to join them in the hereafter. It sure diminishes my interest in these productions if we're going to be lied to in this fashion like some slimebag politician oozing empty promises. In both cases, to quote a very smart man half a century ago, "we've had enough of that."
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