Admittedly I did watch this about 3 years ago when I first came out, because it was interesting insofar as I lived in this part of London around that time, and I never heard about these murders at all....
The documentary is good but not great, there are holes everywhere and what it is attempting to convey is somewhat lost in the concept that it was police ineptitude that created this problem, and to some extent that is probably true. Its also probably true that had this been four teenaged girls the coppers would have been a little more cogent in their investigation and it is also fair to assume that their dismissal of the lives of gay men was in no small part due to institutional homophobia.
What is less clear to me is how this guy managed to lure all these young men to his place. I mean come on, he was no oil painting was he, and no matter what inducements were on offer, one would seriously not have thought you'd meet this chap at the local tube station and decide to go home with him, no, you'd get back on that tube and leave. Maybe drugs were involved, or the promise of gods knows what, and it is sad as much as anything that this may have been all it took to get probably vulnerable young guys to go with him. It begs the question to me around why people make the choices they do. All of us gay men I should imagine are none too saintly and we I suppose will all have those experiences we look back on and think (after seeing this doc) 'there but for the grace of god go I' - the concept of going to a strangers house for sex is not a new one, or a diminished one at all, and yet it is probably a very risky behaviour - the risk is perhaps also part of the thrill of it.
Anyways, the documentary shines something of a light on the choices we make as people as much as it does the lack of action by the local coppers. They failed to connect the dots that were plainly there to see, and because of this, the questionable choices of the men involved became fatal choices. I see there is a 3 episode series out in recent weeks that I think from the synopsis is a serialisation of the families story around this case, haven't seen it yet, but will get to it, will be interesting to see how they address these questions if indeed they do so at all.
This story is a salutary lesson to any of us who think its entirely safe to go off to a random strangers house and to be so vulnerable, sure, not everyone is a psychopathic killer, but, some people are and ultimately we are each accountable for the decisions we make.
The documentary is good but not great, there are holes everywhere and what it is attempting to convey is somewhat lost in the concept that it was police ineptitude that created this problem, and to some extent that is probably true. Its also probably true that had this been four teenaged girls the coppers would have been a little more cogent in their investigation and it is also fair to assume that their dismissal of the lives of gay men was in no small part due to institutional homophobia.
What is less clear to me is how this guy managed to lure all these young men to his place. I mean come on, he was no oil painting was he, and no matter what inducements were on offer, one would seriously not have thought you'd meet this chap at the local tube station and decide to go home with him, no, you'd get back on that tube and leave. Maybe drugs were involved, or the promise of gods knows what, and it is sad as much as anything that this may have been all it took to get probably vulnerable young guys to go with him. It begs the question to me around why people make the choices they do. All of us gay men I should imagine are none too saintly and we I suppose will all have those experiences we look back on and think (after seeing this doc) 'there but for the grace of god go I' - the concept of going to a strangers house for sex is not a new one, or a diminished one at all, and yet it is probably a very risky behaviour - the risk is perhaps also part of the thrill of it.
Anyways, the documentary shines something of a light on the choices we make as people as much as it does the lack of action by the local coppers. They failed to connect the dots that were plainly there to see, and because of this, the questionable choices of the men involved became fatal choices. I see there is a 3 episode series out in recent weeks that I think from the synopsis is a serialisation of the families story around this case, haven't seen it yet, but will get to it, will be interesting to see how they address these questions if indeed they do so at all.
This story is a salutary lesson to any of us who think its entirely safe to go off to a random strangers house and to be so vulnerable, sure, not everyone is a psychopathic killer, but, some people are and ultimately we are each accountable for the decisions we make.