Finding a criminal and looking for tiny specks of possible incompletesness in evidence (present in >80% of cases, because, typically, during the commission of a crime, there is rarely a film crew present at the scene to document its every step, and rarely a group of criminalists to immediately secure all material evidence) and ways of sowing possible doubts (possible in >90% of cases) is a very profitable and highly fashionable business nowadays, so much so that there are more pseudo-documentaries trying to sell a criminal's "innocence" than there are convicted criminals themselves.
What can a director who looks for such a business opportunity do, then? Why, dig for the cases where there is no doubt, and throw in enough "maybes" to suggest some! Better still, if one can add salacious, also fashionable phrases such as "Satanic panic", "religious mania", "fanaticism", etc., etc. - that's a guaranteed sale!
The director of this chaotically filmed, artificially stretched like an old rubber (there are four episodes; one would be more than enough, and every one repeats at least 15 minutes of footage from the other episodes, verbatim) attempt at making a documentary reached for an old US case, the series of murders in the town of Fall River, where three local street-walkers were abused, victimised, and savagely murdered, and a local violent pimp and drug dealer was captured and sentenced for one of the killings, with an almost equally unappealing street-walker who had the ambitions of being a competitive pimp (and who, by her personality and looks, reminds one of a double for Charles Manson's brutal cohort Susan Atkins) being sentenced as well, after providing testimony.
Those who know the case know that it is relatively simple, and involved mostly violence, drugs, and competition in street criminality. That would not be interesting enough to sell, so the director concentrates on another aspect of the crimes: The Satanic Angle! After all, he tells you, *everyone* knows that when a crime involves some satanic, occult, esoteric, etc., imagery or background, it is obviously false, it's a frame-up, it's a scandalous lie, all the culprits are beautiful little innocents, etc., etc. "Case closed!" - he screams. "The pimp is innocent! Just listen to his convincing testimony that I've recorded! The real culprit is, uh, uh... well, does it matter? That woman who testified against him lied, and I will suggest that maybe she is guilty, even though I will forget that some of the people whom I filmed in support of the pimp are also saying things that make it seem as if the woman is innocent as well, so, uh, uh, never mind! See, there's also this weird guy, and I will suggest that *he* is guilty, too, because he's weird, and weird is *BAD*! He's weird like the pimp is, but, uh, uh, it's, uh, a different weird! See, he was also an abuser! Just like the pimp! Uh, I mean, uh... here, let me reinsert some footage that you've already seen! Oh, and here is half an hour of video about the COVID-19 outbreak, which is absolutely related to the topic of the 1979 murders! How do you like that, huh? Huh? I'm so great!"
That's approximately the kind of chaotic, repetitive nonsense that constitutes this pseudo-documentary. (By the way, regarding the pimp's filmed scenes: most of his monologues consist of repetitions of the phrases "know what I'm sayin'?" and "and all that stuff", as well as its alternative "and all that sh...". Perhaps the director saw in him a kindred repetitive soul who also repeatedly and repetitively likes to repeat himself? Let's repeat... well, no, let's not be this mess's director, and let's *stop* repeating).
At any rate: in reality, the occult/satanic angle consisted mostly of the fact that the violent pimp would occasionally use occult imagery and babbling, drugged "rites" (which would make even the old conman, the self proclaimed "founder of Satan's church", Anton la Vey himself - real name Howard Levey - roll his eyes) as just another tool with which to intimidate and control the unfortunate women whom he exploited and abused. This was actually quite a common tool used by his likes at the time, and is found in a number of similar solved cases, such as the notorious crimes of Adolfo Constanzo and his Matamoros sect, or Robin Gecht and his "Ripper Crew" gang. In both of those cases, the figure of a psychopathic leader / self-claimed guru took on a group of much weaker, damaged followers, and, by using the guises of occultism, Satanism and esoterica as a means of dominating, influencing and manipulating those followers, he gradually made them fulfill his own desires and commit hideous murders, including primitive rituals and cannibalism. And, in both cases, the followers submitted to his commands, even though the leader himself was privately motivated just by his sexual deviancy and violent psyche, and treated the occult factor as just a tool of influence and manipulation.
However, there *is*, in fact, a seemingly innocent man in all this mess, and it is the fellow whom the director of this 40-minutes-stretched-into-4-hours oeuvre desperately tries to present as "The Real Killer" (TM). The man, after having something of a mental breakdown, made admissions of "religious visions" of one of the murders, which was enough to send him behind bars for it. Nothing in the evidence points towards him; in fact, everything that exists points *away* from him. The other accusation levelled against that man is that he was an abuser. Was he? Maybe - but all there is to support that accusation is the word of a professional, lifetime liar, and the liar's one-time close associate, who supports the liar's words (and who appears in the interviews as someone who comes across rather bizarrely, almost as if drugged or intoxicated). The victim's own closest friend and confidante, a woman of her age, spoke of the man in her own testimonies (both at the time of the murders and in the 2000s), and described him as "a little mouse", who never did anything hurtful or even offensive to the victim; the man and the victim had, in the testimonies of the victim's friend, a shared, accordant and relatively happy relationship (as happy as the life of two social outcasts, one of whom is a street-walker, can be, that is). Instead of the man, the victim's friend directed her own suspicion towards, unsurprisingly, the sentenced pimp and the sentenced street-walker. Of course, the victim's friend is completely omitted by this pseudo-documentary, as her testimonies go completely against the director's "subjective truth", in every aspect and detail.
The only real evidence against the man seem to be local people's recollections that he was the town's oddball when it came to dressing, and that he may have had questionable morals, which may have involved alcohol and/or drugs. Of course, the questionable morals of the sentenced pimp - a genuinely confirmed violent abuser, a known drug user and provider, and a manipulative sadist - do nothing to prevent the director of this mess from wanting to be his own desktop BozoBuddy, and to advertise his "innocence" by the means of selling this product-supposedly-similar-to-a-documentary.
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