The Killing Season

[Meredith Quill]

Discuss The Killing Season Here!

[Primetimer]

Two filmmakers set out to try to solve the murders of nearly a dozen women on Long Island -- but is that story the real story?

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[AlliePK]

They DID find Shannan Gilbert's body on December 13, 2011.

[Sarah D. Bunting]

You're right; I've updated the piece. Thanks.

[Primetimer]

The filmmakers behind A&E's upcoming true-crime event series talked to Sarah D. Bunting about Capote, becoming the story, and moving away from whodunits.

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[gary st. martin]

I like the show ! I hate the dreary soundtrack that NEVER CEASES !  STOP the unnecessary sound track, the show does not need this, ie   First 48 Hours doesn't need this music because the content is enough ... same applies with The Killing Season   ... content is enough ! I am a lifelong career professional musician, a little background sound track goes a long way  ... this is OVER KILL  ... no pun intended.  Thank you !

[attica]

The stats given for the long-haul killers are horrifying. Watching this series in light of recent national political events, I keep thinking about the Germaine Greer quote: Women have no idea how much men hate them.

[Sisygambis]

I agree, Attica, I was overwhelmed by the sheer numbers of women who have gone missing or been killed.  When the stat came up  that 20,000 women could go missing in a year with no one reporting it, I had to sit back and take an extra breath for a few moments.

[zxy556575]

Jesus. The innumerable missing missing, estimated number of serial killers, and the highways murder map made my stomach curdle.

Why -- after so many decades and so many crimes -- won't police departments taking missing persons cases seriously? I don't care if 90% of them have left voluntarily; you still put in the fucking time to find out.

Edited November 28, 2016 by lordonia

[Primetimer]

How TKS relates to ID's The Vanishing Women.

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[primemover76]

Well color me surprised. I grew up in Chillicothe, OH and did a double take when I saw it in one of the headlines here. I got out of there after high school (a bit over 20 years ago) and never looked back. I would take exception to the small town comments from the police in that clip. It may be a big town but its not isolated in the middle of no where. Its not some town with only one traffic light. Even when I was there the towns population was over 20,000 and the county population (Where I lived) was closer to 70,000.

[cmfran]

Really liking this show so far, but wow, it is bleak. Between the attitudes towards the women and the poverty of the victims and their families/friends, it's a tough watch.

I never knew so many murders were being committed by long-haul truckers, but it makes sense. 

[rwgrab]

I had really high hopes for this project based on the filmmakers' work with the documentary Cropsey, but unfortunately it just didn't work for me.  Since Cropsey specifically set out to explore an urban legend, this style of conversational investigation was a really good fit.  In this case, I just felt like we were being bombarded with hearsay on top of hearsay that didn't lead to a greater truth.  Also, their tendency to believe and repeat all the things they heard from random people online doesn't tell me whether this was well-researched or just tossed together.  Like that guy in episode 3 or 4 who said of Atlantic City that he just really-super-duper-thought all the girls were killed at this one spot, so they drive there, and then say "oh yeah, this is totally like Gilgo Beach."  Well, maybe, but how does that prove a connection if you're just going off of what one person said without any corroboration?

And then there were also internal inconsistencies between the episodes.  Just one example:

Episode 2 - Two different styles means we probably have two different killers dumping bodies at Gilgo Beach

Episode 6 - No way did these suspects in NM kill the women on the West Mesa because it's way too close to their homes and serial killers would never keep the bodies that close to home (never mind the serial killers in Cleveland who actually kept their bodies in their homes)

Leads to Episode 8: oh yeah, this guy in Massapequa is really close, so he totally could have killed all 10 women on Gilgo Beach

Or within an episode: like before a commercial break the author of The Missing Missing says there could be thousands of victims, who's to say?  And then after the commercial break, they repeat that as if it were a real statistic when the database they were looking at for the victims along interstates only has about 600 entries.

What did work for me were the scientific portions, like the guy crunching data to illuminate long-term patters or using geographic remote sensing to hunt for possible burial sites.  I guess that tells you a bit about me and why driving around and collecting rumors for $20 a pop from people on the street didn't wind up convincing me of much.

The last episode made some pretty strong statements about how broken our system is, but these cases of sex workers and possible drug addicts who mostly communicate anonymously with their connections are bound to be the hardest to solve since there's so little outward leads to be drawn.  Should we blame the police for that?  I don't really agree with the central premise that a bunch of people searching on the Internet can do a better job than law enforcement has.  Not all data in the world is available to people on Websleuths, so just because somebody on the message boards is emphatic about a certain theory, I'm not ready to assume he's cracked the case.  It's like that episode of Will and Grace where Karen says something like "You know how I know?  Because I reeeeeealy think so!" :)

I agree that we need to take a better look at how data is gathered by law enforcement so that we might see patterns that would help solve cases, though.  They definitely made a strong case for that, but the rest of the project really undermined their findings for me.

[attica]

I was pretty frustrated with how quickly R&J dismissed the police angle in NM. So their suspect says "We told girls we did it to scare them!" and they're all, yup, sure, that makes total sense, let's move on. Sorry, no. That sounds to me like gaslighting, deflection. Especially in light of Daniel Holtzclaw  and other known badly behaved cops: I find it hard to imagine a bed of corruption like APD is filled with such well-meaning Samaritan cops.  

On the other hand, the narco-terrorism angle is believable too, so what do I know? I do know I'd like better investigating, that's for sure. 

[zxy556575]

It was pretty much eight hours of wheel-spinning for me, with droning narration.

I didn't find Cropsey compelling so already had low expectations.

[stinkogingko]

I enjoyed Rachel and Josh but agree this was mostly wheel-spinning. Not enough focus on any one topic. I think they're right that there are some very bad police forces out there and the lack of cross-jurisdictional cooperation is a real problem. Some of the original Gilgo Five cases might have been solved if they'd been worked harder sooner. But I think these cases do tend to be hard to solve and I'm not convinced that citizen sleuths could do a whole lot better. Though I'd watch the hell out of a documentary about Websleuths. Who are these people? Why would anyone believe this Peter Brendt guy? 

[12catcrazy]

Not many comments on this series.  I felt it was very interesting watching it but ultimately had no answers to much of anything.   If nothing else, I hope that it shed some light on all these women who have gone missing and who ultimately the police (and society) don't seem to give a crap about. 

And as a person who has read a shit load of "true crime" books since I was a kid (we're talking 40 years here), about the only way most of these serial killers get caught is when they either totally fuck up (almost WANTING to get caught) or by pure accident.  We had two guys here on Long Island in late 80s, early 90s. Joel Rifkin was caught apparently driving without license plates and when finally stopped, had a victim's body in his vehicle, and I don't remember the details about how they caught Robert Schulman but it had something to do with a car.  

There has been speculation that Rifkin might have something to do with a least some of the Gilgo Beach murders, but he denies it.   And with all of the corruption in the Suffolk Cty police dept and local governments here, God only knows about Gilgo Beach.   I don't see them finding the killer any time soon. 

[starri]

I have a real problem with the way they describe the creepy German man as a profiler.  He's not.  He's just someone with the internet and a copy of DSM5.

[azshadowwalker]

I didn't get to watch this when it originally aired, but I was able to see episode 6 online. The interviews with the women were heartbreaking. In my younger, wilder days, many of the women in my circle worked the streets or strip clubs. One of them died. Others were stalked, beaten, threatened or raped. I could see my friends in these women. 

Heather was the one who made me the most sad. I was so happy that she was able to physically survive, but the emotional impact was obvious. She was "in the bathroom" when they arrived. During the interview, she looked like she was fighting a nod. Pretty sure she was shooting up when they got there. 

Mostly, I am glad they didn't focus on Websleuths. I post over there because of my interest in true crime. It's kinda batshit most of the time. I would rather listen to the facts of the cases than the bizarre theories that come from that place.