‘Last Call’ Review: HBO Doc on Serial Killer of Gay Men 1990s NY – The Hollywood Reporter

Contents:

• ‘I GOT AN UMBRELLA AND AMBN’: INDICTMENT REVEALS ALLEGED CONSPIRACY BEHD GAY BAR DEATHS
• MAN SENTENCED JEFEY DAHMER COPYT GAY DATG APP PLOT: FEDS

‘I GOT AN UMBRELLA AND AMBN’: INDICTMENT REVEALS ALLEGED CONSPIRACY BEHD GAY BAR DEATHS

Te Crime We Bged 2022For gay New Yorkers 1991, there were still plenty of reasons to not put much fah law enforcement.

Jt 22 years after clash wh police outsi the Stonewall Inn Greenwich Village opened a promisg new ont the ongog fight for LGBTQ+ rights, AIDS was cimatg the queer muny and hate crim were on the rise, no small part due to the tragilly wispread misperceptn of the vis as a gay disease and lack of unrstandg about how was transmted. And another nightmarish turn of events, someone was g NYC's vibrant gay nightlife scene as a huntg ground.

Last Call: When a Killer Stalked Queer New York, a four-part HBO seri premierg July 9, lv to the grisly murrs and a not-so-distant past when blatant homophobia was still the norm and queer bars, as one activist puts the show, "were one of the few plac the muny where we uld e and feel safe. "And even then, adds Bea Hanson, who served as a liaison between the NYC Gay & Lbian Anti-Vlence Project and police, "There was always this sort of 'you've got to watch your back at the same time too' sort of feelg.

MAN SENTENCED JEFEY DAHMER COPYT GAY DATG APP PLOT: FEDS

Tony Brooks, a 26-year-old ndidate for cy uncil at the time, told police he and Anrson had gone to Manhattan together the night of May 3 to attend a fundraiser at the Central Park Wt home of Robert Browne, a proment gay rights activist. One wasn't gay.

One was not a homosexual. "In hdsight, " he says, "maybe  would've been a good ia to follow up wh the that time, we didn't know was a gay bar. I don't know anythg about where all the gay bars New York are.

"Sometim he went for male pannship, " rells former New Jersey State Police Detective Nick Theodos, who not the seri that Mulhy's murr was the first se that brought him to close ntact wh the gay muny. "The homosexual muny wasn't very open about what they were dog their private liv, " he said. Sakara, an openly gay 56-year-old who equented the Five Oaks piano bar the Wt Village, where he was last seen alive on July 30, 1993, acrdg to vtigators.

All the targets — Peter Anrson, Thomas Mulhy, Anthony Marrero, Michael Sakara — were gay men picked up Manhattan one eveng only to turn up hours or days later as severed body parts roadsi trash ns outsi the cy. But I also spect ’s no surprise that tak the ps an furiatgly long time to get there — nor that the eply graed homophobia of law enforcement specifilly and Amerin society more broadly is what slows them down. “Why is the emphasis on the gay part?

As far as the thori are ncerned, “The gay thg wasn’t really relevant to the vtigatn other than fdg out who might kill him, and where he hung out. Archival footage lays out on one hand the vilent celty of Ana Bryant’s anti-gay speech and the unabashed homophobia of law enforcement lears sneerg that sodomy is a crime, and the rage of AIDS protts and the pleasur of queer nightlife on the other.

Activists like Bea Hanson and Matt Foreman (both formerly of the NYC Anti-Vlence Project) and reporters like Dunn Osborne (om Gay Cy News) remember beg flood wh reports of hate crim, and the hostile difference of tablishments like the NYPD or the mastream media toward them. (A smatterg of more recent clips nnect those old prejudic to the anti-gay, anti-trans sentiment bubblg back up today, though Last Call rrectly assum most dienc n make the nnectn on their own. It clocks what’s not beg said when Marrero’s big brother still nnot brg himself to acknowledge that Anthony was a gay sex worker — and how much that silence now weighs on Anton, Anthony’s bisexual Gen Z nephew.