S.amuel Little claimed to have fatally strangled 93 women in numerous states over the course of his murderous life, and Confront a serial killer let him outline his crimes – and his motivations – in hours of audio interviews conducted by author Jillian Lauren. Both for this docuseries and as part of the research for her upcoming book Exit Sandman: The True Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Lauren befriended Little after his 2014 conviction and incarceration for the murder of three women. And as she said repeatedly during this five-episode affair, her goal was to persuade Little’s confessions (who died in December 2020) to identify his victims and thus give a voice to the voiceless, whose demise was ignored by a criminal justice system that saw them as, according to Lauren, “less dead.”
So want Lauren and director Joe Berlinger Confront a serial killer to be a story about not just Little, but, more importantly, the dozens of female prostitutes and drug addicts he killed – a noble cause, unfortunately nullified by the fact that the real protagonist and subject of this nun- fiction pointed to Lauren herself.
It premiered on April 18 on Starz, Berlinger’s latest crime attempt (Crime scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel) is a case of a journalist who allows himself to become the story. Lauren’s intentions are principled and her triumphs are real, but from the moment she first appears in front of the camera there’s a performative quality to every tear training, breathtaking line readings, narrated piece of prose and reference to Little as “Mr. Sam Especially when interspersed with the talking heads of the rest of the proceedings, Lauren overly acts on camera, which fits with the fact that she, and Berlinger, consistently keep her role at the center of this saga, so that it soon becomes becomes less about what Lauren does than about her doing it – empathetic, fair, and at the expense of her own sanity and the well-being of her family.
Lauren’s husband Scott Shriner (Weezer’s bassist) and their two sons come forward from time to time to explain the toll Lauren is taking on her and their clan. That idea is then emphasized by Lauren’s first-person commentary, in which, with intense sadness in her voice and eyes, she talks about her responsibility to Little’s victims, her identification with them (thanks to her own history with drugs and violent men), her desire to create safe spaces for her children in the midst of her macabre toil, her inability to let go of the trials of these many victims, and most importantlyher struggling to endure endless chats with Little. Despite denying any guilt during his first trial, Little opens up candidly to Lauren during their phone calls, providing all kinds of gruesome details about his childhood, mentality, and countless disgusting crimes.
Unfortunately, in a way that’s the opposite of Liz Garbus’ I will disappear in the dark, who married Michelle McNamara’s quest to identify the Golden State Killer with a portrait of the socio-political climate of 1970s and ’80s America, and Berlinger turns the proceedings into a platform for his star. And every time Lauren says she’s putting the dead in the spotlight, it feels like she’s courting it herself.
Lauren’s analysis of Little adds even more and is of a pedestrian variety – although that doesn’t stop her from telling it as if she were spreading hitherto unknown insights. The idea that Little was a “predator” hunting marginalized women whom society was unlikely to miss – and who would not warrant a serious police investigation – is perfect and borne out by the facts of Little’s decades-long murder spree. Yet it is also a fairly clear facet of this story. Time and again the series makes momentous statements that are not nearly as astute or revealing as they think, leaving everything a little exaggerated and empty.
Time and again the series makes momentous statements that are not nearly as astute or revealing as they think, leaving everything a little exaggerated and empty.
Lauren’s bigger thesis is that Little’s saga is a clear example of the failure of the criminal justice system, because despite having a rap sheet totaling nearly 100 pages (including offenses that ranged from burglary and assault to rape and murder ), escaped serious prosecution. This is also true, and speaks to a general disdain for sex workers and drug abusers (especially if they are women of color). And an angry new showdown between Laurie Barros, who survived a Little attack, and the prosecutor who got no guilty conviction (instead settled for a plea deal that landed Little two years behind bars) speaks to the misogyny that here, where on-the-skids women were thrown out in fields, in barrels and on rubbish dumps by the monstrous Little, then belittled by the institutions designed to stand up for them.
But even in this regard Confront a serial killer tells us things we already know, while at the same time mentioning things that do not fit the material at hand. For example, Lauren claims that Little’s ability to escape prosecution for so long is proof that the justice system is racist – this despite the fact that he was a black man who in many cases murdered white women, which you would think ideally feeds him. a racist system. Don’t help matters is a sordid, non-chronological structure that makes things less – instead of more – clear, and suggests that Berlinger himself knows that nothing particularly profound can be gleaned from Little’s reign of terror other than that it’s depressingly easy to get away. to come to terms with the killing of those living on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.
In his conversations with Lauren, Little offers ample evidence of his own aberrant sex-driven sociopathy, his supernatural coldness, and his arrogance. He repeatedly tells Lauren that she is destined to be with him “forever”, and that, like the souls of the women he killed, he “owns” her. He’s a chilling creep, to the end. In contrast to its genre brothers John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise or The confession killerhowever, Confront a serial killer Marks Little as a regular liar and yet takes a lot of what he says at first glance. The success of Lauren and the police in pinning down countless unsolved murders of Little – based on his own testimonials – in many ways suggests that he was telling the truth. But the possibility that he was also an egomaniac who claimed crimes he didn’t commit isn’t explored here – unsurprisingly, given the series’ general blind spot when it comes to self-righteousness.