What goes on beneath the skull?

Mindhunter (Miniseries, S1-2, 19 episodes)
Director: David Flincher et al.

Growing up, being exposed to all those Hollywood movies and T.V. crime dramas, I used to wonder why was it that they were so many serial killers in America. Fast forward to the present, not necessarily much wiser; I think this type of crime is evenly distributed worldwide. As people become aware of such psychologically-related killings, more get exposed. It used to be that crimes and murders happened because of money, women, power and anger. Now we have another component to feed, our unexplainable inner desire to inflict pain, destroy and gloat in the joy of executing, planning, reminiscing, reliving the moment and being in the limelight dodging it. 

One reason why serial killer murders can be extensively investigated in the USA and Europe is the availability of funds and manpower. Even years after the cases have turned 'cold', there is a push from society to continue investigating these cases. The State has the finances to invest in newer forensic tools and mobilise resources as the situation warrants.

This miniseries was set in 1997 and the years after that. It was a time when the FBI was trying to make sense of the nonsensical killings that happened in the 1960s all through the 1970s. They had started a unit, Behavioural Science Unit (BSU), to look into these crimes and the killers' minds and make sense of it.

If one is expecting swashbuckling police-and-robbers car-chasing drama in this one, he will surely be disappointed. The series is quite cerebral, with a lot of talking and mental gymnastics. The characters are complex, and their life stories form part of the storytelling drama. It revolves around three FBI agents and a psychology professor. They interview convicted serial killers (the name that they came up with for these killers who kill in a particular pattern and leave specific signatures). The initial name was Sequential Killers. They were to build a rapport, map their mind and hopefully use their knowledge to catch future serial killers.

Good casting and makeup of serial killers' lookalike

Some criminals they interviewed include David Berkowitz (Son of Sam), Ed Kemper (Co-ed Killer), Ted Bundy and Charles. Manson (who influenced hippies to do his killings). In the second season, a good portion is spent investigating and catching the Atlanta Child Murders. In real life, the Atlanta murders happened in the 1979-81 bracket, involving up to 26 child murders and two adults. A person was sentenced for the murders of the two adults, but no one has ever been charged for the 26 black children. It has a sore point for the black population in Atlanta in the State of Georgia.

An engaging watch, 4.8/5. Even though everyone knows that the show was left hanging with the story of a man with an ADT uniform acting funny, probably itching to murder someone, begging to be told, the filmmakers have said they have no immediate plans for a third season because it is too expensive.

(P.S. A question often asked is whether criminals are born or are they nurtured? Are the parents to be blamed for their children's murderous malfeasance? Can upbringing mould a wrong design into a useful one? Children's lousy conduct has often strained husband-wife relationships. The desire to give the best for the children has frequently given just the opposite effects. Growing in the same environment, even siblings follow different trajectories.)

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Because the clairvoyant said so?

Zulfarhan Osman

A news report piqued my interest recently. The parents of a murdered college student prostrated in prayer right after the verdict was announced by the court of appeal that six accused would be hanged. Later, they told reporters they were showing their appreciation to the Almighty as justice was done. 

These types of news often leave me more perplexed than I already am. An overseeing Almighty who was cognisant of all the things going on with their loved one but procrastinated would typically get a cold shoulder. If He were a mere mortal, He would get a notice of professional negligence for napping on the job. His nemesis, the horned and tailed one, through His proxies in robes, would have a field day trying to act smart and reenact all the fraction of seconds when danger could have been averted. But deep inside, these Satan's representatives on Earth thrive on maladies like these. 

On one hand, we are products of the Original Sin, imperfect in every way and prone to being tempted to wrongdoings. However, we are still expected to bear the effects of our misdeeds. 

We are expected to forgive and forget like He forgives us every time we commit a sin. And we claim that the justice He metes is just. Yet we investigate, leave nothing unturned, exhume, and do a forensic investigation to the last foxhole to pin down the perpetrator and hurl the whole might of the law against him. We gain joy in seeing the accused squirm and hide in shame. We call this justice prevailed. 

On the other hand, we have an abundance of examples of the victims' families forgiving their aggressors. I covered this in another post. (See here.)

(P.S. For the curious, the abovementioned case happened in a military college in Kuala Lumpur. In 2017, six students, then 21, accused a 17-year-old junior of stealing a laptop computer. A seer had earlier identified the 17-year-old as the thief. The six students, together with 12 other friends, try to beat and torture the young boy to confess. They burnt his body and privates with hot iron. The perpetrators concealed him from the hostel warden, and delaying medical attention, the 17-year-old succumbed to his injuries two weeks later. The six accused were found guilty and sentenced to 18 years of jail. The accomplices were jailed for three years. The six were given sentences to hang at the Court of Appeal.)

(P.P.S. Alfred Hitchcock's 'Rope', based on an actual event, comes to mind. How two students of Chicago University in 1924 thought it was cool to snap the neck of a 14-year-old boy!)

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Unconventional Investigative Methods?

Vina - Sebelum 7 Hari. (Indonesian, 2024)
Director: Anggy Umbara

Thanks to Saravanan Decodes, my latest indulgence, for highlighting many solved and unsolved mysteries worldwide. He has 700-over YouTube presentations of some of the most puzzling and heinous murders and tries to decode them.

Two exciting cases piqued my interest. It was in how these seemingly dead-ended cases saw living daylight through unconventional methods.

The first case happened in Cirebon, West Java. A 16-year-old Vina Dewi Arsita, a student, was reported to have died after getting involved in a road traffic accident while travelling with her boyfriend, Edy, in the thick of the night in 2016. The death certificate was released as death due to Motor Vehicle Accident. There were some uncertainties about whether police did not come forward with more information about the ongoing investigations or whether their investigation was shoddy. Her boyfriend, too, perished in the accident. Burial was done.

On the seventh day of her death, Vina's best friend, Linda, was possessed by Vina's spirit, who narrated minute to minute account of what Vina endured before her death. In the local populace, it is believed that a dead person's spirit hovers around their neighbourhood before departing for good. Vina's admirer, Eky, who had made bold advances towards her, was once spat upon and humiliated by Vina. Eky was a member of a motorcycle chain gang. Keeping a grudge against her actions, Eky, with his ten other friends, confronted Edy and Vina, ramped them down, ran their machines over Vina's limbs, gang-raped her and left her to die.

This news soon became viral, and sympathetic netizens launched an awareness campaign. The police had no choice but to re-investigate. New investigative papers were opened. Rape was confirmed, and eight of the eleven perpetrators were apprehended, charged and convicted. They confessed to their crimes. Astonishingly, their account of what happened corresponded precisely to what was told by Vina's spirit. Eky and two others are still at large. A point to note is that Eky's father is a police officer.

Saravanan Decodes

People wonder whether its investigation was manipulated or whether justice can still be served after so many years.

The second bizarre case happened in a village near Agra, India, in 1988. A 4-year-old Toran Singh (@Titu) was born into a poor family of six children. Titu was a precocious child who started speaking at the age of 18 months. By 4, he started talking about his wealthy family, which he was born into, and the roaring electrical business he ran in Agra. And he said his name was Suresh Verma.

Out of curiosity, his elder brother checked out his assertions. It was all true. Titu even recognised his widowed wife of his last birth. Suresh Verma indeed had a radio business and was killed by foes. He was shot in his head. Due to a lack of evidence, the case stalled. Police were called in. 

Titu ( Toran Singh)

Curiously, Titu could narrate all the intimate details of the murder that only the victim could tell and that the police did not reveal for public consumption. Titu identified his shooter, who confessed to the police later. The killer was later charged and sentenced. Titu had a birthmark on his scalp, which corresponded to the area where Suresh Verma was shot.

Toran Singh went on to lead a quiet life away from media scrutiny. He is reportedly an assistant professor of naturopathy and yoga therapy at Benares Hindu University in Varanasi.

Even though the methods employed to investigate these cases will not stand alone if challenged in a court of law, they can nevertheless be helpful as part of the police armamentarium to cow the perpetrator into submission.

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When you gaze into the abyss...

Passing through darkness.  (Miniseries, E1-E12, Korean; 2023)
Director: Park Ba-ram

Over the centuries, humans have agreed on how they should live life. Compassion, tolerance, and acceptance have been the mantras to sail through the rough waves in the high seas of life. We respect the other with the adage 'Do not do unto others what you do not want others to do unto you' and think that should suffice for all to mind their own business and lead meaningful lives.

Life, as we know it, has been so easy. As if there is not enough of Nature's hostility towards over existence, there is danger from our own kind. Nature has dictated species protect their own kind. Still, violence and savagery are justified in the name of the continuity of species and territorial ambitions, which, in a way, also ensure the dissemination and dominance of species. Only in the human species do we humans kill another for the sheer pleasure of seeing someone die. Our inquisitive mind yearns to know what lies beyond the realm of life. Sending someone to the Otherside or just stepping momentarily into the gate of death and stepping back in gives some unbelievably enjoyable thrill and erotism.

We are stepping into the zone of dark, mind-bending psychological crimes. Some wonder if we are all inherently evil. Is that any truth that this is because we are all born out of the Original Sin, that we are all sinners and are at the Mercy of the Divine for Redemption?

Did 'civilisation' or living in communities mould us to behave in a particular manner? Numbers matter when we are exposed to dangers day in and day out in our early days of existence.

Remember our school days. Children who have not fully developed the inhibitory synapses of the frontal lobe say all the darnest. At the playgrounds, they can be pretty cruel, spewing venom with filters, leaving a spate of their schoolmates/playmates with developmental issues or social anxiety.

This Korean miniseries is not for the faint-hearted. It tells the tale of a criminal profiler and his team in the Behavioural Crime Analysis of the Seoul Metropolitan Police, who takes his work too seriously. Stemming from a near-drowning episode in his childhood, the detective develops the ability to empathise with both the victims and the perpetrators of the crimes he is tasked to solve.

This journey takes him and his dedicated team through a harrowing experience, questioning everything we try to pinpoint as the culprit to make someone turn to the dark side.

Is it the absence of a father figure as a child grows up? Is childhood trauma, sexual assault, corporal punishment, bullying or humiliation the culprit? Is the brain wiring to be blamed? What is at fault, Nature or Nurture? For every possible aggravating factor that may lure one to crime, many uproot themselves out of filth to be somebody. Is loneliness a precipitating factor? As Nietzsche said, 'If you gaze into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you!'

What about the people who often associate, investigate and peep into the lives of these vermins of society? Do those who fight with monsters should look into it so they do not become monsters? Scriptures say, 'You are the company you keep with'. A calf which hangs around a piglet would eventually feed on filth like hogs usually do, Amma used to say!

Before we say the cases are hyped to appease the viewers, the cases were reported by Korea's first criminal profiler, Kwon Il-yong and journalist-turned-author, Ko Na-mu.

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The new wave whodunnit

Silence 1: Can You Hear It?

Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout

Written & Directed: Aban Bharucha Deohans

It is not easy to catch many whodunnit mystery dramas in Indian cinema. Most stories are too convoluted to follow or too outlandish to believe. Sometimes, the investigative officers are given superhuman capabilities and have to single-handedly swashbuckler or chase the villains to the conclusion. That is history. 

With more exposure to police procedural TV shows and Hollywood offerings, audiences can no longer be fooled by this dated production. They are demanding more. With the advent of OTT platforms, it seems that newer, bolder, and more realistic scripts, sticking to real investigative police work, are on the menu these days. Many real-life crime dramas are shown as docuseries and movies. These two films with the same cast are fine examples.

In Silence #1, a young lady is found dead with a gaping wound on her head by hikers at a popular hiking site. Novice sleuths or even crime drama addicts can sniff out the perpetrator at the word go. The storytellers decided to go somewhat meandering to trap this suspect. Of course, when this lead turned out to be a red herring, we knew it must be and turned out to be the second on the list anyway. Manoj Bajpai, who assumes the role of a disillusioned police investigator, keeps the plot together. There is a backstory to his frustration, which adds glitz to the whole affair.

As the first outing in Silence #2, Bajpai’s service in the particular unit, Special Crime Unit (SCU), is requested explicitly by VVIP. An important political figure is gunned down in a bar, and Bajpai is told to get to the bottom of it. Slowly, investigations take a tangent. It spins into a yarn of child prostitution and call-girl racket. The ending, however, turns out to be a whimper as the wrongdoer, after an elaborate execution of her whole crime, just admits to her heinous crimes so readily.

Still, it is an engaging one or two.

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A case for abolition of jury system!

American Crime Story (Season 1; 2016)

The People v. O. J. Simpson

A 64-year-old man was imprisoned for a year after being caught stealing ten cans of sardines, two bottles of instant coffee powder, and some mouthwash. He was punished with a month's imprisonment.

In the justice system, an individual trusted with the coffers of the nation and its future, accused of amassing RM 42 million for his own needs, gets 12 years in prison. This happened after much public pressure, demonstrations, democratic change of government and taxpayers coughing out more money to finance what turned out to be a non-ending series of trials-within-trials. Because the ex-PM has all the money that can buy justice and legal minds, there is a high possibility that he will end up spending the rest of his royal-pardoned six years under house arrest, in the comfort of his loved ones and window to the outside world. That is the best justice system that money and influence can buy.

This is by no means confined to the third world or despotic governments. It is a worldwide phenomenon.

When the Malaysian courts discontinued the jury trial system in 1995, the naive me thought it was a step backwards for justice. After all, more impartiality is displayed when more people collectively decide, and developed countries, particularly the US, still use jury services. So they must be right, I thought.

The sensational trial of Mona Fandey et al. gruesomely murdering a state assemblyman created such mayhem that the courts thought that trial by jury should be abolished.

The merits and demerits have been in the legal fraternity's imagination for years. In India, the famous 1959 case of a naval officer, Nanavati, murdering his wife's lover created such a storm that the legal system felt the sensationalism surrounding the trial made the juries err on their judgement. The Bombay High Court later reversed the jury's decision of freeing him to impose life imprisonment.

The opponents of the jury system argue that the law is too complex for an average person to comprehend, who may also be swayed by emotion, prejudices and sentiments.

In this time and age, with the bane of knowledge and information, we humans are more confused than ever. Like in the immortalised lines from the movie 'A Few Good Men', the real question is, 'Can you handle the truth?'. With so much information, emotion, biases, innate bigotry and prejudices bottled up within us, how unflinching can be towards the real truth?

This proposition is laid bare in the case People of the Stae of California v. O. J. Simpson, which took place when the American sports icon, Simpson, was accused of murdering his ex-wife, Nicole Smith, and her companion, Ron Goldman.

Cuba Gooding Jr as OJ, David Schwimmer as
Robert Kardashian, John Travolta as
Robert Shapiro. 

On the one hand, a black football player who beat the odds with his rags-to-riches story to be super rich, marry a white girl and live in a posh white, exclusive neighbourhood in LA. Some also looked at OJ as Uncle Tom, who had become a white, not as a black man. On the other hand, Nicole has reported domestic abuse in the relationship. When a blood-stained glove with OJ's and both victims' blood was found in the vicinity of the murder, the prosecution went all ballistic to charge him with double murder. They were clear in their approach. It was a case of domestic violence gone overboard.

From the get-go, the defence took a racial slunt towards the case. At a time in America when the police (like now) had the dubious reputation of being overtly racist in the way they handled their affairs. The Rodney King killing and the LA riots were They went along with the idea that the pieces of evidence were planted by bigoted police officers. To top it the lead defence lawyer, John Cochrane, drew in the support of the NAACP (North American Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, founded 1909). The defence tried to recruit as many black jurors as they could. In their mind, even though Simpson had turned into an Uncle Tom-like character with a white wife, country club and all, he was framed because he was black. That is where the defence was looking for sympathy.

With the fueling of fire by the extensive media, the trial became a competition between the whites and blacks of America. The whole trial became a media circus. First, it starts with Simpson engaging in a low-speed police car chase. Then, the trial was televised on Court TV, making people hooked on the twists and turns the case took. By the end of the nine months of trial, people were waiting outside the courthouse with bated breath to hear the jury decision. The jury took less than 4 hours to deliberate. Even though it provided a sound argument backed by scientific data, it was not enough. Simpson had apparently built a fan base among the jurors. They also voted along racial lines. The verdict would have been different if the jury was predominately white. The trial of the century ended with O. J. Simpson walking out a free man. A poll suggested almost 75% of white respondents believed OJ was guilty, whilst about only 25% of blacks thought he was guilty.

What is this about OJ's defence team being a dream team? I suppose it must be a group of morally corrupt individuals who mask themselves behind a law degree, unscrupulously stir sentiments, and churn out uncertainties in investigations and technicalities to create that element of reasonable doubt to crush the conviction. They promise the stars and the moon and charge an arm and a leg.

Robert Kardashian, the estranged husband of Kris Jenner (of the ''Keeping Up with the Kardashians' fame), was on the dream team. As a close friend and an attorney, he completed the whole trial convinced he was defending a guilty guy. To add fuel to the fire, 13 years after his acquittal in 2007, OJ was charged and later imprisoned for 33 years for armed robbery with a mostly white jury. So much for a fair trial and the adage that everyone is innocent until proven guilty.

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