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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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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Where does the fault lie?

Dahmer: Monster - The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022)
Netflix miniseries

I was curious growing up in the mid-70s and watching all those American documentaries about serial killers. I often wondered why all serial killers came from a developed nation like the USA. According to the FBI, the USA currently has 2,000 active serial killers (325 million population @ 0.00006%). On top of all that, it has the most number of its citizens locked up in prisons. Is modernity directly correlated to mental illness? Perhaps the country's vastness makes one go cuckoo or makes it easy for them to think they can hide their trails and get scot-free. Now experts are telling us that the fact that many families who end up with single parenthood end with this problem. In keeping with rising costs, single parents have to leave their children unsupervised and work two jobs. Children have to learn things on their own. In the century of the self, prioritising individuals rather than communal or extended family living may have perpetuated these many behavioural deviants.

On the other side, a country with such deep pockets has the luxury of re-investigating old cases periodically with newer technologies to smoke out perpetrators. Hence, an apparent increase in the number of instances and discoveries.

Or maybe documentaries and podcasts are scavenging deep into the crypts into the police files to meet the insatiable appetite of crime nerds, and they succeed in making every American look like a potential serial killer in the eyes of a non-American.

Jeffrey Dahmer is an infamous serial killer who lured young men and even a 14-year-old boy to his abode, drug, tortured, mutilated, drilled their skulls to infuse with drugs, dissolved their bodies in acid and even consumed their internal organs.

These miniseries try to tell how this quiet boy turned into a cold monster, tracing his childhood and the family environment in which he grew up. One particular thing that struck me is the frustration that Jeffrey Dahmer's father, Lionel, had to go through throughout his life. He was trying desperately to balance his work as a scientist and his emotionally unstable wife and trying very hard to be an excellent father to Jeffrey. All throughout his life, Lionel is searching for where he went wrong.

Even before Jeffrey was born, his mother was popping pills like they were M&Ms. There was a concern about whether these powerful tranquillisers and anti-emetics had long-term ill effects on Jeffrey. The postpartum depression took an enormous toll on his mother. Jeffrey saw his mother overdosing on pills, and he even had to call 911 when his mother was unresponsive one day.

His parent quarrelled all the time. Still, when Jeffrey was six, his mother delivered his brother. His mother became more distant. His father was frequently away at work, making Jeffrey a loner and left to his own devices. Lionel, as his father, tried his best to live up to his role as a father. The parents separated when Jeffrey was 18, and by then, Jeffrey already had a severe drinking problem and was having issues in high school.

The most exciting thing that struck me from the miniseries is the frustrations the father had to go through trying to put Jeffrey on the right track. At no point did Lionel give up on his son. He also felt guilty that perhaps his genes were the ones that caused his predicament. Anyway, Lionel had had occasional thoughts of killing in adolescence. He wondered whether his father-son outings of dissecting roadkill made him cut up his victims later. He blamed himself for being an absent parent. Still, someone had to bring in the bacon. Should he take the blame solely for how Jeffrey's mother turned out? Was he wrong in taking a new partner? But then, Jeffrey's brother turned out normal. Lionel tried to put Jeffrey back on the right track in so many ways. Oh, how much he tried, unsuccessfully.

This is the curse of having a person with mental illness in the family -so much guilt, finger-pointing, and so many frustrations. Not able to get to the bottom of it, they may resign to the fact that this situation is a curse carried on from previous births, and karma is full throttle in motion.

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Even serial killers want to live!

The Serpent (Miniseries; 2021)
Netflix-BBC

Ever since I read about Charles Sobhraj in the papers back in, probably 1976, I was fascinated with this character. Over the years, little snippets about him used to pop up here and there. Again, my interest in him was piqued when he would repeatedly outsmart his captors and make yet another dash to temporary freedom. Earlier, in one of my old posts, I mentioned someone who had named his newborn Sabhraj, not knowing the infamous icon behind the name. Now, after so many years, the child must be a teenager; I wonder if the child is cursing his parents or revelling in the glory of his cool name, securing many equally cool friends.

And then, this miniseries also reminded me of a friend who shares almost the same name as Sobhraj's sidekick as Ajay Chowdhury. Cocooned comfortably in his own sanctuary with no mobile phones and e-mails, he can be contacted via the landline. There is a problem here. He is so hard of hearing but does not believe in getting hearing aids for himself. So calling him is out of the question. He is not in the pinkest of health either, battling cancer. With all the travelling restrictions and the rage of the pandemic, giving him a visit has to wait. In his mind, not being able to hear is not his problem; it is others'.

This 8-episode miniseries starts with his time in Bangkok in 1975 by the poolside in his apartment complex. He assumes yet another pseudonym, Alain Gautier, as he entertains friends who later become victims. He professes to be a gem dealer, but his main interest is drugging travellers, robbing them of their monies and passport and dumping off their dead bodies. At a time when forensic sciences were primitive, the exchange of information was sketchy and local resources were limited, Sobhraj (aka Hotchand Bhawnani Gurumukh Charles Sobhraj @Serpent), and his accomplices, Ajay Chowdhury and Marie-Andrée Leclerc, could literally get away with murder.

Tahar Rahim
French-Algerian actor
who acted well to fit the mould of an
 Indo-Franco-Vietnamese serial killer.

Through the storyteller's creative storytelling, the miniseries, through its unique way of moving to and fro between episodes, managed to paint a composite picture of Sobhraj's formative years, his earlier crimes and his relationship with his mother. Sobhraj is said to have operated in France, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, India, Thailand and Hong Kong. Besides robbery and heists, he gained notoriety primarily from his systemic enticing and killing of backpacking hippies. His modus operandi is the same - befriending white tourists through charm and warmth, poisoning them, followed by taking their passports. Sobhraj and Marie would then travel, assuming the identities of their victims to avert detection.

His crime came to light through the almost maniacal investigative work of a Dutch diplomat and his wife stationed in Bangkok, Herman Knippenberg and Angela Kane, working relentlessly with a perenially under-resourced Thai police and later the Thai chapter of the Interpol.

Sobhraj and Marie's running days came to a halt in 1976 after Sobhraj's failed attempt at poisoning a group of German students in New Delhi. He was imprisoned for 12 years. Marie was diagnosed with terminal ovarian cancer in prison and was extradited to Quebec to spend her remaining days. In prison, Sobhraj led a cushy life bribing the jailers. He even managed to sell his life story to a publishing house. Fearing extradition to Thailand after his time in Delhi Tihar jail, he held a big party at his 10th year of prison term, drugged the prison guard, and staged a jailbreak. He was re-apprehended in Goa and had was jailed for another 10 years as he had intended because a conviction in Thailand would mean the death penalty. Using the 20-year statute of limitation in Thailand in his favour, he walked out a free man in 1997. 

Nihita Biswas - fascinated by Sobhraj's French charm!

He went back to France for a quiet life to reconnect with his first wife, daughter and his Vietnamese mother. For reasons best known to him, Sobhraj made another trip to Nepal in 2003. It was a bad mistake. A reporter identified him, wrote about him in the local papers, and the Nepali police sprang to cuff him for an old unsolved murder. He was given life imprisonment. Some say he missed being in the limelight, hence his last trip. Even in prison, he created lots of publicity. Despite the denials by the local authorities, Sobhraj lives like a Raj. In 2018, he was said to have wedded his lawyer's daughter, Nihita Biswas, a TV personality 44 years his junior.

He pops up in the news every now and then, a complaint here and an appeal to the French President there. In 2017, he underwent open-heart surgery for defective heart valves. The irony of it all coming out from the mouth of a serial murderer accused of 12 to 24 people, as quoted by the operating surgeon, Dr Raamesh Koirala, was this. When counselled on the heart valve replacement, Sobhraj is said to have said, "do whatever you think is right for me, doctor. I just want to live!”

[P.S. The whereabouts of Ajay Chowdhury is unknown. He is said to have been sent to do a gem deal in Malaysia. Unconfirmed sightings of him in Germany were made, probably untrue. He must have been killed by The Serpent.]

The reel is almost close to the real!

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Uncomfortably numbed...

Des (TV Mini-series; 3 episodes, 2020)

This dramatisation of a 1983 real case from the police files of a seemingly boring man who carried out gruesome murders of equally unimpressive men in a most deliberate manner. He is credited to have killed at least 12 men. An ex-army cook with a short stint as a policeman and a civil servant invites young men to his apartment, makes them inebriated, kills them in various manners, and disposes of them in equally grisly ways. His activities came to light when a drain was blocked. Police were called in when human remains were discovered. The suspect, Dennis Nilson, is quite nonchalant about all his pursuits. He boasts about his crimes and even speaks to an author in the hope of publicising his feats. 

The murders and the investigations were later described in a best-seller titled 'Killing for Company'. The TV series shows how all the police investigations and this case, in particular, left a bitter after-taste in his mouth in the chief investigator, Detective Chief Investigator Peter Jay. Two years after Nilson was sentenced, he quit for force. In one of the closing scenes, Jay returns to the crime scene with the biographer, Brian Masters, where some of the victims were buried under the floorboard. The case never really left much resolution the many of the victim's families. Many of Des' victims were never identified. Masters quipped, "I can still smell the stench." implying the purifying bodies once hidden under the floor. To this detective, Jay replied, "Funny, I don't smell it anymore!"

It made my mind go asunder.

We are the company we keep with. My wise mother used to tell us when we were young about choosing the right friends. We became the persons that we befriend. She often quoted a famous somewhat brash proverb, "a calf, when it wanders with piglets, will soon be scavenging around dumpsites!" Cows, revered by Hindus, are given divine status. Pigs, on the other hand, are looked upon as dirty and shunned by most societies. By the association one keeps, he is lured to venture into the majority's habits as we, human beings, are social animals.

I feel for the many of the frontliners, the health and police personnel,  who have to deal with many of the unsavoury characters they have to deal with daily. Their clients come in as helpless, broken souls needing fixing. Once they regain strength, they bite the hand that fed them. The frontliners know that they should not be their own yardsticks to judge their clients. But with constant exposure to the nerve-numbing tragedies daily, are they at risk of becoming numb to the very struggles they are trained to handle. Are they at risk of becoming another file in the statistics in the annals of time?

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It is the message

Silence (Nishabdham, Tamil; 2020)

This film was initially meant to be a silent movie, one without dialogues. It would have probably done better. The dialogue was a killjoy and laughable. A significant proportion of conversation of the film was in English, and that is the one that looks so fake, especially the lines written for Hollywood actor Michael Madson. 

It starts off as a paranormal tale but later goes on to give a serial killer angle to the final story. It is predictable with many glaring loopholes in the narration. The cast comprises an ensemble of a few Indian actors (R Madhavan, Anushka Shetty and a few young actresses) and many amateurs. 

Forget the story. What fascinated me about this film is how Indians in this story blended into American society. Filmed amidst the lush landscape around the outskirts of Seattle, Washington, we see how the characters mingled seamlessly partaking in what is considered the culture of the local populace. They indulge in classical music (the main character is a cellist), art, (the other character is a mute painter) and appreciate all the things people in their newfound land hold in high esteems. 

This does hold true to many economic immigrants of the late 20th and 21st century who screwed their own form of governance set up in their respective countries. Their way of life failed them, but they still proclaim to know better. They run down their host, denigrate their behaviour, criticise their way of life but still want to reap maximum benefit from the social safety net that the new country had to offer. They bite the hands that feed them and behead the people who think differently from them.

It appears that these people are doomed for failure wherever they go.

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For some, life is a play toy!

Zodiac (2007)

Growing up with an 'over' exposure to many crime dramas, I used to wonder if there were any real people who find intense pleasure in murdering people. And I am referring to a select group of psychopaths called serial killers. And that they did what they did with high precision, covering their tracks well, intelligent chaps who would tease the police with crumbs of clues and laugh all the way to carry on with their next crime.

I started wondering why all these killers were all whites and are all centred in the USA. The concept of serial killers only became popular in the 1970s, but in reality, the Germans through the 1929 silent movie 'M', introduced the idea of a pedophilic serial-murderer. The first modern serial killer, according to criminologists, must surely be Jack the Ripper in London. Generally, serial killers carry out their crimes in a particular fashion, maintaining a high degree of control over the crime scene, having a solid knowledge of forensic science that enables them to cover their tracks and leaving a sort of a trademark signature. It is as if they are perfecting a grand work of art.

Charles Sobhraj

It is generally believed that outside the USA serial killers are rare. There is a reported killer nurse from London and another in South Africa. If one was not in the habit of nitpicking between serial killers, spree killers and mass murderers as well as semantics, he would find many in Asia in the form of Charles Sobhraj (@ Bikini Killer), Lê Thanh Van (Vietnam), Chisako Kakehi (Black Widow from Japan), Yoo Young-Chul (Korean Hannibal Lecter), Tsutomu Miyazaki (Japan), Javed Iqbal Umayr (Pakistan) and Ahmad Suradji (Indonesia).

What makes 'The Zodiac Killer' interesting is that his crimes were never solved. Even though the Zodiac Killer operated in the state of California, in the northern part predominantly, the non-cooperation between police counties made the exchange of information difficult in solving the cases. He terrorised in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At least five murder cases are linked to him, but Zodiac claimed to have killed 37 people.

He got his name when he sent a cryptic letter to the newspapers after his second murder. This film tells about how this case tormented a San Francisco Chronicle reporter named Paul Avery, his colleague a cartoonist Robert Graysmith and an inspector Dave Toschi. Even the prime suspect was always Arthur Leigh Allen, all search warrants, handwriting experts' analysis of the Zodiac letters and also the DNA of possible saliva on the Zodiac letter stamps came out to nought.

Many theories have been flying around about the real killer. Amateur investigators, armchair critics, TV and documentary makers, geeks and nerds all have been churning out their two cents' worth on identifying the perpetrator. Some even suggested that he could have been apprehended for unrelated crimes and could have died before making a full confession. Even the Unabomber, an American mathematics professor turned terrorist, was a suspect.

Cryptogram sent by Zodiac to the San Francisco Chronicle. 

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A private eye to the world

Don't F**k With Cats (Netflix 3-part documentary, 2019) 
Hunting an Internet Killer

I just happened to bump into this as I was on the treadmill and I was hooked. It was not much of love at first hello, but I liked the quite convoluted storyline. It illustrates the twisted nature of human behaviour, but at the same time, there are people who, through their actions, show that humanity has not died. But life, as it is, is never straight forward.

In life, Occam's Razor states that 'entities should not be multiplied without necessity' does not solve all puzzles. Things are more complicated than they seem. Simple answers may not be the correct one. 

It is not an easy watch and is not for the faint-hearted. Few viewers could pass beyond the first 20 minutes of the show as the subject matter is unpleasant. It is based on a true story that happened between 2010 and 2012. It involved many countries, including Canada, the UK, France and Germany. But I guess when it consists of the cyberspace, these borders are arbitrary.

The documentary starts with a youtube clip that came out in 2010 of a couple of kittens which were brutally killed in broad daylight under the full view of netizen with a live recording of them being placed in a plastic wrapper and slowly vacuum sealing them! Concerned cat lover netizens, including the narrator, Deanna Thompson, a data analyst from Vegas, who goes under the screen name of Baudi Moovan, started discussing this heinous crime. Pretty soon, they started trying identifying the location as well as the maker of the clip. Everyone chipped in with their amateurish investigative skills. The need to apprehend the perpetrator became more acute as a second video appeared online. In that clip, a cat was fed to a python. 

The internet sleuths slowly browse through pictures over pictures online, scrutinised in between the images, with the help of Google Map and all, managed to pinpoint the crime to a Luka Magnotta. Now, to pinpoint who Magnotta was and his whereabouts, that was an enigma itself. It appears like he was a globetrotting celebrity. The armchair investigators also try to analyse the character. In midst through it all, to avenge the death of cats, an innocent man was wrongly accused. And he took his own life due to the humiliation!

Another problem with this type of crime is jurisdiction. Who is to investigate these crimes when nobody knows where it happened.

The issue became more problematic when the video maker made a chilling clip of a person being stabbed repeatedly with an ice-pick.

The documentary makers cleverly put in the element of doubt into the whole story. They inserted interviews taken with Magnotta's mother. She threw a spanner to the works. She told of a manipulative character named 'Manny'.

From then on, the pace picked up. Police forces from many countries became involved, and the suspect was an Interpol's 'Red List'. It all came to a dramatic end with words like paranoid schizophrenia and bizarre role-playing of movie characters thrown in. Disturbing.

With all the benefits that the internet offers in improving lives and empowering people, there is a dark side to it. It becomes a convenient playground for weirdos and the mentally deranged for their one moment of attention in the world stage and sometimes to create mischief under the cloak of anonymity.

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Evil is good?

Main aur Charles (Me and Charles, Hindi; 2015)


Earlier in life, I took a keen interest in the intriguing case of the suave serial killer of Indo-Vietnamese descent who used to grace the tabloids in the 70s. He is alleged to be a master manipulator, a psychopath, a successful impersonator who speak many languages and could make members of the fairer sex weak in the knees!

Hence, it is only logical that I should give a go at this mini-biography of the man himself. Unfortunately, the film seems like a bit haphazard initially, moving to and back between timelines as the story moves between three lifelines in three decades. The second half of the film starts to grasp the essence of the story by impressing upon us the conniving nature of the man. The choice of actor picked to depict Charles Sobhraj is excellent. His external appearance, barrette and large framed square spectacles caught the uncanny likeness of the serial killer himself. In the building of character and gaining empathy for the social outcast, the filmmakers did not manage a good job.

The movie concentrates mainly on Sobhraj’s escape from a Delhi jail, his apprehension and subsequent trial by the ‘Me’ character, i.e. And Kanth, a senior Indian cop.

Memorable quote:
Good always wins but evil never dies!