Last Call: behind the terrifying untold story of New York's gay bar killer
Quote:On 10 July 1992, a grisly stash of body parts was found in trash bags by a rest stop on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The parts had been cut so cleanly that barely any blood could be found amid the sinew and bone. Over the next few years, similar scenes of horror would emerge in the region, leaving scores of clues about the character of the victims as well as the origin and method of their deaths.
If this story had traced the common arc of serial killings, a wave of fear would have rippled through the communities most likely to suffer the next victim. But it didn’t happen that way. In fact, the people who were most at risk – in this case, gay men who met for hook-ups at New York City bars that served the community – were given no sustained or amplified warnings by either the authorities or the media, creating a safe space for the murderer to continue to wreak havoc. In fact, the case got so little attention relative to its horror that today few remember it, even within the gay community.
Now, three decades after the murders, journalist Elon Green has written a book titled Last Call: A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York that goes beyond the facts of the story to reveal the larger issues that surrounded them. “It’s important for people to see how anti-queer bigotry manifested itself in this case,” he said to the Guardian. “They need to understand the stakes, not just for the victims but for the men who simply went to these bars during that period. There are systemic issues here.”
While LGBTQ people may still be at considerably elevated risk for violence, the level of peril and contempt was far higher in the late 80s and early 90s, when the bulk of the book takes place. Worse, that period represented the height of ignorance and fear about Aids, as well as the peak death toll in the gay community in the west, greatly impacting how the community was viewed. “Aids took what was, at best, a level of indifference towards gay people and turned it into revulsion,” said Green.
