Paul Bateson
Paul Bateson (l.), who appeared as an extra in the film The Exorcist, and Morgan Kelly (r.) portraying Bateson in the second season of Mindhunter.
Paul Bateson is a difficult man to learn about, which is probably just as he would want it. His mysterious life and how it intersects with several grisly serial killings in New York City targeting the Greenwich Village gay community. As Mindhunter gets ready to explore the mystery of the Bag Killer, here’s what very little we know about Paul Bateson.
Born in Lansdale, Pennsylvania in 1940, Bateson grew up at a time when being “not exclusively gay” was little defense from the institutional, cultural, and legal oppression that homosexuals have been forced to live under for much of Western history.
Prior to the Stonewall Riots in New York City that launched the activism for LGBT rights and the movement towards equal treatment, two men walking down the street together in certain parts of the city — such as the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan — would be under the constant state of threat from law enforcement who could and often would arrest young gay men on prostitution charges for the crime of walking home with a friend.
It was under this cloud of disrespect and threat from the police department that a serial killer started murdering and dumping the dismembered bodies of gay men, at least six that we know of, into the Hudson River wrapped in bags.
Though there was no way to make an identification of the bodies, the clothing they were wearing led police back to the Greenwich Village clothing shops that catered to the various “scenes” in the gay community. The similar modus operandi of the six known killings linked them to a single murderer, known as the Bag Killer.
The Village VoiceThe journalist and gay activist Arthur Bell found himself at the middle of the story when Paul Bateson called him to confess to murdering Variety journalist Addison Verrill.
In 1977, when a journalist for Variety magazine, Addison Verrill, was found dead in his apartment after being beaten and stabbed to death, there didn’t seem to be any connection with the Bag Killer. Nothing of value had been taken from the apartment though there were signs of a struggle.
The police treated the case without little urgency, to the consternation of Village Voice reporter and activist Arthur Bell who wrote about the case as an example of the indifference clearly shown by the NYPD and city officials toward the murders of gay men, of which there were many.
Arthur Bell soon got a phone call from a man who claimed to be Verrill’s murderer and wanted to talk about the killing to explain what happened. The call was reported on the front page of the Village Voice soon after and the NYPD was convinced the caller would call Bell back.
He did not, but a man who called himself “Mitch” who telephoned. He told Bell and the police investigator listening in on the conversation that a former X-ray technician friend of his by the name of Paul Bateson, a frequent patron of the popular leather clubs in the neighborhood, had called him and confessed to Verrill’s murder.
Soon, police arrested Bateson and he confessed shortly thereafter to the crime. Sentenced to 20 years in prison, police were already making connections between Bateson and the Bag Killer, who was still at large.
They were never able to prove it, however, and Verrill’s murder is the only one that Bateson ever confessed to.
John Springer Collection/Getty ImagesAl Pacino stars as an NYPD detective going undercover into Greenwich Village’s leather scene to apprehend a serial killer stalking New York City’s gay community.
The Bag Killer has a lower profile than other serial killers of the era since they were not as prolific as Dean Corll or Ted Bundy, but the sensationalism of the case was apparent even then and in 1980, the film Cruisin was released, starring Al Pacino as an NYPD detective going undercover in the Greenwich Village leather scene to try and apprehend the Bag Killer.
While reviews were mixed and the gay community protested the film’s production however they could at the time — seeing it as an exploitation of their suffering — it has been the most high profile depiction of this serial murderer’s crimes to date.
This season of Mindhunter will see Holden and Tench interviewing Paul Bateson as they dig into the mystery about his connection to the Bag Killer case, murders that to this day remain unsolved.
