Samuel Little allegedly fatally strangled 93 women in many states during his life of murder and Confronting a serial killer lets him expose his crimes – and his motivations – in hours of audio interviews with author Jillian Lauren. Both for this documentary and as part of his future book research Exit Sandman: The True Story of America’s The Prolific Serial Killer, Lauren befriended Little following her 2014 conviction and incarceration for killing three women. And, as she repeatedly states throughout this five-episode adventure, her goal was to convince the confessions of Little (who died in December 2020) to identify her victims and thus give voice the voiceless, whose deaths were ignored by a criminal justice system that saw them as, after Lauren, “less dead.”
So do Lauren and director Joe Berlinger Confronting a serial killer to be a story about not only a little, but more importantly, about the dozens of prostitutes and drug addicts he killed – a noble cause, which, unfortunately, is nullified by the fact that the real protagonist and subject of this work of non-fiction turns out to be either Lauren herself.
For the first time on April 18 at Starz, Berlinger’s latest real crime effort (Crime scene: disappearance at the Cecil Hotel) is the case of a journalist who allows himself to become the story. Lauren’s intentions are based on principles and her triumphs are real, but from the moment she first appears on camera, there is a performative quality to every tear breakdown, breath line reading, piece of prose narrated, and reference to Little as “Mr. Sam. “Especially when she juxtaposes with the rest of the process, Lauren over-activates the camera, which is in line with the fact that she and Berlinger constantly keep their role in this front and center saga, so it quickly becomes less about what Lauren does than about doing it – empathetic, fair and at great cost to her own health and the well-being of her family.
Lauren’s husband, Scott Shriner (bassist for Weezer) and their two sons show up from time to time to explain the situation that Lauren’s work takes on her and their clan. This notion is then underlined by Lauren’s first-person comment, during which, with intense pain in her voice and eyes, she talks about her responsibility for Little’s victims, her identification with them (due to their own history of drugs and abusive men), her the desire to create safe spaces for her children in the midst of her macabre toil, her the inability to give up the trials of these many victims and – especially –her fight to end endless discussions with Little. Despite denying any guilt in his initial trial, Little sincerely opens up to Lauren during their phone calls, offering all sorts of awful details about her childhood, mentality, and her countless disgusting crimes.
Alas, in a way that is the opposite of Liz Garbus’s I will be gone in the dark, who married Michelle McNamara’s quest to identify the Golden State Killer with a portrait of the socio-political climate of the 1970s and 1980s, Berlinger turns the proceedings into a platform for his star. And every time Lauren says she puts the spotlight on death, she feels like she’s courted herself.
Moreover, Lauren’s analysis of Little is of a pedestrian variety – though that doesn’t stop her from offering it as if she were distributing hitherto unknown ideas. The notion that Little was a “predator” who preyed on marginalized women that society probably would not lack – and that would not justify serious police investigations – is on the spot and confirmed by the facts of the murder spree. over Little’s decades. However, it is also a pretty obvious facet of this story. Countless times, the series makes cumbersome statements that are not nearly as cunning or revealing as one might think, thus making everything a little exaggerated and empty.
“Countless times, the series makes cumbersome statements that are not nearly as cunning or revealing as one might think, thus making everything a little exaggerated and empty.”
Lauren’s broader claim is that Little’s saga is a cruel example of failures in the criminal justice system because, despite the fact that he had a rap sheet that totaled nearly 100 pages (including crimes ranging from entry and entry and assault, rape and murder), evaded serious prosecution. And this is true and speaks of a general disregard for sex workers and drug users (especially when they are women of color). And another furious confrontation between Laurie Barros, who survived a Little attack, and the prosecutor who failed to receive a guilty plea (instead, he settled for a deal that compensated Little two years behind bars) speaks of the misogyny played here, where the women on skates were thrown into the fields, barrels and garbage dumps by the monstrous Little and then dizzy by the institutions meant to support them.
Even in this sense, however, Confronting a serial killer it tells us things we already know, while at the same time stating things that are not tangled with the material at hand. For example, Lauren proclaims that Little’s ability to escape prosecution for so long is proof that the justice system is racist – despite the fact that he was a black man who in many cases killed white women, which what would you think would make him the ideal fodder for a racist system. Not helping things is a misleading chronological structure that makes things less clear and less clear and suggests that Berlinger himself knows that there is nothing particularly profound to be gleaned from Little’s reign of terror except that it is depressingly easy. to escape by killing those who live on the lower rungs of the social ladder.
In his discussions with Lauren, Little provides ample evidence of his own deviant, sex-based sociopathy, his preternatural 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. It’s a terrible creep, to the end. Unlike his kind, brothers John Wayne Gacy: The Devil in Disguise or The killer of confession, however, Confronting a serial killer he marks Little as an ordinary liar and yet takes much of what he claims at face value. The success of Lauren and law enforcement in fixing numerous unsolved crimes on Little – based on her own testimony – suggests that, in many ways, he was telling the truth. But the possibility that he was also an egomaniacal claim to the crimes he did not commit is unexplored here – surprisingly, given the series’ general blind spot when it comes to self-absorption.