Doc Unlocks Murder of Gay Porn Star

There’s so much true crime content out there that it’s sometimes hard to tell one sordid exposé from the other. Most of them tend to apply the same formula and aesthetic: plots twists and reversals galore; reams of archive images; interviews with experts or so-called experts; cheesy re-enactments and b-roll footage; and lots of thriller music to up the suspense.

Rachel Mason’s My Brother’s Killer checks most of the above boxes, and at first blush it feels like yet another gory cold case doc meant to shock us in front of our screens. But as the story unfolds, and some truly surprising characters and facts emerge, the film transforms into a probing account of a gay community devastated by bigotry, AIDS and one gruesome murder that haunted people for decades.

Let’s start with the facts: In October 1990, the decapitated head and severed limbs of 25-year-old adult film actor William Arnold Newton, aka Billy London, were found in a dumpster in West Hollywood. The murder traumatized L.A.’s underground queer scene, which had suffered decades of homophobic attacks and the rippling effects of the HIV crisis. After years of trying to solve the crime, the LAPD eventually packed London’s case away.

Enter filmmaker Mason, whose enlightening 2019 documentary Circus of Books, chronicled the Los Angeles porn shop that her parents ran when she was a kid. The place served as a safe haven for the city’s persecuted gay denizens, including young arrivals like London who came to L.A. to escape oppressive small-town America. Many of them turned to prostitution or adult films — which were made clandestinely to avoid legal repercussions — in order to pay the rent. Their lives were often rough and sordid, but awarded them the kind of freedom they could never find back home, even if such freedom came at a price.

Fascinated by London’s story and the fact that his murder was never solved, Mason decided to team up with homicide detective John Lamberti and sociologist turned online sleuth Clark Williams, who grew up in the same small Wisconsin city that London did. The trio would go on to spend years chasing down leads, red herrings and crazy coincidences, allowing Mason to explore the ins and outs of a gay community that her parents served for a generation in their L.A. store.

Of the many suspects in the team’s investigation, one of the major ones is London’s former porn partner Marc Rabins, who speaks candidly in interviews about their wild times back in the day, when sex and drugs were rampant, as was the possibility of violence at the hands of gay-bashing mobs. Another suspect is the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer, whose methods for dismembering his victims (many of whom were gay) mirror those used on London, prompting the team to dig into Dahmer’s whereabouts at the time of the murder.

It’s impossible to explain what eventually happens in My Brother’s Killer without spoiling the film’s big twist, which this reviewer certainly didn’t see coming. Suffice it to say that the denouement only deepens the idea that a death as horrible as London’s was perhaps less the result of a freak incident than it was the product of its time — a time when gay men were victims because of who they were.

What makes Mason’s doc stand out from other cold case flicks is how it goes beyond sensationalizing to explore something more sinister within the neon-lit world of ‘80s Los Angeles, which was filled with handsome boys like London looking to escape their pasts and find a better life. None of them suffered the same fate he did, but a detailed spreadsheet prepared by the investigators reveals how many of them wound up dying prematurely, whether from drug overdoses or the effects of AIDS.

The sad reality of My Brother’s Killer is that the true crime at the heart of London’s tragic story wasn’t just the grisly murder of one promising young man, but the many wrongs committed against a community that encountered so much darkness in the California sunshine.