I Know What You Did Last Friday: Uncanny Valley
It's a big valley, okay?
Welcome to I Know What You Did Last Friday, a newsletter about murder, ghosts, disappearances, crimes, legends, spooky old houses that only have one attic light on, and all the other things that make life worth living. This week, we’re talking: weird murders.
Caught on Camera
I sometimes wonder what makes certain crimes stick in the mind more than others. Every murder is tragic, but what is it about, say, JonBenét Ramsey or the Manson family that keeps me awake decades after the fact? You could argue that it’s because these crimes are so famous, so much a part of our cultural fabric that they’ve come to symbolize much more than just senseless death.
Or, maybe it’s that they’re really fucking weird.
Like, you know what haunts me the most about Charles Manson & Friends? The creepy crawling they did before they ever killed a soul, where they’d sneak into people’s homes and rearrange their stuff. I think about that constantly. Imagine walking into your bedroom after a period away and realizing everything is slightly off.
The only thing scarier than waking up to a stranger in your house is waking up to your bedroom dresser six inches to the left of where it was before you fell asleep!
That, I think, is what the true crime stories that wedge themselves into my psyche have in common—a sense of the uncanny. One of the uncanniest unsolved mysteries I’ve come across in recent memory is the murder of Missy Bevers, a 45-year old fitness instructor from Texas. Eight years ago on an April morning (I imagine that it was sunny, because Texas), her students showed up for a workout class at a local church. Instead of…whatever one does at a church workout class, they found Bevers dead.
By all accounts Bevers was well-liked by her community and had no enemies. Before becoming a fitness instructor, she worked as a teacher for special needs students. Who would want to hurt this lady! She sounds nice! (No I am not saying that less nice people deserve death, stop twisting my words!)
Anyway, not only was Bevers killed in a mysterious and brutal way, the key piece of evidence in this case is bizarre. Surveillance footage from the morning Bevers was killed captured an individual (almost definitely the killer) wearing head-to-toe (yet mismatched) police gear lurking inside the church, seemingly waiting for her to arrive. As one does when they have time to kill (*groan*) before their intended murder victim arrives, the suspect spent some time strolling around the building, smashing windows and being generally unsavory.
I am only able to watch a few seconds of the Missy Bevers video before I get so creeped out that I want to throw my device across the room and actually go outside for ten minutes in order to calm down. It’s compounded by the knowledge that the murder remains unsolved and yet, there the killer is, caught on camera. There’s a sense that, if a few details were ever-so-slightly different—if the headgear slipped, if the camera angle changed—maybe we’d know who did it. Or maybe it never would have happened at all. —E.K.
The Man Behind the Mask
There are few things that disappointed me as much as learning that John Wayne Gacy never actually committed any murders while dressed as Pogo the Clown. Why bother creating this whole phenomenal disgusting clown persona if you’re just gonna do your actual murders in your khakis, as if you were just scrubbing your toilet? It’s like if you went to hang out with the Joker and he just wanted to stay in and do sheet masks.
Yes, I know it is in poor taste to demand that a serial killer entertain me more while he does shis serial killings. But serial killing — or, at least, the culture and true crime media around serial killing — is a game of gimmicks. The Mount Rushmore of American murderers is made up not necessarily of the most evil people who committed the most horrible crimes, but rather, those who have amazing elevator pitches: Gacy (evil clown), Bundy (evil preppy), Dahmer (gay cannibal), Son of Sam (talking dog guy), Aileen Wuornos (The Woman One). It’s almost like being in a boy band!
People who require a bit more explaining, like Richard “heavy metal Satanist” Ramirez, Gary “what exactly IS a Green River” Ridgway, the Hillside “wait there were two of them?” Stranglers, or Edmund “really tall, killed college girls, but then there was this whole mom thing” Kemper are eternally relegated to the second tier — simply because the more you have to explain someone, they less frightening they are. The part of our brain that thinks the boogeyman is real is not into nuance.
So where do masked killers fit into this mix? On paper, a mask sounds like an excellent gimmick: ahhh, no face! Very scary! Who knows what’s happening under there! Smiles, frowns, rashes, overplucked eyebrows that got drawn on weird: each terrifying in their own ways!
On the big screen, too, masked killers are some of the only ones to get serious traction; Jason, Michael Myers and Leatherface have been able to spin roughly 88696968676 sequels and reboots out of the premise that not being able to see someone’s facial expressions somehow makes the act of being murdered even scarier.
But in real life, masked killers have not had the same level of connection with the public. Take the Zodiac Killer — he had a mask AND sent letters AND did weird cryptic codes? Three excellent gimmicks! He had his own little logo, just like Slayer! But I think Zodiac largely remains a taste for the connoisseur.
One case that I come back to over and over again is the Texarkana Phantom Killer. In early 1946, a man walked the desolate lovers’ lanes of Texarkana, Texas, killing five people and wounding three more. The Phantom Killer was described by the first people to survive his attack as wearing a white cloth bag on his head with eye holes cut out.
I don’t think I come back because I think it’s cool to kill people who were just trying to make out (it’s rude!), or because I think the way the crimes caused the residents of Texarkana to become gun-toting maniacs is interesting (though it IS interesting). I’m in it for the mask.
There are no pictures of the actual Phantom Killer, obviously; he got away with it (probably). So these images are from The Town That Dreaded Sundown, the 1976 film that’s probably the only reason we know about this case today.
But jesus christ, look at that fucking mask!!
Not so far off from what Jason wears in Friday the 13th Part II:
But to me, something about the Texarkana Phantom Killer one is creepier. It’s not camp, it’s not silly, it doesn’t make you look like a poorly constructed scarecrow. It gets me on a visceral level, the same way “evil clown” or “hello from the gutters of N.Y.C.” does. It’s the work of someone who is not plugged into reality properly.
I actually think masks are scarier than most serial killer accoutrements, which is maybe why masked killers actually aren’t that popular. They’re too scary. And they work. Everyone on our Mount Rushmore of serial killers eventually got captured by the good guys. Our masked killers may be out there to this very day.
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The worst part about getting into true crime is that you get started because you’re fascinated by the dark side of humanity. But if you spend enough time in it, you learn that the dark side of humanity is not actually very interesting at all. People kill because of money, or jealousy, or a weird hang-up about women. Crimes that at first glance seem totally Grimm’s Fairy Tale, turn out to actually just be another case of some asshole who had problems with his mother and thought therapy was for girls. It turns out that extreme human misbehavior, like all human behavior, is actually pretty boring once you get into it.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I didn’t get into true crime because I think murder is cool, or because I’m trying to personally figure out how to NOT be murdered. I’m into it because I like touching the boogeyman part of my brain. I want some things to be un-understandable. Human beings have a drive to believe in monsters, the uncanny — it balances us in some way, gives us some kind of insight into each other or the human spirit, some essential function that we need to make it through a world that is far more complex than evil clowns or boy bands.
And so, in that spirit, this Halloween season, I would like to salute the Masked Murderers of the World! You may not get the same love as evil preppies and talking dog guys, but please know that I appreciate everything you do. — Gaby
Spooky Recs
Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ray Bradbury
Mr. Bradbury does not need my help, as this book is definitely a Halloween classic. But I’ve actually never read it before! Most Octobers I weirdly find myself less in the mood for spooky stuff than I typically am (I’ve been reading a ton of books about Old Hollywood lately). But I’m finally making this one my last-minute seasonal read. - E.K.
Prevenge
Alice Lowe was one of the stars of the cult 2000s British horror comedy series Garth Marenghi’s Dark Place, and once a decade, she just shows up out of nowhere and makes the weirdest genre movie she can think of. In Prevenge (2016), she plays a pregnant woman whose fetus demands that she kill the people who may (?) have played a role in her ex’s death. Whatever you’re picturing, it’s funnier and weirder than that.
Her next movie, Timestalker, which I was lucky enough to just see at the Brookyln Horror Film Festival, is about a pathetic woman stuck in a time loop where she keeps having the same unrequited crush on the same blowhard for several thousand years. It is also funnier and weirder than whatever you are imaging, and should be out next year! —GM