Serial killer true crime stories are a genre in and of themselves — so much so that the repeated revisiting of murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy almost turn them into clichés that threaten to trivialize the very real consequences of their killings. But rarely are true crime and social justice as cohesively intertwined on the small screen as they are in “Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York,” a four-part docuseries premiering on HBO.
Directed by Anthony Caronna and executive produced by Howard Gertler from Elon Green’s 2021 nonfiction book, “Last Call” pulls back the curtain on the killing spree of Richard Rogers, a male nurse who, as far back as the 1980s and until 2001 when he was eventually caught by authorities, targeted gay men in New York and New Jersey. (Prior, in 1973, he was acquitted of killing his college housemate in what he alleged was a fit of gay panic.) His reign of terror also fell at a time when queer people were under siege by the NYPD and whose stories were largely ignored by the mainstream media amid the AIDS crisis and the still-felt influence of the Anita Bryants of the world. Through sensitively conducted interviews with the victims’ surviving family members, friends, and lovers, and through noirish reenactments that recall the work of Errol Morris and “The Thin Blue Line,” “Last Call” seeks to reclaim those stories and the socially vulnerable people who tell them.
Gertler told IndieWire that the filmmakers did not want “to create something that would re-traumatize the family members of the victims. The community at large would have to guide how we were going to approach the violence of it.” That involved setting up months-spanning interviews also with the NYC Anti-Violence Project and the authorities who tracked the case.
Beneath the grislier aspects detailed in the series — Rogers’ modus operandi involved dismemberment and strewing body parts around the Tri-State Area — is also an evocative snapshot of gay New York in the early 1990s. Queer bars like The Townhouse and the since-shuttered Five Oaks play as much of a role here as the people who frequented them and the killer who haunted them.
“Last Call”
Rogers’ first victim was Peter Stickney Anderson, a well-liked, closeted banker whose former secret lover shares moving testimony about their relationship. That man was the last to see Anderson before he was drunkenly abducted by Rogers and killed. Rogers also picked up and murdered Thomas Richard Mulcahy, a married father of four who lived an undercover gay life and whose daughter recounts touching memories of him. There was also Michael Sakara, the mayor of Townhouse, who is warmly remembered by former employees of the bar and by his sister, who is also gay.
“Last Call” gives us perhaps the most access to the surviving family of Anthony Marrero, a 44-year-old Latino sex worker whose killing confounded the NYPD — who’d mostly clocked the man who was eventually revealed to be Rogers as a murderer of white, moneyed, older men.
As for how the filmmakers got the victims’ loved ones to speak so candidly without reactivating their trauma, Gertler said, “It was a series of conversations. There was one subject where we were talking to them for a year before they felt like they were ready to sit for this interview. When you approach subjects with a story like this, especially ones who’ve been through some sort of trauma, it’s important to communicate what your intent is […] to let them know when they’re in the room they can say no to any question they want to.”
He added that “everyone came away feeling like they had a cathartic experience.”
In the harrowing second episode of “Last Call,” which is primarily focused on Marrero and the fallout within the underground gay community of his murder, one of Rogers’ alleged attempted victims speaks anonymously about his brush with someone whose MO sounds closely like the killer’s.
“Last Call”
“His parameters in telling this story were that he did want to hide his identity because he wasn’t afraid, but he didn’t want Richard Rogers to possibly see this show or hear about this person sitting down that still had trauma from that experience. He didn’t want Richard to feel like he had affected his life in that way,” Caronna said.
Rogers, who did not respond to requests to participate in the series, is still alive and serving multiple life sentences in New Jersey State Prison. The NYPD’s often futile pursuit of him across the years turns the series into a documentary thriller in its final stages — futile also because of the police’s own seemingly homophobic refusal to take the murders more seriously.
“Richard’s backstory was never the most interesting thing to Howard and I. We weren’t really interested in telling that story. And we also didn’t want to do this sort of like armchair psychology on Richard Rogers,” Caronna said, with the filmmakers insistent that “Last Call” is not a lurid serial killer saga but instead a portrait of often-maligned or ignored voices from the queer community. In a timely harkening to recent controversies surrounding The New York Times’ coverage of trans people, “Last Call” touches on the bias at the Times and other New York media outlets that deemed Rogers (before his identity was known) as the “gay-slay” killer obviously because it had a catchy, if-it-bleeds-it-leads rhyme to it. But that’s just one part of the story that the four hours of “Last Call” — which, like “O.J.: Made in America,” starts as one true-crime sort of thing before revealing a broader, deepening social canvas — can only tackle so much.
“I don’t know that I will ever tell a story as incredibly difficult as this one because we weren’t just telling a very basic true crime story. We had so many elements that we had to work into four hours. It was a complicated, trial-and-error thing over the course of a year and a half,” Gertler said.
What drove Rogers to kill remains eerily ambiguous, and it’s not something the series tries to answer. “We know his sexuality, but the only thing that really accounts for is that he knew how to take advantage of these safe spaces,” Caronna said. “I can’t speak to it — and I don’t think any of us can — what his true motives are, but it wasn’t our place to make that comment.”
“Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York” premieres on HBO and streams on Max on Sunday, July 9. Watch an exclusive clip below.
Directed by Anthony Caronna and executive produced by Howard Gertler from Elon Green’s 2021 nonfiction book, “Last Call” pulls back the curtain on the killing spree of Richard Rogers, a male nurse who, as far back as the 1980s and until 2001 when he was eventually caught by authorities, targeted gay men in New York and New Jersey. (Prior, in 1973, he was acquitted of killing his college housemate in what he alleged was a fit of gay panic.) His reign of terror also fell at a time when queer people were under siege by the NYPD and whose stories were largely ignored by the mainstream media amid the AIDS crisis and the still-felt influence of the Anita Bryants of the world. Through sensitively conducted interviews with the victims’ surviving family members, friends, and lovers, and through noirish reenactments that recall the work of Errol Morris and “The Thin Blue Line,” “Last Call” seeks to reclaim those stories and the socially vulnerable people who tell them.
Gertler told IndieWire that the filmmakers did not want “to create something that would re-traumatize the family members of the victims. The community at large would have to guide how we were going to approach the violence of it.” That involved setting up months-spanning interviews also with the NYC Anti-Violence Project and the authorities who tracked the case.
Beneath the grislier aspects detailed in the series — Rogers’ modus operandi involved dismemberment and strewing body parts around the Tri-State Area — is also an evocative snapshot of gay New York in the early 1990s. Queer bars like The Townhouse and the since-shuttered Five Oaks play as much of a role here as the people who frequented them and the killer who haunted them.
“Last Call”
Rogers’ first victim was Peter Stickney Anderson, a well-liked, closeted banker whose former secret lover shares moving testimony about their relationship. That man was the last to see Anderson before he was drunkenly abducted by Rogers and killed. Rogers also picked up and murdered Thomas Richard Mulcahy, a married father of four who lived an undercover gay life and whose daughter recounts touching memories of him. There was also Michael Sakara, the mayor of Townhouse, who is warmly remembered by former employees of the bar and by his sister, who is also gay.
“Last Call” gives us perhaps the most access to the surviving family of Anthony Marrero, a 44-year-old Latino sex worker whose killing confounded the NYPD — who’d mostly clocked the man who was eventually revealed to be Rogers as a murderer of white, moneyed, older men.
As for how the filmmakers got the victims’ loved ones to speak so candidly without reactivating their trauma, Gertler said, “It was a series of conversations. There was one subject where we were talking to them for a year before they felt like they were ready to sit for this interview. When you approach subjects with a story like this, especially ones who’ve been through some sort of trauma, it’s important to communicate what your intent is […] to let them know when they’re in the room they can say no to any question they want to.”
He added that “everyone came away feeling like they had a cathartic experience.”
In the harrowing second episode of “Last Call,” which is primarily focused on Marrero and the fallout within the underground gay community of his murder, one of Rogers’ alleged attempted victims speaks anonymously about his brush with someone whose MO sounds closely like the killer’s.
“Last Call”
“His parameters in telling this story were that he did want to hide his identity because he wasn’t afraid, but he didn’t want Richard Rogers to possibly see this show or hear about this person sitting down that still had trauma from that experience. He didn’t want Richard to feel like he had affected his life in that way,” Caronna said.
Rogers, who did not respond to requests to participate in the series, is still alive and serving multiple life sentences in New Jersey State Prison. The NYPD’s often futile pursuit of him across the years turns the series into a documentary thriller in its final stages — futile also because of the police’s own seemingly homophobic refusal to take the murders more seriously.
“Richard’s backstory was never the most interesting thing to Howard and I. We weren’t really interested in telling that story. And we also didn’t want to do this sort of like armchair psychology on Richard Rogers,” Caronna said, with the filmmakers insistent that “Last Call” is not a lurid serial killer saga but instead a portrait of often-maligned or ignored voices from the queer community. In a timely harkening to recent controversies surrounding The New York Times’ coverage of trans people, “Last Call” touches on the bias at the Times and other New York media outlets that deemed Rogers (before his identity was known) as the “gay-slay” killer obviously because it had a catchy, if-it-bleeds-it-leads rhyme to it. But that’s just one part of the story that the four hours of “Last Call” — which, like “O.J.: Made in America,” starts as one true-crime sort of thing before revealing a broader, deepening social canvas — can only tackle so much.
“I don’t know that I will ever tell a story as incredibly difficult as this one because we weren’t just telling a very basic true crime story. We had so many elements that we had to work into four hours. It was a complicated, trial-and-error thing over the course of a year and a half,” Gertler said.
What drove Rogers to kill remains eerily ambiguous, and it’s not something the series tries to answer. “We know his sexuality, but the only thing that really accounts for is that he knew how to take advantage of these safe spaces,” Caronna said. “I can’t speak to it — and I don’t think any of us can — what his true motives are, but it wasn’t our place to make that comment.”
“Last Call: When a Serial Killer Stalked Queer New York” premieres on HBO and streams on Max on Sunday, July 9. Watch an exclusive clip below.