His remains were discovered in July 1993 discarded in the trash as most of the others were about an hour north of Manhattan. The fourth victim, Michael Sakara, suffered the same fate as the previous victims: fatal stab wounds and severe dismemberment. He was disposed of in trash bags at the edge of a state forest in New Jersey. His body suffered stab wounds, like the previous victims, and he was also dismembered into seven parts. He had previous arrests for pandering & solicitation. Anthony Marrero was a sex worker who was known to work the area around the Port Authority Bus Terminal. Ten months later, another victim emerged. His remains were deposited in two separate locations. Thomas Mulcahy was also not from New York city and was in Manhattan on a business trip from Massachusetts. This victim had also been stabbed, but this time his limbs were also dismembered and washed clean before they were dumped. Two months later, another victim was discovered, disposed of in a similar way. He was found inside a 55 gallon trash barrel. His penis was cut off, shoved into his mouth, and his body had been stabbed. On May 5th, 1991, Anderson’s body was found on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He wasn’t from New York and was visiting Manhattan from Philadelphia in 1991.
At the time of his murder, he was still predominantly closeted, and although he was separated from his wife, he was still technically married to her. The Last Call Killer’s first victim was Peter Anderson, a banker. Here is everything we know about the Last Call Killer and efforts it took to find him. While the book titled Last Call obviously details the murders and the eventual arrest of the perpetrator, it also takes a look at law enforcement and the bias they showed towards the crimes.ĭespite the perpetrator being convicted, police have said the actual number of victims and his motives for killing these men actually still remains a mystery. Journalist Elon Green took it upon himself to write a book about this very issue. Despite committing several brutal atrocities, the man wasn’t actually found until 2001.Īt the time, many felt the crimes went unsolved for so long because the victims were gay. Because of this, the predator earned himself the title of “The Last Call Killer”. The killer’s victims were targeted as they left the bar right after last call. In the early 1990s, fear gripped the LGBTQ community in New York City as a serial killer began preying on drunk men frequenting the city’s gay bars late at night. However, because Last Call shows how the passage of time often changes culture for the better, it’s ultimately uplifting-if a book about a serial killer could, in any way, be called 'uplifting.By: Nikki Hudson True crime: How a serial killer made NYC gay piano bars unsafe in the 90s
To his credit, Green never lets us forget the amplified threats that existed for gay men during this era. Regular readers of true crime may not find the violence unexpected, but the cultural context of the AIDS panic adds additional weight to this brutality. Their lives mattered, and Last Call is a testament to how homophobia shaped these men’s lives and, eventually, their deaths. He shows us the people they were and the lives they left behind. In Last Call, Green instead foregrounds Rogers’ known victims. True crime too often focuses on the 'bad guys,' as if repeatedly mulling over their motives may eventually explain evil.
Weaving together multiple histories and jumping back and forth in time can be hit-or-miss as a narrative structure, but Last Call does it well, thanks to Green’s original reporting conducted with law enforcement, politicians, victims’ families and patrons at gay bars where Rogers lurked. But there’s also the imperative of truth-not just the factual tally of names, dates, and numbers, but the existential question of why such horror happened at all. Most true-crime writers favor the crime half of the equation. preserves the poignant irony that the trust and vulnerability that once made gay bars synonymous with gay community were also vectors of death, both in the form of murder and, later, HIV/AIDS. Such offbeat details compensate for Green’s smooth but bland prose. a salvage operation not only for individual lives, but for a whole bleak chapter of underground queer life. Green, who identifies as straight, never explains why the victims obsessed him. It’s a reparative act that doubles as an extended elegy for the decades of closeted or bullied queers who encountered similar demons in schoolyards, across dinner tables, in pews, or in the browser histories they desperately erased. Rather than focus on the killer-who has all the allure of a wet cocktail napkin-he foregrounds the lives and milieus of the victims.