Original subtitles

(footsteps crunching)

(car door opens)

(keys jingling)

(car door closes)

(engine starts)

("Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte" by Patti Page plays on radio)

♪ The red rose tells you ♪

♪ Of his passion ♪

♪ The white rose his love's so true ♪

♪ Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte ♪

♪ Charlotte ♪

♪ Don't you cry ♪

♪ Hush, hush, sweet Charlotte... ♪

Reporter: The murder of a married,

middle-aged businessman

from Massachusetts...

(tense music playing)

Man 1: The night the gentleman

from Massachusetts disappeared,

it was relatively quiet.

Man 2: I think he saw this guy

across the room in the piano bar.

Man 1: And then they were gone.

Next thing I know, there he is in the papers.

He couldn't have seen it coming.

And so many people were so terrified.

Reporter: His body parts were found in plastic bags

along roadways here in New Jersey,

and his briefcase was left nearby.

(wind whooshing)

(dramatic theme music playing)

Chief Thomas Macauley: I was working a regular shift

when I was notified.

A few of the Department of Transportation employees

found a, uh, a human head in the back of their truck.

Nick Theodos: Evidently, as maintenance workers

were throwing the bags off the truck.

one of the bags caught the edge of the wood

and split open,

and that's when they noticed the head.

Around mile marker 70.

They found the bags containing the legs.

I worked numerous murders,

but this wasn't like a normal crime scene.

It looked like somebody had washed the body

and then used newspaper to wrap the body.

Chief Macauley: Our victim was cut into seven pieces

and packaged

in several different trash bags.

We went through each bag and collected what we could.

Part of the body was wrapped in a, uh, shower curtain.

There was a bag from a shopping center.

Chief Macauley: A Liz Claiborne

king size fitted sheet.

Theodos: We found a keyhole saw.

We found some gloves.

One of the bags contained his briefcase

that had his, uh, wallet,

which contained his driver's license.

So at that point, we knew our victim was Thomas Mulcahy.

Tracey O'Shea: I would say half of these photos

are from trips of some sort.

My dad really enjoyed taking us and traveling

and, and showing us things and having us experience things.

And being together as a family

was definitely important to him.

This is at my senior prom, I believe.

He was just, you know, being sort of, Dad.

(laughs)

O'Shea: It was about six weeks before my 19th birthday

when my father was killed.

It's been, gosh, 31 years.

So the hesitancy to put it out there

and have, have it sort of resurface

is just a lot.

It's good to kind of, go back,

and remember that point in my life

where he was there, (chuckles)

and able to do these things with him.

My father was very kind,

kind of gentle...

funny in a quirky kind of way.

(laughs) Um...

This was more of his "chilling attire,"

even though he looks pretty buttoned up

for gardening and being outside.

I always felt like my dad was different

than maybe a lot of the other dads that I grew up with.

Not hugely.

He loved our town

and what it provided from a family perspective,

but he was more, sort of, cosmopolitan,

traveling to different parts of the world.

His life seemed bigger than Sudbury.

He was into Hollywood glamour,

and he loved Broadway and "Chorus Line"

and "La Cage aux Folles."

I'd say the big thing was, he kind of, let us be ourselves,

or let me be myself,

and kind of, um, was encouraging in that way.

In my teenage years,

I sensed that there was more to him

and the life that I experienced,

there was more to it.

Then he went down to New York

on a business trip and...

never came home.

(solemn music playing)

Chief Macauley: When we started trying to figure out

how Mr. Mulcahy became a victim of a homicide,

we started tracing his footsteps.

And we found out that he was in New York

for a presentation.

My mom was in regular contact

with the police

and, and getting updates,

especially in those early days.

I know he had done his presentation

at the World Trade Center,

that he had with a colleague,

that they had gone out to lunch afterwards

and drank a lot of beers.

The detectives shared with us

that there was some ATM transaction somewhere.

Through looking at his credit cards,

we were able to track his movements.

And he ultimately ended up at the Townhouse...

Townhouse Pub in New York City.

It was learned that, uh, that sometimes

he went for male companionship.

I was the last person to be seen

with Thomas Mulcahy.

It was a busy night, but it wasn't overly crowded.

And I took my usual spot at the bar.

My friend Jack came in with a friend of his from Boston

named Thomas Mulcahy.

I liked older, professional,

well-dressed gentlemen.

Uh, so he introduced me.

Oh, he was a very handsome man.

Tall, classic New England,

Brooks Brothers, businessmen,

executive look.

I knew nothing about his home life,

just that he was here on business.

I would like to have spent more time with him,

but I noticed

that he was interested in someone else

standing at the piano.

So I politely excused myself.

As I was leaving, I was curious

as to who it might have caught his attention.

So I did look back, and I did see one gentleman

standing at the piano.

I had not seen him before.

Brown hair.

Wearing a polo shirt.

Kind of nondescript.

Two or three days later,

I get a knock on my apartment door

at about six o'clock in the morning.

And it's detectives from the 17th Precinct

informing me that Tom--

body parts had been found scattered throughout New Jersey.

♪ ♪

O'Shea: In the months after my father was murdered,

the details were kind of unraveling.

We had, kind of, a session

as a family, um,

with a therapist.

Um,

and I think the way it was said,

was that my dad had another life,

and that that life was gay.

And then... I learned

that a few years prior,

after he returned from a business trip,

my mom found some brochures

around gay bars in London

or something like that.

Um, from my understanding, my mom and dad

wanted to--

they made a choice to work on things

and, um...

be in therapy.

In my world, homosexuality wasn't really talked about.

Not that I was afraid of it

or opposed to it or anything like that,

but I just didn't really have much exposure

to what being gay was.

Just having gone through my dad being murdered,

being dismembered,

being alongside the Garden State Parkway,

like, and now I'm being told he's gay.

Like, (voice breaking) what else is gonna...

happen?

(somber music playing)

(ambient street sounds)

With the gay community?

Probably with the gay community, yeah.

When we started investigating and going to the bars

that were known to be frequented

by the gay community,

we had contacted, uh, in New York City,

the Gay Lesbian Anti-Violence Project,

and, uh, mentioned to them that we had this case

and that, um, you know,

if there was any way that they could help.

Bea Hanson: The Anti-Violence Project was founded in 1980,

and it was founded in order to respond to a rash

of anti-gay bias attacks that were happening.

We called ourselves the New York City Gay

and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.

And at AVP, we functioned kind of as a connector

between the police department and the community in some ways.

Matt Foreman: We're doing precinct sensitivity training programs.

We're training state police in New Jersey. Uh, we're try...

The New Jersey State Police knew about us

because I was doing sensitivity training class

with them for a whole year

because they had a horrible reputation

of harassing gay men.

Hanson: The New Jersey State Police

called me wanting help,

wanting any information we could,

we could help them with.

And they had no clue about the gay community.

I mean, uh, you know, it's just a different world.

Hang on to those wigs and pumps, 'cause here we go.

(funky electronic music playing)

Hanson: When I first moved to New York,

you know, I came in '86,

New York was really a place,

and I think for a lot of Queer people then,

it was a place where you felt like,

you could be who you are.

Person 1: I love New York.

Thank you, New York, for being so fabulous.

Foreman: Our movement was just growing.

Person 2: So gay today.

Foreman: Everything was just burgeoning

in terms of gay life.

I think it's hard for straight people to understand

what it felt like to walk into a gay bar back then.

("Show Me Love" by Robin S. playing)

♪ You've got to show me love ♪

♪ ♪

♪ Heartbreaks and promises ♪

♪ I've had more than my share ♪

Foreman: I remember the first gay bar I walked into,

I thought, "Oh, my God, I've been missing this

my entire life."

It just felt like home.

♪ Show me, show me baby ♪

It was, uh, sexual. Very sexual.

Narrator: Come to Man's Country and develop your body

or a friendship with somebody else's.

Hanson: We had the Clit Club.

It was really like, the "dyke coming out,

sex-positive place."

I loved going there.

David Wertheimer: Queer bars were

one of the few places in the community

where we could come and feel safe.

Hi. What are we doing here today at Marie's Crisis?

Piano bars, poppers, Barbra Streisand,

the whole deal, you know?

Yes!

(singing) ♪ And all because of the man... ♪

Wertheimer: And there were people

who, because they... hated gay people,

or were afraid of gay people, or were afraid of feelings

they may have had themselves,

would come to places like this

specifically with the intention of doing harm.

Hanson: There was always this kind of...

"You got to watch your back at the same time too," sort of feeling.

Reporter 1: It all started just after midnight

when a pipe bomb exploded in a West Village bar

called Uncle Charlie's.

A six-inch pipe bomb

had been placed in a trash can.

It exploded inside the club,

injuring a bar worker and two patrons.

Reporter 2: Bouquets of flowers and the candles

at the door of the Ramrod bar.

They're really symbols of the mourning,

the feeling of mourning for the two dead

and the others who have been shot.

Mike DeLa Hoz: This is ridiculous!

I want to live my life out.

I don't want to be killed on these streets.

It's ridiculous!

(sniffles)

I mean, you know what it is to be,

to be assaulted for just being alive?

I mean, for being what you want to be.

If there's one thing that is universal,

in my experience to LGBTQ people,

that we all know intuitively, it's violence.

So you used to do-- you, you admit

that you used to do gay bashing?

Guest: Yeah. Fag bashing.

Oprah: And why would you do this?

Uh, we were young and full of goofiness,

and we just--

it was the thing to do on a Friday or Saturday night.

Yeah. And so did that give you pleasure doing that?

At the time? It was fun, yes.

We had cases where guys would come in with,

to the West Village and Chelsea with golf clubs.

There's no golf course in the West Village and Chelsea.

Simply to use those to, to beat up gay people.

-(protestors shouting) -(whistling)

Hanson: And, you know, the AIDS crisis was raging.

One of the things we saw is people were targeted

because they looked sick,

because gay people and gay men, you know,

were, were blamed for HIV and AIDS.

So the AIDS crisis, the epidemic of AIDS

and violence definitely connected and increased.

Foreman: It's in all of us.

That fear of being hurt

because we're queer.

Probably not a program goes by on "Gay USA"

where we don't talk about the rising tide of anti-gay

and anti-lesbian violence.

"Gay USA" is a weekly one hour news show...

(lively show theme playing)

Andy Humm: ...about everything that happens

in the LGBTQIA community.

The brutal beating of...

Whenever anybody was beat up

or something bad happened, we'd talk about it.

Hate crimes against gays and lesbians

are up all over the country.

You know, I've had people try

to run me over in their car because of it.

My best friend was beaten severely in Brooklyn.

He had to live with me because his jaw was broken.

Guest: Two guys walked towards me,

and call-- one of them called me a faggot.

The one who was closest had his,

-his arm up-- -Oprah: Mm-hmm.

and, um, stabbed me in the shoulder.

I had so much repressed anger

at how we were being treated.

(indistinct shouting)

Foreman: I was just furious,

and I wanted to do something about it.

Reporter: Can you spell your last name for me?

F-O-R-E-M-A-N.

Executive director of New York City

Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project.

Reporter: You told me yesterday that the Anti-Violence Project

has been around for ten years, um, here in New York.

What's new that's happening?

What's the phenomenon that you see happening?

What's new is this alarming escalation

in anti-gay and anti-lesbian crime.

It's been on the increase for years...

Every day, more and more,

especially on Monday mornings, we'd have 10, 20 new reports,

which meant 10, 20 people

that needed to be reached out to

to talk to, to help.

Our job was to be there for the survivors,

try to help them navigate the system,

whether it was crime victim, uh, compensation for their injuries,

or to help them deal with the psychological trauma of it.

If you're a member of this community,

if you're a lesbian or a gay man in this community

and you've been victimized, come to AVP.

I mean, that's, that's the root.

That's the bottom line there.

It was very much trying to push law enforcement

to give a shit.

Foreman: In the Mulcahy case,

Bea was the front person with the police.

I was pretty involved with keeping on top

of the New Jersey Police Department,

helping them connect them to the Townhouse.

The Townhouse wasn't really connected in

with, you know,

the Queer organized community

like, in the, in the West Village and in Chelsea.

There was out gay people everywhere.

But this is uptown.

This was kind of a bar where a lot of, like,

guys in suits went.

A lot of closeted guys went.

I would characterize it back then

as a place for older gentlemen

and, and younger men who like older gentlemen.

Michael Ferreri: For these men,

The Townhouse provided anonymity.

So they felt safe that anyone coming here

was obviously gay.

And, uh, if they're here, well, you know, you're here, too.

Chief Macauley: We went in the Townhouse several times

to, uh, interview people,

but they had no additional information to offer.

Foreman: I think a lot of potential tips

were missed because

the way in which they approached people at the Townhouse,

with very little finesse, as I understand it.

It's very difficult, especially in a bar like The Townhouse

where people were pretty closeted,

that they didn't really want to get involved with police.

(tense music playing)

Theodos: So we tracked down all of the items

that were recovered from the scene.

We checked on the Pergament bag

where the keyhole saw was purchased.

We called Pergament.

"We have a, a keyhole saw.

Could you tell us where somebody might buy this saw?"

And they say, "Well, what's the SKU number?"

And when we give them the SKU number,

they say, "Okay, that was shipped to Staten Island."

Chief Macauley: We couldn't identify which Pergament it came from.

We took a SKU number from the latex gloves,

and it, it identified the location

where those latex gloves were purchased,

which was a CVS on, on Staten Island.

And there was only one CVS on Staten Island.

And talking to the management at the CVS,

these gloves were probably purchased

within, like, a two-month period prior to this homicide.

And in that aisle,

directly across from the, from the gloves

was a box of, um, of trash bags

that were similar to the trash bags

that, that the victim was found in.

Theodos: They were all in Staten Island.

When we go back 30 years ago,

there wasn't the camera presence that you have today, right?

If you probably bought that today,

you'd probably have somebody on video,

but, uh, not lucky enough.

Chief Macauley: We also tried lifting several fingerprints

from the Mulcahy bags.

You put it in a sealed container

with superglue

and you apply heat to it,

and your prints are, are raised off that item.

But with our bags,

uh, it wasn't quite sealed.

So we didn't get the prints at that time from those bags.

We were trying to find any leads

or anything we could discover.

Chief Macauley: Lucky for us,

every homicide that we had,

we were required to submit it into ViCAP no matter what.

ViCAP stands for Violent Criminal Apprehension Program,

and is the analysis of similar cases

throughout the country.

Theodos: So we submitted the ViCAP form.

And once it went into the database,

the algorithms would push out if there was anything similar

based on the crime scene description.

It came back that there was a very similar case

in 1991.

(intense music playing)

Reporter: Police say he was stabbed to death.

So far, no motive, no suspects.

Chief Macauley: We realized

this person has done this previously.

Carl Harnish: Okay, here.

And then we're going west.

Jay Musser: Here's, here's the bridge.

-Harnish: Yeah. -Musser: So this is Mannheim.

So it has to be right around somewhere in around in here.

Harnish: Redding. Oh, we're going--

Musser: We're going-- That's where the body was found.

Harnish: Where's 72? Yeah. Okay.

This is the location where the barrel was located.

At a, uh, rest stop.

It's just a wide area.

He was about 40 to 45 feet off the road.

Yeah, okay.

Harnish: We were in charge of Lancaster County.

This, of course, is where the Pennsylvania Dutch live.

Musser: It's different from the city.

We didn't have a lot of homicides.

Harnish: The person who found the body in the barrel

was a maintenance employee.

I think he tore at least three bags open

before he realized, "Oh, it's a body."

He immediately radios his office.

I'm notified, Jay's notified,

and immediately we went to the scene.

Musser: When I got to the scene,

the body was on the ground,

removed from the, the 55-gallon barrel.

The only thing that really caught my attention

was how clean the body was.

With him being stabbed

and this big gaping hole in his stomach,

there had to be a lot of blood,

and yet there was nothing, and his whole torso was clean.

I saw that.

And for the moment, I didn't see anything else.

Musser: Five days later,

approximately 38 miles east of that,

that's where his personal belongings were found.

They found his clothes

driver's license...

Harnish: That's the first time the name come up.

That was Peter Anderson.

Musser: That's when the investigations really started.

You've got to find the trail. "When was Peter last seen?"

(vehicles passing by)

Tony Hoyt: I met Peter...

let me think, I've got,

I've gotta just do a little arithmetic here.

(softly) '63...

I'd say that I probably met Peter

in 1964 or 1965.

In New York.

We were all hanging out in the city together,

some party or something like that.

I remember he was very dapper.

He was always dressed to the nines.

In perfectly pressed Brooks Brothers suit.

Always wore a bow tie.

And he had a little round face.

He was very enthusiastic about,

about life and about meeting people.

He went to Trinity. He was a smart guy.

He liked to entertain,

and he'd have little dinner parties

and he always liked to keep the cocktail hour going

for hour after hour.

The-- I sensed that there was some sort

of electricity between the two of us.

But we didn't talk about it, because you didn't talk

about those things.

And then I got married.

Once I got married, I moved to Long Island.

I had the kids.

Peter and I...

we just went our separate ways

for a while.

(Director speaking)

Yeah. I, I, I think I can,

I think I can answer that question.

First night when there was hanky-panky.

I hadn't seen him in... (trills lips)

six or seven years.

And one night,

I had a client dinner in the city.

After dinner was over, I'd missed the last train,

and I'd had too much to drink.

I called Peter on the payphone. Cost a dime.

And I said,

"I, I need a place to sleep. Can I spend the night?"

And he said, "Sure, come on up."

Well, one thing led to another,

and that was the start of, of our relationship.

Peter was the first guy I was with.

No words were spoken.

It just happened.

We were both attracted to each other,

and, uh, we had some pretty good sex.

It was quite a romance because we were so close

and we were so intimate.

We fit together.

And we were safe together.

It's trust. We trusted each other.

Obviously, this relationship could not see the light of day,

or we would both be in serious trouble.

Me with my wife and my family and Peter at the Bank of--

Bank, Bank of New York.

Where I grew up, uh, everybody was straight.

One wasn't gay,

one was not a homosexual.

One grew up, went to school, went to college,

got out of college, got married, had babies, and died.

And that's what nice, nice people did.

(cheerful vintage music playing)

Lieutenant Williams: I'm Lieutenant Williams,

a police officer attached to the juvenile division.

I'm on my way to talk to a group of young people.

Humm: Before Stonewall, no one was out

except, you know, ten people. Alright?

Coming out was considered insanity before that.

"Are you out of your mind?

Why would you tell anybody this?"

In the old days, psychiatrists,

they were making so much money

off making gay people think we were sick.

Lieutenant Williams: What Jimmy didn't know was that Ralph was sick.

A sickness that was not visible like smallpox

but no less dangerous and contagious.

A sickness of the mind.

You see, Ralph was a homosexual.

Even when the psychiatrists removed us

from the index of mental disorders in 1973,

the psychiatrist who testified for it wore a big, ugly mask.

If he was identified, he was gonna lose his job.

Foreman: Back in the '50s and '60s and '70s,

if you came out,

you would, in fact, lose your job.

You would, in fact, be thrown out of your church,

you would lose your children.

Narrator: The CBS News Public Opinion survey indicates

that sentiment is against permitting

homosexual relationships

between consenting adults without legal punishment.

Man: I was terribly frightened by the homosexual feelings

and the guilt associated

with having feelings of attraction

towards other males.

(pensive music playing)

Hoyt: One night, Peter said to me,

"Well, I've got something to tell you."

And I said, "Well, what's that?"

And he said, "I'm going to get married."

And I said, "You what?"

It was his cover.

He needed a cover.

And, um, I said,

"Well, this is... good for you."

(inaudible dialogue)

Hoyt: It wasn't an issue.

"Well, well, God, we're,

"we're in bed together, maybe we should,

"maybe we should talk about this.

Uh, maybe we should come out."

We didn't really know anybody who was out.

And he said, "It doesn't necessarily have to end."

I said, "No, it doesn't."

But it did.

The last time I saw him, he was getting married

the next week.

And after that, I didn't see him

until that night in-in New York City in 1991.

Reporter: Lancaster police have identified him

as Peter Anderson of Philadelphia.

He was a former Assistant Vice President of Mellon Bank.

(ambient street noise)

Harnish: With his identification,

we knew where he lived.

Trooper Musser obtained a search warrant

for Peter's apartment in Philadelphia.

Musser: Went through the apartment

with Trooper Kevin Dykes.

Just going through anything to see

if we can find any, any more leads.

The gay thing wasn't really relevant

to the investigation other than finding out

who might've killed him and where he hung out.

Harnish: We conducted interviews

at various bars in-in Philadelphia

that we knew or had heard that Peter frequented.

Musser: One of the interviews let us know that

Peter went to New York on a Friday

for a fundraiser

in the apartment of Robert Brown,

up by Central Park West.

I guess he ran into an old relationship,

an old friend.

Hoyt: At the time, I was living in New York.

I was working. I was publisher of "House Beautiful" magazine.

A good friend of mine, Robby,

was giving a fundraiser.

For Tony Brooks, who was running,

I think, for city council.

I walked into Robby's apartment,

and there was a table set up

and sitting at the table collecting money

and checking off names was Peter Stickney Anderson.

And we looked at each other and said, "Holy Christ.

How long has it been?"

He had the same bow tie on

and the same Brooks Brothers suit.

And there he was.

And we gave each other, I'm sure, a big hug.

It was great to see him.

We'd gone on. He'd had a kid.

He'd gotten married.

He was married twice. He was like me.

He was a slow learner.

As the party wound down,

Peter had a good buzz going,

and he said,

"Let's go have a drink somewhere."

And I said, "Fine."

"Where should we go?"

He said, "Well, the Townhouse

58th Street between 2nd and 3rd."

We went to the back of the room

and ordered a cocktail, maybe two.

And, uh, suddenly the bartender said, uh, to Peter,

"I'm sorry, you've had too much to drink

and I can't serve you any more liquor."

So I said, "Look,

why don't I get you a room at the Waldorf Astoria?"

Went to the payphone, called the Waldorf Astoria,

made a reservation for him.

Took him down the stairs at the Townhouse.

Put him in a taxi, told the cab driver

to take him to the Waldorf Astoria.

And I said, "Peter, great to see you."

(pensive music playing)

(Robby Browne speaking)

Myself and Trooper Dykes went up there to interview Robert Brown,

who ha-- hosted the party.

(Robby Browne speaking)

Hoyt: I went up to Robby's, and these two state troopers

from Pennsylvania were there.

They talked about,

"Mr. Brown, you had a party on Friday night."

Da-dee-da-dee-da.

He whips out a picture of Peter and shows it to Robby and said,

"Was this gentleman at your party?"

And Robby said, yes.

And then he showed me the picture.

He said, "Do you know who this is?"

I said, "Yeah, it's Peter Anderson."

Then we found out that, we found out

that he'd been killed

and where he'd been found and how he'd been found.

It was terrible.

Terrible.

The Pennsylvania guys asked me a couple of questions,

and I told them what I knew

about the Waldorf Astoria reservation.

We followed up on the Waldorf Astoria,

and they recalled him being there.

Peter arrived up at the check-in desk, drunk,

and started to check in.

And there was a bellman or somebody

who he started to, sort of, pinch his butt.

And the guy said, "I don't come with the room."

So they put him back out on the boulevard,

and that was the last anybody saw him.

We checked the cab company, but they told us

nobody's tracking where they go,

what they do or nothing like that.

So cabs was a zip.

The train station was a zip.

Where he went after that, nobody knew.

Hoyt: I think Peter probably forgot

that he'd been turned off by the Townhouse bartender.

He'd been 86'd and, uh, went back to the Townhouse.

(suspenseful music playing)

Musser: We didn't go to the Townhouse.

In hindsight, maybe it would have been a good idea

to follow up with the Townhouse.

I mean, it would be nice if we had a picture.

We could have went over there.

At that time, we didn't know it was a, a gay bar.

I don't know anything about

where all the gay bars in New York are.

I don't know about anything about the community.

It really is irrelevant.

I mean, we don't-- all we do--

All we know is we got a body,

and we gotta find out who would do it,

but it's not really relevant to anything.

Hoyt: So after that initial rush,

you know, the initial times with the state troopers,

it went quiet.

I think it went quiet.

Harnish: There wasn't any information developing on it.

You take the investigation until you have no more leads.

And then once you have no more leads,

then you have to move on.

And so after five months, I moved on to another job.

So...

(Director speaking)

Yeah. Why is the emphasis on the gay part?

(pensive music playing)

Hanson: We have so many examples

of law enforcement thinking

that they're doing the right thing...

where they were more kind of connecting to,

you know, the evidence that they had collected

and, and looking at that.

But they weren't really connecting

to the community.

What we saw that law enforcement couldn't see was

that this was connected to a larger problem.

And I think some of that's deliberate,

and I think some of it is just unconscious.

We saw working with the NYPD

that more often than not,

the police back then were either indifferent or hostile.

(indistinct shouting)

Crowd (chanting): Shame! Shame!

Wertheimer: The New York City Police Department

is, is a huge entity.

There are some 30,000 police officers,

and those police officers represent, very frequently,

the full spectrum

of attitudes and opinions about lesbians

and gay men that you see in the larger population,

which may include hostile feelings.

When you're talking about homosexuals,

you're talking about somebody that commits a crime.

Uh... what they do.

Interviewer: What do you mean?

It's sodomy.

And sodomy is a crime.

Foreman: The NYPD is a, a military operation.

It is a very macho operation.

And, uh...

I mean, to this day, homophobia is rampant.

It was deadly dangerous.

It was prevalent within the ranks.

I'm not saying every cop was like this.

There were so many cops I worked with back then

that were just amazing, beautiful human beings.

But before I came out,

the fear I felt...

within the NYPD was significant.

Um...

I really felt that I couldn't be visible.

I really felt like I wouldn't survive

if I came out.

I can remember being in my locker room

and one of the older cops that were there,

um, really aggressive cop, you know, one of the cops

that you don't want to run into, uh, in the streets,

came into the locker room furious,

slamming the locker room door closed

and screaming out, "Fucking faggots!

"If I ever find out one of us is a fucking faggot,

"I'm gonna blow his fucking head off by accident,

running up the stairs on a job."

And I'm changing.

And when he said that, I was like,

"Holy shit, I'm not coming out.

I'm not coming out. Not here."

(solemn music playing)

Foreman: We knew that there had been

these horrific crimes

and yet no sign of the NYPD taking it seriously.

I don't want to minimize how challenging

a case like this would be

to try to find witnesses and pursue them and--

But...

inexplicable that NYPD

wouldn't have just mobilized for this.

And... and they didn't.

It was extremely difficult to understand

what the NYPD was responsible for.

And it was never clear to me

who was responsible for what.

Musser: When we went to New York, we stopped at the precinct

and told them what we were there for.

But I don't know how much they were involved.

Harnish: The jurisdictions that were involved.

You have Philadelphia and you have New York City.

Aggravating part to me is we're not in our home turf.

We don't know where we're at when we go to those places.

So that puts us at a handicap.

Hanson: I think, for the NYPD,

it's like, "Eh, it didn't happen here."

The reality is they really didn't want

to get involved in the gay community.

One thing I don't understand about the assault problem

is when you're assaulted,

why can't you just press charges

regardless of whether you're gay or not?

You would think that would be so.

-Guest: There is why-- -Dee. Let me get Dee in here.

Dee: Okay. When I was assaulted,

I was taken to the emergency room

because the police failed to respond to the call.

When the police officers,

uh, come into the emergency room,

they, uh, suggested that this was a lover's quarrel.

It wasn't a drastic means.

(audience groans)

Foreman: People are like, why bother?

Why do I want to put myself out for that?

Are they actually going to do anything about this?

Probably not.

Dee: It was weeks before I ever heard from them again,

and they told me that this pro-- this, uh, violence

would probably never come to court or anything

because they would never be found.

I think the most vital service that AVP served

was that people knew there was an organization

that wanted to hear what had happened to them.

Narrator: If you've been victimized, the New York City Gay

and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project can help you.

Foreman: We had a crisis line.

The main thing is that you survived the crime.

-Uh, we do encourage... -Wertheimer: The group decided

to, uh, establish a hotline

where individuals who wanted to report crimes against them

could, could call for assistance,

uh, for help in reporting crimes to the police

to document attacks against them.

And, uh, very quickly, as that hotline was established,

calls began to come in from all over the city.

The whole time I was at AVP, it increased every year.

Foreman: Our figures continue to exceed

the figures of the NYPD bias unit

by about seven to one.

That ratio has been constant in three of the four last years.

We saw a lot of,

you know, what we were calling "pickup crimes,"

or these, or these crimes where somebody picks

somebody up at a bar

with the promise of, like,

"We're gonna go home together,

we're gonna have sex."

And then something horrible happens.

We get a tremendous number of calls about pickup crimes.

And, you know, since it's a crime that happ...

Hanson: When we look at these cases,

you know, clearly Peter Anderson

and Tom Mulcahy were pickup crimes.

They were last seen at a gay bar,

the Townhouse.

And that's what we've seen over and over again.

I actually am at the point now,

where I feel like we're getting hunted down.

Foreman: This is a map of the village

in, in lower Chelsea of anti-gay incidents

during the first nine months of 1991.

Over six hundred.

Six hundred.

That's what it was like working at AVP

on a daily basis was just--

All those little dots represent

someone being... brutalized.

This was probably (sniffs) one of the last pictures

towards the end of his life.

In the last few years,

he and I started to have more kind of, real conversations

about things beyond just father-daughter,

about life,

just having more adult mature talks,

connecting about ideologies and all of that.

And I got the sense that he was processing

and confronting things that...

had been buried.

That's the hard-- the hardest part for me

is, sort of, that being cut short

and not having the opportunity

to build that relationship

with him further.

(sharp inhale)

Hoyt: When I think about Peter,

it's just, it's, I-I still can't believe it.

I think those years when we had our relationship

were important to Peter

because he finally had somebody who he could hug.

(sniffles)

And would-- could get hugged back.

There's layers to relationships

and different things

that I just don't know that I can speak to.

But my parents loved each other,

and I think they had a real partnership in,

in raising our family.

So after he died, my mom was a wife and a mother

who was trying to make sure

that this didn't get swept under the rug.

(inaudible)

Chief Macauley: We continued to work tips

and leads that came in. We never gave up.

HANSON: I'm from the Anti-Violence Project...

Foreman: At AVP,

we wanted to get the word out to the community.

"Did you see anything? Do you remember anything?"

And there was very little to go on.

Hanson: We were making the connections

between these homicides

because I absolutely believed

that something was gonna happen again,

that somebody else was gonna be killed.

We cannot count on anyone else

to help us in this fight.

When we see a brother or a sister in trouble,

don't turn our backs.

Remember, it could be you next time.

Theodos: We were concerned about, did we make a mistake?

Was there something there that we overlooked?

And now was somebody gonna die because of that mistake?

Less than a year later,

I get a phone call from the guys that,

"Hey, we got another one."

(tense music playing)

(radio static, distortion)

("Safe" by Debby Friday playing)

♪ I watch the night turn into day ♪

♪ So many things I dare not say ♪

♪ Pacing a square into a sphere ♪

♪ So scared to check if you're still there ♪

♪ Are you still here? Are you still near? ♪

♪ Are you still safe? ♪

♪ Are you still here? Are you still near? ♪

♪ Are you still safe? ♪

♪ Oh... ♪

♪ ♪