Original subtitles

(ambient street noise)

Anonymous Victim: I can, I can do that.

I can do it more like it's a slideshow

rather than a video, because my memory--

it's, it's 30 years ago.

What I can remember is...

sitting in the Five Oaks.

There's a person on my left.

I remember he had a blue jacket on.

He bought me a drink,

and he had what he called a gym bag with him.

And I remember thinking that wasn't a gym bag,

that it was a tool bag.

I don't remember how long after,

but I started feeling what I thought was drunk.

I thought, "Gee, I wonder if I'm sick."

And I remember excusing myself to go home.

I was making my way home.

And then all of a sudden, this man appeared at my side,

and it was the man from the Five Oaks.

And he said, "Oh, are you okay? You seem unsteady.

Let me help you. Let me help you. Let me help."

So the next thing I can remember

is making it into my building,

he's still with me.

Making it to my door,

he's still with me.

I opened my door and he comes--

He lets himself in.

I remember opening my eyes, and my face was on the rug.

I'm passing out. I can hardly stay awake.

I looked up, and he was looking at me.

This I remember very clearly.

He looked at me like I was a bug under glass.

He went to the bathroom.

I remember looking up and seeing his bag,

and I reached for it

and I unzippered it and I saw a rope.

And I thought, "Oh, shit, this is, this is bad."

I got myself up onto my knees, and I said, "I need air.

I need air."

Picked his bag up.

I opened the door. I went out to the hall.

And I started walking towards the elevator.

He started walking towards the elevator.

And I just darted back,

darted right back into my apartment,

slammed the door, double locked it,

and he came back and I heard the door going...

(imitating door rattling)

(tense music playing)

And I passed out.

♪ ♪

(dramatic theme music playing)

(footsteps crunching)

Thomas Hayes: I was working as a detective

in the major crime homicide unit

when that call came in.

It was May 10th of '93.

Male body parts were found

in a heavily wooded area in New Jersey.

A gentleman who lived in the area,

he heard the noise of a blimp in the sky.

So he was trying to move around through the woods

to get a better view of the blimp.

And he came across a bag

where he thought maybe it was a deer carcass.

And he saw a human arm hanging out of a bag.

Detective Mike Mohel did respond to the scene.

Mike Mohel: As soon as we exited the car,

which was a distance away

from where the bags were found,

the stench of decomposition was heavy.

I knew right away

that we were dealing with a dead body.

I-I think some animal activity had taken place

where some of the bags were opened,

and we could see body parts in them.

Right away, we thought of the Mulcahy murder.

Reporter: The murder of a married,

middle-aged businessman from Massachusetts...

Hayes: The wooded area where he was found,

it was in close proximity to the Mulcahy body.

And based on the way the bodies were dismembered,

both cases, the head was severed,

the torso was cut in two pieces,

the arms were both severed,

and both legs were severed with a saw.

Mohel: The evidence was collected

from the scene itself of our victim.

We had fingerprints from our bags.

(Mark Woodfield speaking)

It doesn't happen often anywhere

in the state of New Jersey we're gonna have two crimes

that are that similar

in close proximity to each other.

We knew we had a serial situation.

(ambient traffic noise)

(birds chirping)

Jose Luis Marrero: When the cops came to my house,

I'll never forget. I was cleaning the basement.

My wife said, "The cops are here."

I said, "The cops? What's the, what's the problem?"

So I came up. One of the, the cops tells me, you know,

"You got a brother named Eddie or Tony?"

I said, "Yeah, that was my little brother."

He said, "Well, we found him dead in New Jersey.

They chopped him up and put him in the bag. And..."

I went upstairs, I took a shower.

I laid down, and I said,

"My little brother is dead."

I-- I didn't believe it. I didn't believe it.

I still don't believe it.

I don't even believe it because I--

Tony nev-- never, you know, get in trouble.

I got two sisters,

and we were five brothers.

The little one was, uh, Eddie. That's Tony.

Since he was small, we called him Tony.

But his real name is Eddie Marrero. Yeah.

All my brothers, they were born

in Las Marías, Puerto Rico.

When we were in Puerto Rico, we were real poor.

But it was still, it was nice. It was nice.

We'd go swimming every day. We'd go fishing every day.

Sunday, go to church. That's the only thing we got.

Even Tony used to go to church a lot.

I remember...

(chuckles)

I'll never forget that.

We used to get along

and when we moved to Philadelphia,

that's when everybody started going different ways.

You know?

(director speaking)

Oh, no, I don't think he was, uh-uh, gay

or anything like that, you know?

No.

He must have hang around with gay people,

you know, when he go to bars or something.

But he wasn't gay, you know?

Antonio Marrero: This was in California, right?

Yeah, this is in California.

This is my father. And my mother.

-That's Tony. -Antonio: Yep.

Jose Luis: When he was small. Yeah.

-I don't remember-- -Antonio: How, how tall was he?

-You always say he was the small one. -Jose Luis: No, he--

-Antonio: Like me? Like-- -Jose Luis: Yeah, he--

Antonio: Five, I'm 5'2" on a good day.

Jose Luis: Yeah, he's like 5'3" or 5'4".

Probably. He was little- Just a little bit.

-Yeah? -Jose Luis: Yeah.

Antonio: I am related to Tony Marrero, Uncle Tony.

I am his great-nephew.

Um, and he would be my great uncle.

He's my grandfather's brother.

Juanita: Your grandfather and his sister.

Antonio: For my grandfather,

there was this... hesitation

about Tony's sexuality.

There's this still ingrained, um, sense

of he doesn't want to see his brother,

who he knew for so long,

to suddenly just this revelation,

um, of his sexuality being anything different.

...California? When you-- did you go to visit?

Jose Luis: Yeah, I think...

Antonio: The Marreros grew up

with a sense of hypermasculinity

and this religious aspect of, you know, family.

We were Roman Catholic

and from my other family members,

I would hear, "Your Great Uncle Tony,

"he was a faggot.

"That's how he ended up like that.

"If that's the kind of lifestyle he led,

that's what ends up to those, to those people."

And it was less of

"That's just the eventuality

of being in that lifestyle,"

and more of

"I hope that's what happens,

you know, to people in that lifestyle."

I knew I was bisexual since I was young.

So when my parents found out about my sexuality,

they said, "Never come home.

Don't come home again."

And, uh,

I have not talked to them since 2010.

This was in 2010.

Man: When my son told me he was gay, he said,

"What would be worse than, than being gay?"

And I said, "I'd rather see you have cancer."

And when I went to see my parish priest,

he said to me, "He has to go."

That, that he has to get out of the house

because he's gonna influence my other two boys.

Matt Foreman: I think a lot of gay people

grew up in a household where your father said

bad things about gay people.

And part of that was, uh, frankly,

the way in which institutions in our society,

the Roman Catholic Church in particular,

you know, demonized us.

That ingrained hatred against us,

that doesn't come out of nowhere.

You're not born hating

and wanting to murder gay people.

Something happened.

Anita Bryant (singing): ♪ Yes ♪

♪ Jesus loves me... ♪

Reporter: Anita Bryant was once known

as an orange juice saleswoman.

Not anymore.

With a religious fervor that has made her

America's most controversial woman overnight,

she has been selling her Save Our Children group.

Bryant: According to the word of God,

it's an abomination.

Homosexuals cannot reproduce biologically,

but they have to reproduce by recruiting our children.

Foreman: Anita Bryant was a former Miss Oklahoma

who organized this widely publicized attack

on our very basic rights.

Extremely religious, she says she feels

that God has singled her out to spearhead a crusade

to prevent admitted homosexuals from teaching her children.

Foreman: She decided that an ordinance

in Miami Dade County

that was passed to outlaw discrimination

against gay people needed to be repealed.

Reporter: Anita Bryant has rallied thousands

of fundamentalist Christians to her side

for a strong anti-homosexual counterattack.

For the first time, uh,

I know the Christian community have never been involved

in any political controversial issue,

and they're not only involved, uh, but they're committed.

Foreman: That Anita campaign

was wildly successful for them.

(audience applauding)

Reporter 1: It was a decisive end

to Dade County's homosexual controversy.

Miamians told their elected officials

they wanted no part of a law which protects homosexuals.

Bea Hanson: It is kind of a watershed moment

that then creates this tsunami effect

across the country.

Reporter 2: Opponents declared

that homosexuality is a disease

and called for repeal of the amendment...

Pat Buchanan: It is my deep-felt belief

that it is morally wrong, that it is socially ruinous...

Jerry Falwell: Homosexual promiscuity, it's a violation

of God's laws, laws of nature and decency...

It's just as big an aberration as bestiality or...

Spreading disease from one to the other...

You cannot be saved in homosexuality.

Crowd (chanting): Gays suck!

Gays suck! Gays suck!

Gays suck!

Foreman: And, you know, people say,

"Oh, politicians, you know, say just anti-gay rhetoric,

but it doesn't mean anything."

It absolutely has consequence.

It's basically a call to arms. "Go after them, beat them up."

Murdered out in Queens in a gay cruising area.

Brutal killing of a gay man...

Brutally murdered by three men...

When you have people in power talking hate,

there's a resulting increase

in violence in those communities.

Newsreader: Witnesses have told police

that the accused murderers in stabbing Hillsborough

more than 15 times

said, "Here's one for Anita."

Hanson: And most of those homicides had

what we called overkill.

They were particularly brutal.

It wasn't just like shooting somebody in the head.

It is beating them

and stabbing them multiple times.

Andy Humm: In the last three years, there have been

151 documented anti-gay murders.

And 60 percent were victims of what is called overkill.

Hanson: For this case, there was a serial killer

where people's bodies were dismembered.

Foreman: There was something,

is something, inside this man's mind

that made him hate gay people

enough to want to,

to butcher them.

It was something deep

that was coming out that was angry.

It wasn't just, "I want you dead."

It was, "I want you to suffer."

(ambient traffic noise)

Hanson: At AVP, we were constantly looking

at the newspapers to identify

possibly gay men who were killed.

And that's how I found out about Anthony Marrero.

Foreman: Well, I remember the murder of Anthony Marrero

because he was different,

uh, from the preceding two victims.

Hanson: At the Townhouse you had Peter Anderson

and Thomas Mulcahy.

Older gay white male.

Foreman: Anthony Marrero was young.

He was a person of color,

and the work he did

was very different from everyone else.

(light music playing)

(Jose Luis speaking)

Jose Luis: Tony used to travel.

He'd go to Washington, he'd go to New York,

he'd go to Boston.

He even went to California one time.

I always asking, "Tony, how you get dressed all the time,

nice shoes, nice clothes, and you don't work?"

He said, "Well, this is my business.

That's none of your business."

I said, "Okay. That's all I say.

I'm not gonna ask you no more. That's all."

No, I cannot say

what kind of work he was doing or not.

Because we never did talk about it.

You know, we didn't talk about it.

Mohel: One of my people interviewed the brother

of Marrero and, uh...

they kind of knew what Anthony was,

but they, they really didn't have much

to, to share with us

because of his lack of visibility to them,

his lack of visiting, lack of discussions.

There's this kind of, I think,

instinctual feeling that I think is wrong that, like,

because somebody's related to somebody

that you kind of know them the best, you know?

And, and, and, you know, the reality is people can hide

a lot of things from people that they care about and love.

I thought that the reason,

the only reason, no one ever talked about Tony

was because of what happened to him.

And in the past ten years, you know, I was like,

I should look into that more.

This person in the community was part of my bloodline,

and what happened to him should not have happened to anyone.

No one deserves something like that.

And, you know, a quick Google search would show up,

you know, his mugshot.

(poignant music playing)

Hayes: We were able to identify Anthony Edward Marrero

through some fingerprints that were submitted to AFIS,

which is an automated fingerprint identification system,

and we eventually got a hit.

Mohel: Anthony was in the AFIS system

because he had been previously arrested

for male prostitution

in, uh, New York City.

Hayes: So it, it was there that we went.

Mohel: We were looking for friends of his.

New York City was, I mean, it was just, it was a zoo.

("Digital Versicolor" by Glass Candy playing)

Person 1: I will break out tonight, New York City.

Person 2: Basically, you're getting paid

to get a man's rocks off.

Ceyenne Doroshow: Back in the '80s,

I was working in Adonis Male Movie Theater,

and that's when I met Anthony.

This was Adonis porn theater.

♪ Green, green, green, green, green ♪

♪ This is blue... ♪

Doroshow: There was a lot of nudity,

a lot of blowjobs,

a lot of fucking, a lot of fisting.

A lot of carrying on in corners.

♪ This is violet ♪

♪ This is violet ♪

Doroshow: One night in the bathroom,

Tony is getting done.

I was in one mirror.

He was in another mirror putting on his t-shirt,

his jeans, wiping off his sneakers,

and putting concealer over pimples.

And I was like, "Guys do that?"

Wow.

And I-- he caught me looking

in the mirror and he said,

"Yes, girl, we do that, too."

And I said, "Oh."

He said, "Where are you going, chica?"

I said, "Nowhere, Paco, where are you going?"

He said, "I'm gonna hit the clubs.

"There's a few places I go before I go.

Come with me to Houlihan's."

And I said, "What the fuck do you do in there?"

He says, "So. Yes.

"It's a place where Irish and drunk people go,

"but it's also a place where my niche market lies.

"I'm a stud. I go into this place

"and I'm in these rooms playing pool,

"and eventually they smell my female wiles,

and eventually I'm going home with them for a nice price."

And we went.

And then I got to see him, like, be on.

("Digital Versicolor" continues)

Doroshow: Working the old queers,

you couldn't really tell they were queer,

but you could tell by the chemistry and that,

"Oh, this is how..."

And then you would see the transaction go down.

I said, okay, this is, this is how it's done on that side.

♪ ♪

As our friendship progressed, we would bump into him,

see him in the most unusual places.

The guys worked their whole little circuit.

Leather bars and old queen bars,

or walking through Port Authority.

(ambient traffic sounds)

Reporter: Morning rush hour. Midtown Manhattan.

Commuters hurry to work passing

through the Port Authority bus terminal.

Because it is located

near the city's red light district,

prostitutes, male and female,

work in and outside the terminal.

Hi, I'm Glennda Orgasm,

and I'm reporting from Port Authority and Times Square.

This is exciting.

(light music playing)

It's just the glamour and the excitement of Times Square.

You just can't get that in other neighborhoods in New York.

♪ ♪

Person: You're going to find dealers out on the street.

Pimps, junkies, drag queens.

Foreman: I lived in the Port Authority block

on 41st Street for several years

in the late '80s.

Port Authority was a magnet

for sex workers, gay or straight.

Doroshow: Port Authority was the hub.

It was kind of the place for the sex worker runaways.

It was kind of the place where pimps still existed.

You would get off the red and tan line

and see somebody getting it.

It was in the nooks and crannies all up in there.

In, in the darkest coves, in the staircases.

It was not sort of a hidden thing.

Hayes: From the time we got to Port Authority,

we saw prostitutes, johns,

drug use, panhandling,

mental illness.

It was a mess.

I'll never go back to New York City

as long as I live.

Mohel: We knew Anthony had been arrested

by the Port Authority police.

And we went there, and they, they kind of directed us

to where he would hang out.

Hayes: There was a restroom

on the second level of Port Authority

where Anthony Marrero

made a lot of money

turning tricks for $10.

The bathrooms were high volume clientele.

Tony could just drift in there,

make a couple of dollars and... (snaps fingers)

be out.

Mohel: We were looking for some homicide suspects.

We spoke to 10 or 15 sex workers.

People recognized his picture,

but they didn't really know his name.

Some of the people in there.

It was tough to traverse that community of sex workers

because they don't trust law enforcement.

But we expect that they're not gonna tell us

a hundred percent of the truth.

We were walking around,

and we had our guns exposed and, and badges exposed.

So they knew they were talking to the police.

(indistinct radio chatter)

Mohel: And our badges look very similar

to New York Police Department.

Police officer. Everybody decent in here?

Person: Everybody's decent.

Officer: Got everything closed up?

Person: Yes, sir.

Doroshow: I was doing sex work.

And I remember

there were those cops that said,

"If I see you one more time,

I'ma fuck you up and arrest you."

And that's what scared me the most.

Newsreader: Cops say aggressive surveillance of bathrooms

has cut solicitation in half.

Officer: Prostitution on a midnight tour.

We have officers working

on the patrol on the perimeter.

Officer (on radio): We just directed three females downstairs

that missed their bus.

They started putting undercovers

in the bathroom.

(undercover officer speaking)

It was quite a production.

And depending on the cop

and depending on his comfortability,

you might actually blow him off and then go to jail.

And there were also so many incidents of girls

literally fighting with police because they were brutal.

At this time, we wouldn't put it past the police to kill us.

So...

(sighs)

The police are often more

part of the problem than the solution.

Every year, we receive thousands of reports of, of harassment,

uh, abuse, unequal enforcement of the law,

deliberate mishandling of cases

involving lesbian and gay crime victims and the like.

The police, they were entrapping us.

They were raiding our bars.

Uh, they were making false arrests of gay people.

So, it was very tough to,

to get, to get their attention

and get them to do things.

And while I think most police officers

try to be professional and do their jobs,

many view gay people as second-class citizens,

as people that you can, uh, walk away from,

who you don't need to protect because they're,

they're less than fully human.

They're-- they don't count.

Tell us what happened on the night of February 11th.

Police charged the crowd,

at which point I was clubbed in the head

and went down to the ground

and then repeatedly clubbed and abused.

(crowd shouting)

About 10 percent of our 900 cases last year

involved police abuse of gay men and lesbians.

It doesn't just happen in demonstration.

It happens all the time.

(crowd shouting)

I was wearing a baseball cap and a big hooded sweatshirt,

so I must have looked like a guy.

And so one of-- a man picked me up

and was saying, "What should we do with this faggot?"

And another cop said, "Well, bash his head in."

(crowd shouting)

Right after Anthony Marrero was killed,

we wanted to get involved

and see if we can provide any kind of support.

Call the police, leave messages,

and hear nothing back from them.

They didn't want our participation

or help or support

or to give us any information.

The police didn't really want to connect Marrero

because I think as much as the NYPD

sort of, uh...

didn't, didn't really take seriously crimes

in the, in the queer community,

it was just exponentially more

if somebody was black or brown,

or somebody was trans or somebody was a sex worker,

or any combination of those things.

And the more combinations, I think the tougher it, it was.

We did not see the NYPD

making any sort of substantive effort

to investigate these crimes.

Mohel: Once in a while, a NYPD detective would help you,

you know, if you needed some information.

But at that time,

we didn't have anybody assigned to us.

If you have three people that disappear from your city

and they're killed just outside,

it, it doesn't make sense that they wouldn't get involved

and help in some way.

Hanson: The officer from New Jersey

was working the case,

but we needed NYPD's resources and money.

Mohel: In hindsight, to have an NYPD involved

would have been helpful.

They would know the city better.

They would have informants on the street

and provide a wealth of information.

They definitely could have been involved from the get-go

if they wanted to.

Whether we invited them or not.

And believe me, it was an open invitation.

Foreman: This, uh, serial killer enjoys the hunt.

He enjoys, uh, going after men

that are savvy, that are smart,

that it is a thrill for him to, in a sense, entrap them.

And he also was enjoying playing with the police.

I felt that the NYPD's primary role

since they're here in New York City,

would be to push as hard as they could

within the gay bar community

to come up with, uh, potential witnesses,

potential leads.

I felt like the New Jersey State Police

did a much better job of that,

a much more sensitive job.

They were relentless in ways

that the NYPD wasn't.

Hayes: Through the investigation,

we did come across Carlos Santiago,

who lived in an apartment across from the Port Authority.

He was a close friend of Anthony Marrero.

When we told him that his friend was dead, he cried.

He was very upset.

Hayes: Carlos Santiago,

he directed us to a married couple,

that him and his wife were actors on Broadway,

and that the husband

would pay Anthony Marrero, on occasion, for sex.

When we spoke to him, he was upset.

He was friendly with him.

He hadn't seen him, I believe, in a couple weeks

prior to finding out of his death.

But we did glean some additional information

that, um, we thought might, might be helpful.

Um, that Anthony,

he was also turning his tricks on Second Avenue.

(David Corvino speaking)

Michael Ferreri: The area around the Townhouse

is historically a red light district

for male prostitutes.

("Somebody to Love Tonight" by Patrick Cowley playing)

Guys who were hustlers here

knew that they were going for big bucks.

The crowd was older, moneyed.

And we found out that Marrero was seen

in the area of Townhouse,

would hang out in front of it periodically.

(indistinct chatter)

(tense music playing)

Mohel: That was a surprise. It was huge.

Because Peter Anderson and Tom Mulcahy's last location

that we could discern was also the Townhouse Bar.

Antonio: I mean, I guess I could also...

(indistinct chatter)

Woman: How you doing?

Antonio: Wait, where's the flan? Where's the flan?

Woman: You have the rice, right?

Woman 2: Si, mi amor.

Man: He was a good guy.

Antonio: There's still some, some gaps in the story

about, you know, what happened to Tony and stuff like that,

that we're also finding out.

Growing up, all that became, "Let's keep it private."

But when they die,

-the stories disappear. -Family members: Right.

And if we can't talk about it, he disappears.

Man: Mm-hmm.

Antonio: I'd ask about Tony.

I was like, you know,

"Why doesn't anyone talk about him?"

"What if this happened to me?

"Would you guys

bury me like you did, you know, Tony?"

Tony was buried by more than just cemetery dirt.

He was buried with... the shame.

And that really, like,

really put him into the ground forever.

I'm trying to change that and trying to get my family

to talk about him now.

Antonio: You said he was like, you know,

a little quiet or loner, you know?

Yeah. Tony was like, if you needed Tony,

-Tony was there. -Antonio: Okay.

You know? But other than that,

he wanted to be by himself.

Woman: What's his name, John Travolta?

That's the way he used to dress.

No. They just like to dress nice and look nice.

And that's the most thing I remember about him.

He was a very cool dresser.

Man: But, you know, Tony did whatever he had to do--

Antonio: Yeah.

-Man: to make a living, you know? -Yeah.

Man: And that's, you know, that's something

that, um, is very, very private for him.

Antonio: Mm-hmm.

Woman: That was very hard on my brother-in-law.

It was very hard on him to know

that they killed his brother.

Didn't know why...

Antonio: When Tony was killed,

his life in New York was this microcosm

that was so separated from his life with his family.

We didn't-- they didn't know that universe existed.

There was an absence of information.

What I knew about Tony from the media

was that Tony was a male prostitute

and a drug addict.

That couldn't have been it.

No one lives just--

And even if that was true,

no one lives just one... article

or one headline of a life.

There's more.

(poignant music playing)

Hanson: Anthony Marrero was identified

as a prostitute in "New York Times,"

it actually says, "His death ended what appeared to be

"44 turbulent years

"marked by a failed marriage, drug addiction,

and ultimately gay prostitution."

Anthony Marrero was treated differently.

Peter Anderson and Thomas Mulcahy

were pictured as, like, these white business guys

who, you know, had these upstanding lives

and were murdered.

You know, I think it's both racism

because he was Puerto Rican, uh, and homophobia,

and because he was a sex worker,

you know, just put him in a different category.

Heterosexual reporters in the mainstream press

have a whole range of assumptions about

the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender community.

I think they never question those assumptions.

They might not even be aware

that they have those assumptions.

But they certainly will appear

in their coverage of the LGBTQ community.

It was important for me to get me and Bea

and anyone else we could on TV

to, to humanize gay people.

But more importantly,

to humanize the victims of violence.

These are not statistics out here.

These are real people

that have suffered terribly for no reason

other than they were lesbian or gay or bi or trans.

I mean, gay hate crimes were never written about

unless, like, I think we made a huge fuss about it.

(protestors shouting, whistling)

And we're heading down to NBC. Why NBC?

Well, not NBC so much as all of, all of the media.

The media has played a large role in their refusal

to cover hate crimes against lesbians and gay men.

During the '90s, there was a real development

of LGBT organizations.

(protestors chanting)

It wasn't just AVP.

It was Act Up, it was Queer Nation.

It's about time that we took some action

to counter all this violence against us.

Hanson: It was Pink Panthers.

(group chanting)

Person 1: We're gonna do our own community patrol

and take care of one another because gay bashing has gone up.

It was Lesbian Avengers.

Person 2 (on PA): What about the murders of Julio Rivera,

Marsha Johnson, James Zappalorti,

The constant and uninvestigated violence

on the streets on any given day or night.

(crowd chanting)

Foreman: So many marches, so many demonstrations,

so many, like, all the time

to highlight, "This happened this weekend.

What are you doing about it?"

Foreman (on PA): About six weeks ago,

there was a pool of blood right over here.

That pool of blood

is part of a sea of blood

that has been rising in this city

relentlessly over several years.

Hanson: It was to just express outrage.

(protestors shouting)

I'm worth existing.

And if they say, "faggot," I say, "fuck you."

Hanson: Anger.

Protestors: NYPD go away.

Racist, sexist, anti-gay. NYPD...

Hanson: Desperation.

Protestor: We are not gonna put up

with this shit anymore.

And it was very connected to the AIDS activism

that was going on.

It wasn't until HIV and AIDS

that we saw how powerful we could be.

(protestors chanting)

Foreman: I think the difference was in HIV and AIDS,

straight people did step up,

but not around violence.

And it felt like it's us against the world.

Hanson: We put together this report

of hundreds of murders.

It's data from 29 states and DC.

We had a 151 homicides in just under two years.

Foreman: We knew that gay men, lesbians, trans people

were being murdered.

We decided to do studies as best we could,

reaching out to anti-violence programs across the country,

and scouring the media.

And that resulted in our national report.

And that included the victims of the serial murderer.

Hanson: We were doing demonstrations.

We really wanted to get some attention paid

to these murders that were happening.

When Anthony Marrero was killed,

I did some, like, flyering you know, in the bars

in that, in that area where he was last seen.

At AVP, you know,

we were these untrained investigators.

You know, we had, we--

And I didn't know what I was doing,

but, like, we let people know,

and people in the community were scared.

You know, they were t-totally, they were afraid.

There was a, another murder

in May of this year of a gay man

who was a, a part-time hustler out of the Port Authority.

It's just really sort of horrible, you know,

thinking about the way he did it.

But he does seem to know

what he's doing, or the person does.

(tense music playing)

Foreman: It wasn't just a random,

so, so to speak, horrible murder.

It was clearly a serial murderer

was on the loose.

Serial murderers generally keep on going.

They don't just stop.

Mohel: Well, at the time, we were keyed on Staten Island.

The problem was, you have to know who you're looking for.

There's a million-plus people in Staten Island.

But, what, what we do is you find yourself profiling

as you're looking at the evidence

to see what type of individual

you might be dealing with.

(Woodfield speaking)

Mohel: We felt that the individual was driven sexually,

and he liked killing the specific individuals

from the gay community.

And we felt that he was probably also from that community

that he would be able to get access to these people

and take them from bars.

Mohel: This guy knew what he was doing.

We expected more bodies to drop

because, you know,

he was definitely...

in that type of mode.

He was enjoying what he was doing,

and he was enjoying fooling us.

Doroshow: When Anthony disappeared,

I didn't know what had happened.

There was no directory

for, "Find Your Dead Homo Friend."

In my life, people disappeared a lot.

A lot.

And for several reasons: HIV and AIDS,

domestic violence,

just being murdered, "John Doe."

I think for almost two decades,

we were looking for Anthony.

Not all the time but almost two decades

of wondering, "Why?"

"Where? Did he go home? Did everything work out?

"Did he get his life together?

Did he get off drugs? Did he die of the virus?"

(director speaking)

When you sent me the text.

I found out Anthony was murdered

literally when you sent me the text.

I was in shock because Tony,

he had became a part of our family,

our small, queer community family.

(poignant music playing)

Doroshow: Tony was working nonstop.

One time, you could see that he was,

like, physically tired.

He had been up for days.

He said, "Listen, I haven't taken a bath.

I need to sleep. I need to eat."

We hopped on the train, the A to the L.

I lived in a loft in Bushwick.

The first night that we went, we played cards,

we played Monopoly.

We'd be kiki-ing. I could cook.

I could turn potted meat into a deluxe empanada.

So, Tony knew he was safe with us.

We would go out, run to VIMs,

get some little stud outfits, some underwear, socks.

Then he'd be like, "Okay, children, I got rest.

"Look at the skin. I need to go out.

"I had a fresh shave. Washed my ass.

Y'all bought me some clothes."

And he'd be gone again.

And, you know, those were memories.

That is food for your soul.

When there's somebody there to say,

"I may not know you well, but my home is your home."

We are sisters and brothers without asking.

(patrons chattering)

(tense music playing)

Anonymous Victim: After I encountered this person

in my apartment,

I did not go to the NYPD.

Because, what are they going to do? Nothing.

But I did go back to the Five Oaks...

because my friends were there.

When you walked in, they said hi.

And you knew the bartenders

and you knew what nights they were there.

And I would say a hundred percent of the times

that I walked into the Five Oaks,

my bar buddy Michael would be sitting there.

You come down the steps, and he was the last barstool

right in front of you at the bar,

same place every time.

Sometime in '93, I, I went into the Five Oaks,

and Michael was not at his usual station.

He just disappeared.

And then I heard that Michael had been killed.

Last place he was seen was the Five Oaks.

I was like, "Holy shit."

Reporter: Sakara was gay, lived alone in Manhattan,

and was last seen alive at this piano bar

in Greenwich Village on Thursday night.

(Woodfield speaking)

(tense music playing)

("Temperamental" by Ah-Mer-Ah-Su playing)

♪ I wish I wasn't so ♪

♪ Temperamental, I ♪

♪ Wish I could be like ♪

♪ Everybody else ♪

♪ I sit alone in my room ♪

♪ And I think about all the ways ♪

♪ I'm like no one that I know ♪

♪ I feel tired ♪

♪ Yes, I'm tired ♪

♪ Of putting on my brave face and ♪

♪ Walking out the door ♪

♪ So I wish I could be left alone ♪

♪ Wish I could be all alone ♪

♪ Won't you leave me alone? ♪

♪ Leave me alone, leave me alone ♪

♪ Da-dum ♪

♪ Da-dum, dum ♪

♪ Da-dum, da-dum ♪

♪ Da-dum, dum-dum ♪

♪ Da-dum ♪

♪ Da-dum, dum ♪

♪ Da-dum, dum-da-dum ♪

♪ Da-dum ♪

♪ Dum-dum-dum ♪

♪ Da, da, da, da-da ♪

(song ends)