There was Newton’s younger, good-looking face, but in addition the faces of different younger males, all of whom had died of AIDS.
“AIDS, AIDS, AIDS, murder,” Mason mentioned in a current interview with The Instances. “I was so disgusted. Like, no, you can’t have a murder in this sea of people already dying — that’s not right, not fair. We can’t let this go.”
And she or he didn’t.
As a substitute, Mason helped convene a workforce of beginner sleuths to doggedly examine the case, and in a shocking twist excellent for the true-crime documentary she was filming all alongside the way in which, helped lead Los Angeles police detectives to a brand new suspect — who confessed to killing Newton, who glided by “Billy London” in movies, earlier than his head and ft have been present in a dumpster.
“It’s pretty astounding,” Mason mentioned. Others clearly agree.
On Wednesday, organizers of the SXSW Movie and TV Competition introduced that Mason’s documentary — titled “My Brother’s Killer” and that includes a chilling on-camera interview with the confessed killer — will world premiere at SXSW in March.
“The unsolved murder of Billy London, a gay adult film performer brutally killed in West Hollywood, was an urban legend for 33 years. A documentary intended to honor his life took an unexpected turn when members of the community joined forces to uncover overlooked clues, and seek a resolution to the mystery of who killed him,” the pageant announcement teased.
“Drawing on a rare trove of VHS and personal footage,” the announcement added, “the film reveals a chilling overlap between the victim and some of the suspects who were captured on camera in films made in the narrow window of Billy’s death.”
Mason mentioned she is thrilled with the pageant’s number of her movie, simply as she was by The Instances chronicling the sleuths cracking the case in a front-page story in 2023, which the movie highlights.
Earlier than then, Newton’s story had solely actually been informed in smaller homosexual publications, Mason mentioned. Now, it’s being featured at a “major, mainstream festival” at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are below assault throughout the nation, which is “a big deal.”
“The larger picture of this film is, if anything, a point of optimism, you know? A beacon of hope in some dark times,” she mentioned. “A community solving a murder!”
A killer movie
Mason is understood partially for a earlier Netflix documentary she made referred to as “Circus of Books,” concerning the grownup bookstore on Santa Monica Boulevard the place her mother and father spent years promoting homosexual porn and LGBTQ+ literature.
That movie was partially an ode to West Hollywood, and so is “My Brother’s Killer,” which talks about Los Angeles’ gayborhood with each reverence and a dose of actuality — acknowledging its position as a protected haven for homosexual folks dealing with discrimination and its seedier aspect as a drug-heavy occasion scene in a long time previous.
Rachel Mason in 2023 in Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
The movie captures Newton’s struggles with that scene, together with with methamphetamine, but in addition his candy aspect, that includes interviews with household and mates who recalled a form however unsettled 25-year-old who’d confronted rejection at residence in Wisconsin and run away as a teen to seek out acceptance. It additionally captures what the homosexual porn trade was like in West Hollywood as AIDS ravaged and stigmatized the neighborhood.
The movie introduces numerous members of Mason’s investigative squad, together with Clark Williams, a stay-at-home dad with a background in social work who additionally hailed from Wisconsin. Williams developed the lead that satisfied LAPD detectives to go to an Oklahoma penitentiary looking for solutions from their new suspect, DarraLynn Madden.
And it’s with the introduction of Madden — a former homosexual porn actor and skinhead in Hollywood and now a transgender inmate serving a life sentence for killing one other homosexual man years after Newton’s homicide — that the movie actually hits its stride.
First, lead detective John Lamberti discusses securing a confession from her.
“We initially just said that we were there to talk about an old case from L.A., and it was Madden who actually brought up Billy first, and said, ‘Oh well yeah, and there was this one case where somebody’s head and feet got found in a dumpster,’” Lamberti says within the movie. “And I’m just sitting there trying to keep a poker face: ‘Oh, OK, tell me more.’”
“The fact that I walked out of there with a confession was just mind-blowing,” he says.
Then Madden recounts in harrowing element the killing in an on-camera interview Mason organized after placing up a written correspondence along with her.
Invoice Newton, a.ok.a. Billy London, was a Wisconsin transplant to L.A. and homosexual porn actor whose head and ft have been present in a Hollywood dumpster in 1990.
(Marc Rabins)
Madden tells Mason that she and a few skinhead mates noticed Newton “in a place us skins frequented to hunt and to perform acts of violence,” and that she “laid the plan down to get out, put my arm around him and let him know this is what we’re gonna do — or else. We’re going to walk to this car and we’re just going to take a ride.”
Madden describes the group punching, kicking and elbowing Newton — “He was kind of like a prize pinata at the time. I know that sounds horrible” — and taunting him for being homosexual and excessive. She then describes strangling him with a wire, and deciding to chop up his physique.
“The only thing we could think of to get out of the apartment as clandestine as we possibly could was to dismember Billy, which was not an easy task,” Madden says.
Full circle for sleuths
Mason’s movie — which she made independently with editor and producer Dion Labriola — provides substantial time to her fellow sleuths, together with Williams and Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn, who’ve pored over the case on their podcast “The Dinner Party Show.”
After watching Mason’s interview with Madden, Rice says within the movie, “I always harbored a suspicion that maybe it was a false confession, but that’s not a false confession.”
Rice additionally contemplates Madden’s personal troubled upbringing, her struggling in a world the place each homosexual and transgender folks face super discrimination, and what he sees as Madden projecting her personal self-loathing onto Newton.
“Yes, the queer community has villains, we have people who are seeking to oppress us,” Rice says within the movie. “But if we indulge our own self-loathing, it can go down a road as dark and twisted as this.”
Rabins, Newton’s boyfriend who police as soon as suspected of being the killer, says within the movie that listening to Madden’s confession marked a turning level in his mourning course of: “Up until that moment, I always felt Bill’s presence around me. And after that, I feel like he’s flying free.”
Prosecutors declined to carry expenses towards Madden, citing a scarcity of proof past the confession and Madden already being behind bars for all times in Oklahoma. Madden couldn’t be reached for remark.
Williams has since labored on a dozen different cold-case homicides throughout the nation and helped prosecutors construct a case towards a brand new suspect in a 1991 homicide in Michigan. That suspect is now headed to trial for homicide.
Rachel Mason with Clark Williams in 2023, shortly after the LAPD introduced they have been closing the investigation into Billy Newton’s homicide after securing a confession.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Instances)
Williams mentioned he was in a position to crack Newton’s killing by utterly immersing himself in Newton’s life, and that Newton actually got here alive for him via that course of. “Billy became a person to me that I knew and loved,” he mentioned.
Due to that, he’s slightly apprehensive about Madden showing in Mason’s movie, he mentioned.
“I understand why she’s a cinematic figure, but I don’t like DarraLynn Madden,” He mentioned. “In fact, I loathe DarraLynn Madden.”
That mentioned, Williams mentioned he trusts Mason to do the story justice, and is worked up to see the movie.
“I’ve always believed that Billy Newton reflects a whole generation — my generation — of gay men who came of age in the 1980s and 90s,” Williams mentioned. “I’m really happy that that story gets to be told.”
