Not lengthy after documentary filmmaker Rachel Mason started trying into the ugly 1990 cold-case homicide of homosexual porn actor Invoice Newton in Hollywood, Newton’s former boyfriend, Marc Rabins, confirmed her a homosexual newspaper from the time, filled with obituaries.
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, homicide,” Mason mentioned in a current interview with The Occasions. “I used to be so disgusted. Like, no, you possibly can’t have a homicide on this sea of individuals already dying — that’s not proper, not honest. We will’t let this go.”
And she or he didn’t.
As an alternative, Mason helped convene a staff of novice sleuths to doggedly examine the case, and in a shocking twist excellent for the true-crime documentary she was filming all alongside the best way, 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 fairly astounding,” Mason mentioned. Others clearly agree.
On Wednesday, organizers of the SXSW Movie and TV Pageant 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 homicide of Billy London, a homosexual grownup movie performer brutally killed in West Hollywood, was an city legend for 33 years. A documentary meant to honor his life took an sudden flip when members of the neighborhood joined forces to uncover neglected clues, and search a decision to the thriller of who killed him,” the pageant announcement teased.
“Drawing on a uncommon trove of VHS and private footage,” the announcement added, “the movie reveals a chilling overlap between the sufferer and a number of the suspects who have been captured on digital camera in movies made within the slender window of Billy’s dying.”
Mason mentioned she is thrilled with the pageant’s number of her movie, simply as she was by The Occasions 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 instructed in smaller homosexual publications, Mason mentioned. Now, it’s being featured at a “main, mainstream pageant” at a time when LGBTQ+ rights are underneath assault throughout the nation, which is “a giant deal.”
“The bigger image of this movie is, if something, some extent of optimism, you understand? A beacon of hope in some darkish occasions,” she mentioned. “A neighborhood fixing a homicide!”
A killer movie
Mason is understood partly for a earlier Netflix documentary she made referred to as “Circus of Books,” in regards to the grownup bookstore on Santa Monica Boulevard the place her mother and father spent years promoting homosexual porn and LGBTQ+ literature.
That movie was partly 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 secure haven for homosexual individuals going through discrimination and its seedier aspect as a drug-heavy celebration scene in a long time previous.
Rachel Mason in 2023 in Hollywood.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Occasions)
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 associates who recalled a form however unsettled 25-year-old who’d confronted rejection at dwelling in Wisconsin and run away as a teen to seek out acceptance. It additionally captures what the homosexual porn business was like in West Hollywood as AIDS ravaged and stigmatized the neighborhood.
The movie introduces varied 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 move to an Oklahoma penitentiary searching 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 simply mentioned that we have been there to speak about an outdated case from L.A., and it was Madden who really introduced up Billy first, and mentioned, ‘Oh nicely yeah, and there was this one case the place anyone’s head and ft bought present in a dumpster,’” Lamberti says within the movie. “And I’m simply sitting there making an attempt to maintain a poker face: ‘Oh, OK, inform me extra.’”
“The truth that I walked out of there with a confession was simply mind-blowing,” he says.
Then Madden recounts in harrowing element the killing in an on-camera interview Mason organized after hanging 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 associates noticed Newton “in a spot us skins frequented to hunt and to carry out acts of violence,” and that she “laid the plan all the way down to get out, put my arm round him and let him know that is what we’re gonna do — or else. We’re going to stroll to this automotive and we’re simply going to take a experience.”
Madden describes the group punching, kicking and elbowing Newton — “He was form of like a prize pinata on the time. I do know that sounds horrible” — and taunting him for being homosexual and excessive. She then describes strangling him with a twine, and deciding to chop up his physique.
“The one factor we might consider to get out of the condominium as clandestine as we presumably might was to dismember Billy, which was not a simple job,” 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 Celebration Present.”
After watching Mason’s interview with Madden, Rice says within the movie, “I at all times harbored a suspicion that possibly it was a false confession, however 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 individuals face large discrimination, and what he sees as Madden projecting her personal self-loathing onto Newton.
“Sure, the queer neighborhood has villains, we’ve got people who find themselves searching for to oppress us,” Rice says within the movie. “But when we indulge our personal self-loathing, it might go down a highway as darkish 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 till that second, I at all times felt Invoice’s presence round me. And after that, I really feel like he’s flying free.”
Prosecutors declined to deliver fees towards Madden, citing an absence 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 Occasions)
Williams mentioned he was in a position to crack Newton’s killing by fully immersing himself in Newton’s life, and that Newton actually got here alive for him by that course of. “Billy turned an individual to me that I knew and beloved,” he mentioned.
Due to that, he’s a little bit apprehensive about Madden showing in Mason’s movie, he mentioned.
“I perceive why she’s a cinematic determine, however I don’t like DarraLynn Madden,” He mentioned. “In actual fact, I detest DarraLynn Madden.”
That mentioned, Williams mentioned he trusts Mason to do the story justice, and is worked up to see the movie.
“I’ve at all times believed that Billy Newton displays an entire technology — my technology — of homosexual males who got here of age within the Eighties and 90s,” Williams mentioned. “I’m actually comfortable that that story will get to be instructed.”
