An award-winning documentary details a 35-year cold case that was solved in part using a gay porn archive and the detective skills of a stay-at-home amateur sleuth.
My Brother’s Killer has received widespread plaudits after its debut at SXSW, with director Rachel Mason having helped to solve the murder in California of Bill Newton, better known for his screen name Billy London.
Newton was killed in 1990, with the documentary focusing on the small community that formed to try and solve his murder, which had remained unsolved for three decades.
In addition to Mason, stay-at-home dad Clark Williams ended up investigating the case after being intrigued by a Facebook post about his unsolved death.
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Newton filmed several gay pornographic videos under the name ‘Billy London’, with Williams finding proof that a fellow gay porn actor was also a Neo-Nazi skinhead who had admitted in an interview to carrying out an unnamed killing in California.
Mason firmed up this link using a gay porn archive, finding footage of the Neo-Nazi on stage at a Gay pornographic industry event.
Ultimately, the former skinhead admitted to the brutal killing of Newton in an on-camera interview, however, upon discovering the identity of the admitted murderer, Mason was faced with a ‘complicated’ truth.
The former skinhead and gay pornstar is now a trans woman, called DarraLynn Madden, already serving life in prison for two previous murders carried out in Baltimore.
She killed another gay man years after the death of Newton as part of Bradley Qualls' initiation into a white supremacist group called the Chaos Squad Skinheads.
Madden and Qualls teamed up to kill the man, who was named Steven Domer, before Madden turned on Qualls, killing him.
Due to the fact she was already in prison for the previous murders, as well as prosecutors citing a lack of evidence beyond her confession, Madden faced no further charges for Newton's death.
Discovering, however, Madden was now a trans woman hit the My Brother’s Killer director Rachel Mason particularly hard, telling The Hollywood Reporter: “It was complicated and painful. My partner is trans, so hearing that information was like a knife to the heart.”
In recent years, there has been widespread disinformation about the prevalence of violence by transgender people, particularly by right-wing politicians in the United States.
This has led to some lawmakers calling for trans people to be ‘taken off the streets’, with incorrect statistics about the number of mass shootings by trans people becoming a topic
Mason went on to add: “The last thing you want is a case like this being used to reinforce harmful stereotypes about trans people.
“At the time of the murders, this person was living as Darrell. Later in life she transitioned and now lives as DarraLynn. None of that excuses the crimes.”
The director also revealed that it was ‘intense’ interviewing her, with the interview taking place in a maximum security prison.
She added: “We were taken into a maximum-security unit.
“She came out in double shackles with a guard standing extremely close behind her. But what struck me most was how charismatic she was.
“The detective who interviewed her said the same thing — she’s very charming, very funny.
“Someone you could easily imagine having a conversation with over a beer. That makes it even more disturbing.”
Madden spoke about how she was living a ‘triple life’, working in gay porn as ‘Billy’, as a sex worker named ‘Lyn’, and ‘robbing and pillaging’ gay people as a skinhead named Richy Rich.
My Brother’s Killer premieres at SXSW on March 13.
Topics: True Crime, TV and Film, Crime, Documentaries, US News
Michael Slavin