Samuel Little claims that he fatally strangled 93 women in numerous states during his murderous life, and Confront a serial killer let him explain his crimes – and his motivations – in hours of audio interviews conducted by author Jillian Lauren. Both for these doctrines and as part of the research for her forthcoming book Exit Sandman: The True Story of America’s Most Prolific Serial Killer, Lauren struck up a friendship with Little after his 2014 conviction and incarceration for the murders of three women. And as she repeatedly stated through this five-episode affair, her goal was to attract confessions from Little (who died in December 2020) to identify his victims and thus give voice to the voiceless whose downfall by a criminal justice system which they regarded as Lauren as “less dead”.
So Lauren and director Joe Berlinger want Confront a serial killer to be a story about not only Little, but, more importantly, the dozens of female prostitutes and drug addicts he murdered – a noble cause that is sadly undone by the fact that the real protagonist and subject of this non- fiction work seems to be Lauren herself.
Premiere on April 18 on Starz, Berlinger’s latest crime attempt (Crime: the disappearance in the Cecil Hotel) is a case of a journalist allowing her to become the story. Lauren’s intentions are principled and her triumph is genuine, but from the moment she first appears on camera, there is a performative characteristic to her every tearful exposition, breathtaking line reading, narrated piece of prose and reference to Little as’ Mr. Sam. Especially when she puts the heads of the proceedings next to each other, Lauren works overtime for the camera, which is connected with the fact that she and Berlinger retain her role in this saga from now on, so that it quickly becomes less what Lauren does than the fact that she doing so – empathetic, fair and costly for her own common sense and the well-being of her family.
Lauren’s husband, Scott Shriner (the bassist for Weezer) and their two sons, sometimes appear to explain the toll that Lauren’s work takes on her and their family. The concept is then emphasized by Lauren’s comments from the first person, during which she talks with intense sadness in her voice and eyes about her responsibility towards Little’s victims, her identification with them (thanks to her own history with drugs and abusive men), her desire to create safe spaces for her children amidst her macabre toil, her inability to abandon the trials of these many victims, and – above all –her struggling to endure endless conversations with Little. Despite denying any guilt in his initial trial, Little Lauren openly opens up during their phone calls, providing all sorts of gruesome details about his childhood, his mindset, and his myriad of disgusting crimes.
Alas, in a way that is the opposite of Liz Garbus’ I will be in the dark, married to Michelle McNamara’s quest to identify the Golden State Killer with a portrait of the socio-political climate of America from the 70s and 80s, Berlinger makes the proceedings a platform for his star. And every time Lauren says she’s putting the spotlight on the dead, it’s like she’s doing it herself.
Lauren’s analysis of Little is a variety of pedestrians, though that does not prevent her from delivering it as if she were sharing hitherto unknown insights. The notion that Little was a “predator” committed by marginalized women who presumably would not miss society – and who would not justify serious police investigations – is spotted and confirmed by the facts of Little’s decades-long assassination attempt. Yet it is also a very obvious facet of this story. Time and time again, the series makes weighty statements that are not nearly as astute or revealing as they think, making everything a little exaggerated and empty.
‘Each time, the series delivers weighty statements that are not nearly as astute or revealing as they think, making everything a little exaggerated and empty.”
Lauren’s larger claim is that Little’s saga is a clear example of failures in the criminal justice system, because despite the fact that it contains a rap page that covers nearly 100 pages (including offenses ranging from burglary and assault, rape and murder), serious prosecution eluded. This is also true and speaks of a general disregard of sex workers and drug addicts (especially if they are women of color). And a furious new confrontation between Laurie Barros, who survived a Little attack, and the prosecutor who did not plead guilty (instead he settled for a plea deal that Little covered two years behind bars) speaks to the misogyny playing here. where women on the sheath in fields, barrels, and rubbish heaps were thrown away by the monstrous Little, and then disregarded by the institutions aimed at standing up for them.
Even in this respect, however, Confront a serial killer tells us things we already know, while at the same time mentioning things that are not at hand with the material. Lauren, for example, proclaims that Little’s ability to escape prosecution for so long is proof that the justice system is racist – despite the fact that he was a black man who killed white women in many cases, what you would think of him an ideal feed for a racist system. Not Helping Things is a screw-not-chronological structure that makes things less – rather than more – clear, suggesting that Berlinger himself knows that there is nothing particularly profound to draw from Little’s reign of terror, except for the fact that it is depressingly easy to get away with killing those who live on the lower rungs of social learning.
In his conversations with Lauren, Little provides ample evidence of his own deviant sex-driven sociopathy, his natural coldness, and arrogance. He repeatedly tells Lauren that she is destined to be with him “forever,” and that he “possesses” her, like the souls of the women he killed. He’s a cold crawl, to the end. Unlike the genre brothers John Wayne Gacy: Devil in Disguise or The Confession Killer, although, Confront a serial killer marks Little as an ordinary liar and yet takes much of what he mentions at face value. The success of Lauren and law enforcement in determining Little, based on his own testimonies, on Little, based on his own testimony, does indicate that he spoke the truth in many ways. But the possibility that he was also an egomaniac claiming for crimes he did not commit is being investigated here – not surprisingly, given the general blind spot of the series regarding self-absorption.