Binx Bolling
Former Member
- Joined
- Oct 19, 2018
- Messages
- 5
- Reaction score
- 13
Searching For the Truth About the Actual Murderer in The Exorcist
For decades Paul Bateson's name has been attached to a spree of gruesome
murders in the '70s. This is our search for what's true and what's legend.
On September 14, 1977—less than four years after the release of The Exorcist—the body of Addison Verrill, a film reporter for Variety, was found in his Greenwich Village apartment. Initially, police suspected it was the result of a robbery gone bad. But, as the Village Voice’s Arthur Bell reported, “the TV, tape recorder, typewriter—stuff that a small-time crook could easily dispose of—had not been taken… It was not a break-in crime. Verrill had brought his assailant home or allowed him into the apartment.”
At this time in the mid '70s, Greenwich Village was experiencing a string of murders of gay men. A number of bodies of unidentified victims had been discovered, dismembered and placed in bags that were tossed into the Hudson River. These murders were rarely reported on. “Every year, there are approximately four ‘sexually oriented’ murders of gay men in the Greenwich Village area," Bell wrote. "Seldom do the papers report the crimes.”
On September 22, eight days after Verrill’s murder, Bell got a call from an unidentified person claiming to have killed Verrill. <>
For decades Paul Bateson's name has been attached to a spree of gruesome
murders in the '70s. This is our search for what's true and what's legend.
On September 14, 1977—less than four years after the release of The Exorcist—the body of Addison Verrill, a film reporter for Variety, was found in his Greenwich Village apartment. Initially, police suspected it was the result of a robbery gone bad. But, as the Village Voice’s Arthur Bell reported, “the TV, tape recorder, typewriter—stuff that a small-time crook could easily dispose of—had not been taken… It was not a break-in crime. Verrill had brought his assailant home or allowed him into the apartment.”
At this time in the mid '70s, Greenwich Village was experiencing a string of murders of gay men. A number of bodies of unidentified victims had been discovered, dismembered and placed in bags that were tossed into the Hudson River. These murders were rarely reported on. “Every year, there are approximately four ‘sexually oriented’ murders of gay men in the Greenwich Village area," Bell wrote. "Seldom do the papers report the crimes.”
On September 22, eight days after Verrill’s murder, Bell got a call from an unidentified person claiming to have killed Verrill. <>
