Sandra Harris Writes

NIGHT STALKER: THE HUNT FOR A SERIAL KILLER. (2021) DIRECTED BY TILLER RUSSELL. STARRING GIL CARRILLO AND FRANK SALERNO AS THEMSELVES. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © This Netflix true crime documentary is a really sinister and disturbing watch. In the 1980s, a series of horrific crimes- aggravated burglary, child molestation, child abduction and murders- in the Los Angeles and San Francisco areas of the United States had the residents of those two cities on high alert. The thing is, though, that almost all of the crimes were different to the ones that preceded them, and it took a while for detectives on the case to link them together. Normally, a criminal keeps to the same MO or modus operandi and doesn’t deviate from it too much. For example, a man who shoots people from a safe distance, e.g., David Berkowitz in the ‘Son of Sam’ murders, doesn’t normally decide to suddenly stop doing this and start strangling his victims instead, which would entail up-close and personal contac...

  AMANDA KNOX. (2016) A NETFLIX DOCUMENTARY BY ROD BLACKHURST AND BRIAN MCGINN. REVIEW BY SANDRA HARRIS. © The murder of Meredith Kercher happened in 2007. The sensational and extensive news coverage largely passed me by at the time because I was a new mammy of a baby boy with special needs, otherwise I probably would have been all over that like everyone else. Murder, sex, intrigue, mystery, blood- what’s not to get excited about, as English journalist Nick Pisa who covered the case says in the film, though personally I think this guy was a little too over-enthusiastic about getting his juicy sex-murder headlines. The press jumped on this case like a swarm of hungry wolves. The headlines became more and more lurid, with the journalists leaping on wild murmurings about devil worshipping, cult murder and kinky sex. According to this documentary, the truth is a lot less fantastical and, sadly, more mundane, if you can use the word ‘mundane’ in connection with the death of a lovely, v...