‘My Brother’s Killer’ SXSW Review: A Macabre Real-Life Murder Goes Unsolved for Decades

A very cold case from 1990 gets reheated in “My Brother’s Killer.” Rachel Mason’s documentary probes the mysterious murder that year of 25-year-old William Arnold Newton, who had appeared in several gay porn films as “Billy London.” That modest notoriety, combined with the macabre nature of the deed and its unsolved status for decades, lured the filmmaker into an extended investigation — the end result being this feature. 

As both victim and eventually-uncovered perp remain somewhat unknowable, with limited insight afforded into either party, this true-crime tale doesn’t achieve the full emotional impact aimed for. But it’s nonetheless an engrossing watch, with some shocking and ironical twists in store once the 30-plus-year-old puzzle finally unravels. 

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Mason previously made a film about Circus of Books, the West Hollywood store her mother Karen still operates. Its location and sale of adult materials made it popular within the local gay community, a connection which eventually tipped the director to the Newton case. He had just wrapped work on a XXX project called “The Grip of Passion” when he informed his flatmates he was going out to rent a movie. Instead, he wound up partying on methamphetamine at now-defunct WeHo gay nightclub Rage, where he was last seen by witnesses. Friends and family did not immediately panic over his disappearance, as he’d been known to “wander off for a couple days” while high. But once a missing person report was finally filed, the police had a horrible, immediate answer: His hitherto-unidentified severed head and feet had already been found in an alley dumpster near La Brea and Santa Monica Blvd. (Disposed of somewhere outside the original search area, his torso was never recovered.)

For a community already dealing with the height of the AIDS epidemic as well as gay-bashing violence, it was a chilling discovery. Was a serial killer on the loose? In fact, there was — but despite brief subsequent suspicion that he might’ve been in the area, it turned out Jeffrey Dahmer was home in Milwaukee at the time. Instead, LAPD’s prime suspect for years was Newton’s ex-boyfriend Marc Rabins, who as “David Rey” also worked in the gay porn industry, and with whom he had a stormy relationship. 

But those and other possible leads led nowhere, despite the best efforts of homicide detectives who remained haunted by the case long after. It wasn’t until Mason discovered podcasters Christopher Rice and Eric Shaw Quinn’s repeated inquiries into the murder that their combined efforts gave LAPD some fresh intel, just within the last five years. 

While many who were involved in this late-1980s porn milieu have since passed away, the filmmakers locate numerous survivors, including directors Chichi LaRue and Phil Tarley. Newton himself, a handsome blond, apparently did not much enjoy his relatively brief career onscreen in titles like “Imperfect Strangers” and “Head of the Class” (both glimpsed in non-explicit excerpts). He preferred off-camera hair and makeup duties, even more so pursuing his own visual art and poetry. Indeed, after three years he’d apparently burnt out on the Los Angeles gay scene in general, and was planning to join his mother shortly for an extended period in Las Vegas. But he vanished before that could occur. 

He remains a vague, work-in-progress personality, not described with any great vividness by those acquaintances interviewed. Eventually we realize his was a classic gay-misfit story: Raised in problematic rural midwestern circumstances, enduring too many changes of home and school, rejected by a homophobic father. After dropping out of high school, he hitched his way westward, finally landing like many other strays in the porn industry. 

The most startling realization in “My Brother’s Killer” (a somewhat misleading title, as Newton’s half-sister Michele Oliver is not a principal viewpoint) is that the person who murdered “Billy London” had in many respects a remarkably similar history, complete with formative traumas and porn appearances. The difference was that individual’s double life: He simultaneously hung out with white-supremacist skinheads, his self-loathing leading to multiple acts of lethal gay-bashing. There are further surprises when Mason’s camera at last faces that perp, serving a life sentence in prison. 

“Killer” could have dived deeper into the gay pornography business world of the time, where we’re told there were “some pretty unsavory characters.” But the milieu and related lifestyles (including Newton’s own drug issues) aren’t evoked in any detail. The notion of internalized homophobia turning deadly is a powerful one that likewise doesn’t get explored in depth, even though we briefly hear from an author who wrote an entire book on the subject (David McConnell’s “American Honor Killings: Desire and Rage Among Men”). 

More attention to those contextualizing elements would’ve made for a richer overall experience. Still, “My Brother’s Killer” succeeds on the core level of providing an absorbing real-life mystery whose long-in-coming resolution adds new layers of strangeness and sorrow. Mason is onscreen a fair amount, but wisely refrains from making herself the protagonist. While there’s nothing particularly distinctive stylistically or otherwise about her investigative storytelling here, the film pulls us into its narrative quest, avoiding the more lurid external trappings of standard true-crime entertainment.