I’d explored expanding that into a book, but it didn’t go anywhere.
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Years ago, I had written a story about the so-called Doodler murders, unsolved killings in San Francisco in the mid-’70s, during which five or six gay men were stabbed and left on waterfronts. Green: It came out of a failed attempt at a prior book. The true-crime elements were the crutch that allowed me to write the history. Once I started focusing on them, the victims, I realized I could write about the panorama of gay experience in those years, which is what I really wanted to do. We have Peter, who had AIDS and was in the National Guard, versus Tom who was married to a woman, versus Anthony, a sex worker, versus Michael, who was out of the closet but had been thrown out of the military.
For me, the book is a work of history and not of true crime. But they also weren’t as famously closeted as the prior generation. These guys were just on the cusp of being able to live the lives they wanted, yet did not. This generation of gay men I write about is sort of forgotten relative to other generations.
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So, why did you think this story-which does not seem to explicitly resonate with modern-day issues or events-needed to be told?Įlon Green: A lot of reasons. Tim Murphy: Hi Elon! Thanks for making time to talk.