Yes, you are a terrible person. That's enough seasonal goodwill for you. Time to get back to business. The first new true crime documentary of the year is “Amazon Review Killer.”
This is the gruesome story of real estate agent, sex offender, and serial killer Todd Kohlhepp. He was convicted of seven murders in 2017 and has since said he is responsible for more, but has not provided details to authorities.
Kohlhepp's story is unusual in this genre simply because his tendency toward extreme violence is first recognized and punished very early on. When he was 15 years old, he kidnapped his 14-year-old neighbor, threatened her with a gun, and raped her, telling her that if she told anyone, he would kill her family. For this crime he was sentenced to 15 years in prison and registered as a sex offender. At age 30, he was released without any supervision.
From there, it's a familiar pattern to all but the most casual viewer of documentaries like this. This is horrifying on a human level, but it's just faintly unrewarding in terms of “Did I spend nearly two hours of my life watching this?” level.
Not so surprisingly, the former felon lied about his conviction and status as a sex offender to obtain a real estate license and run a successful business. People remember him as a friendly and charming person. Criminal psychologists have told us time and time again that this is the appearance that narcissists and people with the borderline personality disorder Kohlhepp diagnosed in prison find easier to maintain. Behind the scenes, he was ruthless and easily enraged, seeking revenge against those he perceived to be mocking him or not giving him his due as a superior being.
When he tries to return his new bike and is laughed at (or feels he is being laughed at) by bike shop owner Scott Ponder, he returns and shoots him dead. along with two other employees, Brian Lucas and Chris Sherbert, and Ponder's mother, Beverly Guy. This was in 2003. Police compiled a list of recent customers and interviewed them, focusing on those who had complained about the condition of used bicycles sold by Ponder. They don't disclose the fact that some of their names include violent sex offenders.
I don't know if it's impossible to make a true crime series without elements of police incompetence that complicate the story, or if it's just impossible to make a true crime series without incompetence. Given the current headlines, I'm leaning toward the latter.
In 2015, a couple named Megan Coxey, a waitress at a local Waffle House in Kohlhepp (who made the female staff so uncomfortable that orders were ultimately only taken by male staff), and her husband, Johnny Coxey, were arrested. Go missing. The police have no leads, and the Coxseys have no real connections to the surrounding community or family to make a fuss about when the case is solved.
The following year, a richer and better known local couple, Kara Brown and Charles Carver, go missing. Phone records showed that Charles' phone was on Kohlhepp's property and that Brown and Charles had been texting about the couple coming to work on Kohlhepp's 95-acre farm. Unusual footage from the time showed Brown chained to a storage container. The bodies of Charles and Coxsey were found in the grave.
The US patent for this boring, grindingly repetitive documentary, which should have been 70 minutes at most, features provocative (at least post-mortem) Amazon reviews about the knives, shovels, and locks Kohlhepp purchased to carry out his crimes. It means that he was posting regularly. . “Keep this in your car in case you have to hide a body,” “I haven't stabbed anyone yet. When you do it, use quality tools like this.” ” etc.
But what can we learn from this? Evil men without conscience still roam among us. As much as we classify men who watch porn on the job or make waitresses uncomfortable as normal, they look and act normal. And we do. That the police cannot be trusted. That evil is, as Hannah Arendt said, banal. In other words, there's nothing new. If we don't learn anything from programs like this, we can easily slip into exploitative and immoral territory and need to stop and ask ourselves: “Why are we making this, why are we watching it?”
