Bag murders

Between 1975 and 1977, multiple garbage bags containing human remains were recovered from the Hudson River in New York City. Police determined that the remains belonged to six men. Clothing found with the body parts had reportedly been purchased from leather stores in Greenwich Village, a Lower Manhattan neighborhood known at the time for its concentration of gay bars and institutions. Based on this evidence, investigators assumed the victims had been gay. The identities of the six victims were never established, and the case has never been officially solved.

During the same period, a Greenwich Village resident named Paul Bateson was arrested in September 1977 for the murder of film reporter Addison Verrill. At Bateson's 1979 trial, prosecutors called a witness, Richard Ryan, who testified that Bateson had told him, shortly before Verrill's killing, that he had also killed three other men: 29-year-old Ronald Cabeau, 41-year-old Donald McNiven, and 53-year-old John Beardsley. According to this testimony, each of these three men had been stabbed to death in their Lower Manhattan apartments in early 1973 after visiting gay bars. Ryan further alleged that Bateson had admitted to killing and dismembering six gay men whose remains were dumped in the Hudson River. No charges were ever filed against Bateson in connection with the deaths of Cabeau, McNiven, Beardsley, or the six river victims, due to a lack of evidence. Bateson was convicted only of Verrill's murder and received a sentence of 20 years to life. He denied responsibility for the "Bag murders" for the remainder of his prison term.

The case had a lasting effect on the gay community in New York. During Bateson's trial, director William Friedkin, who had known Bateson from a small role Bateson played in Friedkin's 1973 film The Exorcist, visited him in jail. Friedkin later said Bateson partially admitted responsibility in these conversations for the death and dismemberment of one man. Friedkin subsequently adapted Gerald Walker's 1970 novel Cruising into a film, drawing on elements of the murders; the film was released in 1980 starring Al Pacino. Journalist and LGBT rights activist Arthur Bell wrote a series of articles in The Village Voice about the Greenwich Village murders, arguing that homosexuals faced significant social stigma and violence, and that only a small number of the era's murders of gay men in the neighborhood were officially recorded. Bell's reporting drew public attention and contributed to activism connected to the gay liberation movement.

The filming of Cruising in Greenwich Village drew demonstrations from segments of the local gay community, who were concerned about the film's portrayal of gay life and feared it might provoke further violence. Residents petitioned then-Mayor Ed Koch to deny filming permits, but he declined, and protests continued in the streets, eventually requiring police intervention. Interest in the case was renewed in 2019 following an episode of the television series Mindhunter that addressed the murders and Bateson's possible connection to them.