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The Last Call Killer
How an apparently mild-mannered male nurse targeted gay men in 1990s New York City.
New York City in the early 1990s was famously dangerous and crime-ridden, but men in the gay community perhaps had more reason to be fearful at that time than most — because they were being targeted by a serial killer.
A new crime book called A True Story of Love, Lust, and Murder in Queer New York by Elon Green has revisited this frightening period to shed new light on an often forgotten series of slayings. It also reveals how the murderer was not unveiled until a decade after his first victim was discovered.
Grisly discoveries by the side of the roads
It was May 1991, and a maintenance worker was emptying trash barrels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike when he made a frightening discovery. Inside multiple knotted garbage bags was the horribly mutilated body of a middle-aged man.
He was soon identified as 54-year-old Peter Anderson, a banker who had separated from his wife and had been visiting Manhattan from Philadelphia when he suddenly vanished.
It wasn’t until another body was found more than a year later — in July of 1992 — that authorities started to fear they were dealing with a repeat murderer. New Jersey State…
