Killer Lies: Chasing a True Crime Con Man

-Something terrible happened to somebody

close to me.

While I was in United States.

I had a girlfriend.

She got killed.

Violently.

Very violently.

What are you accused of?

Killing 34 women.

- Stéphane Bourgoin. - Stéphane Bourgoin.

- Stéphane Bourgoin. - Stéphane Bourgoin.

Stéphane Bourgoin had become

one of the foremost experts on serial killers in France.

What were those morbid games that you

played with your sister?

-He was this titan of the true crime industry.

I don't think there is anybody in the

world who has seen as many serial killers as I did.

But nothing was what it seemed.

-With Stéphane, there is a fascination for violence.

-People had this slew of theories about

what could have happened.

They told themselves they were perusing justice.

-Lies have a funny way of becoming real.

I didn't trust him, for some reason.

I thought I was the only one.

-This whole charade blew up in his face.

-This is a very strange con story that took place over

the course of decades.

And the longer I've gone on the more questions it's raised.

We had a target in mind.

And we were all consumed by it.

Is he dangerous?

Why all this attention for serial killing?

He took a masterclass from these guys.

-People's going to believe what they

want to believe anyhow.

-Really there was only one person who could

speak to the why.

And that was Stéphane Bourgoin.

I would do it again and again and again.

Silence, please.

Take one.

The story begins in 2019.

-Stéphane Bourgoin is at the height of his public notoriety.

He's this master of true crime.

Bourgoin had power, access, and influence.

And the thing that got him attention were these

extraordinary stories that he retailed.

-For me, he was the man that gave me my first informations

about who are serial killers and what makes them tick.

-This time of the history of criminology in France

he was the one and only.

Whatever happened in the crime field.

He was there.

That brought him into contact with real

law enforcement, real criminal profilers.

He actually even claimed that he had

solved some crimes himself.

He's hypnotized by criminals.

Which mean going on the dark side.

He's a little creepy.

He's gory, he's a little inappropriate,

he's pushing the limits.

And within a year, he was going to abruptly lose it all.

But to really understand what happened,

we have to go back to the beginning of his

true crime career.

Carol Kehringer ITV. Take one.

Rolling, rolling.

A serial killer, uh, uh, has a very good chance

of getting away with his crimes.

And I got some tips from

John Douglas also...

Oh, did you?

...to interview Kemper.

John has talked to Kemper I think three times.

Yes.

Before leaving we went to the FBI gift shop.

Stéphane was very interested in buying all kind of

things from that store.

Yes.

Then we go to Florida.

To Stark Prison.

And this is where we would meet the two first serial killers.

Stéphane was of course very excited to be there.

For me, it is a bit scary this fascination

for true crime and serial killers.

Serial killers are not a

uniquely American phenomenon.

Parts of bodies leading them to believe...

The murder trial of John Gacy did indeed

get underway today.

Los Angeles police today arrested the man they

believe is the so-called Night Stalker.

What is unique in America is the frequency

of serial killers.

It's understood that the term serial killer was coined by

Robert Ressler and John Douglas,

who was an FBI profiler and the founder of

the Behavioral Science Unit.

What I did was, for the first time,

was to go into penitentiaries and interview

serial killers and rapists.

Uh, murderers of all types.

Thomas Harris, a reporter for the

Associated Press,

decided to embed with these profilers, and from that,

he created a character named Hannibal Lecter.

And that cemented the serial killer as a fictional archetype.

Media properties elevated serial killers to supervillains.

Morning.

-I think for someone like Bourgoin,

that can be very exciting.

We had seen that movie Silence of the Lambs,

so we didn't know whether there would

be glass in between us.

Hell, I can do that in here...

But the guard left us

without anybody watching.

Ottis Toole was known the Jacksonville Cannibal because

he claimed to eat his victims.

Authorities think the number of people he murdered could

be over a hundred.

Your recipe for the barbecue sauce.

I must tell you that I tried it.

Was it any good?

Yeah, it was very good.

Although I didn't try it on the same kind of meat that you did.

-It's good on any kind of meat.

Yeah? On any kind, yes.

So after the interview with Toole,

the guard came back with Gerald Schaefer.

Gerald Schaefer was a sheriff's deputy,

was convicted of killing two teenagers.

He was suspected of being involved in the deaths of

more than two dozen other victims.

He told us that he wrote books about killings.

No I said, "I ought to put these into

a book format, into an anthology.

And fictionalize them.

And maybe I can get across the horror of what serial murder

is all about."

-After the interview was done,

Stéphane asked Gerald Schaefer to autograph books

he had brought.

Well you know I'm a writer also?

Are you really?

We write the same books, yes.

-I have written this documentary.

-How did you like this? Did you enjoy this?

Yes, I liked it very much.

May I see your credentials?

That expires in one week.

You're not real FBI, are you?

Silence of the Lambs

set up this idea that there were more dimensions

to serial killers.

That there was more to be probed and discovered.

Whatever his motivation was,

Bourgoin was clearly fascinated.

I'm here to learn from you.

But, the way he conducted these interviews

took that fascination to a whole new level.

After Florida we went to California to the

jail where Ed Kemper was imprisoned.

Edmund Kemper was known as the "Co-ed Killer."

He was convicted of killing eight people,

including his mother.

Hi.

He was known also for raping corpses

of his victims.

The decapitation fantasies were even there.

They were in place by then already.

What where those fantasies?

What were they?

Oh, yes.

-Um... possessing the severed heads of women.

That got caught up in my morbid fascination.

And did you take Polaroids also?

-At first, I did, yeah. But that stopped.

Why did you do that?

-At first, I was hoping I could get off,

I could get a vicarious thrill in seeing those pictures and

say, well, this will be satisfying enough.

One...

...two people die, that's it, doesn't have to go past that.

And I'll see why I don't wanna do it again.

At the time we shot this film I did not

realize what we got to film was exceptional.

-Those tapes kicked off his career.

They opened doors, they launched his brand.

He had the documentary.

Then he had a book.

Once you have a book, you get on TV.

Once you're on TV...

...you're the expert.

Stéphane Bourgoin is very conscious of this zeitgeist.

He knew that he could repackage this thing as like

a hot new trend in France.