Very Scary People - Season 5, Episode 07: The Time Square Killer (1)

In 1979, the NYFD received a report of smoke pouring out of a room in a hotel in New York's Times Square. When firefighters entered, they thought they saw a pair of mannequins on the beds. It was only when the haze cleared that they realized that the person who set the blaze had beheaded two sex workers. The city's tabloids dubbed the perpetrator the 'Times Square Killer.' But the catchy label was not entirely accurate. For years, the murderer had been targeting women close to his home in the New Jersey suburbs. For a long time, though, police in both states were unaware that they had a serial killer on their hands. Indeed, the Times Square Killer's strongest asset was his ability to blend in, commuting back and forth from the suburbs to his job at a prestigious insurance firm. This is the tale of a perplexing double life, a case that seemed unsolvable and a reign of terror that impacted both the leafy lanes of New Jersey and New York's red-light district.

Genre: Documentary, Crime, History