Chronicle series to investigate killings in ’ 70s
The San Francisco Chronicle is partnering with Sony Music Entertainment and the U. K. production company Ugly Duckling Films to create its first narrative podcast, a true crime series called “The Doodler.”
The investigative podcast will chart the search to unveil the infamous serial killer who terrorized San Francisco’s LGBTQ community in the 1970s and is believed to have murdered at least five people and possibly as many as 14. The Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prizenominated reporter Kevin Fagan will host the series, which is being researched by him and the newspaper’s former investigative reporter Michael Taylor. It is set to debut in 2021. “The thing that makes the Doodler stand out for me is the way he got away with it at a time when gay people were overlooked and oppressed,” Fagan said. “Back in 1974, San Francisco was a beacon to gay people, but ( they) were still getting beat up and killed.”
In 1974 and 1975, when the Doodler was be
lieved to be active, the story was mostly ignored across mainstream media, including The Chronicle.
“There was a lot of homophobia in society at that time,” Fagan said, adding that the story of the killings within the LGBTQ community “was lost to history, really.”
The podcast will be produced by The Chronicle’s senior audio producer King Kaufman and Ugly Duckling Films in collaboration with Neon Hum, a production firm. Sony Music Entertainment will provide the funding, distribution and marketing for the project.
“‘ The Doodler’ follows a baffling case that has long deserved to be fully told,” said Sony Music Entertainment President of Premium Content A& R Tom Mackay. “With some of the best investigative minds in journalism at The Chronicle and the production expertise of Neon Hum and Ugly Duckling Films coming together to track down this suspect, we are eager to see how the show unravels the truth behind this case.”
In 2018, the San Francisco Police Department reopened the case, and soon after released a new, age-enhanced sketch that illustrates what the killer might look like more than 40 years later. It also offered a $ 100,000 reward for information that could lead to the identification and eventual arrest of the Doodler.
The podcast’s production team has created an anonymous tip line, at 4155709299 or thedoodlerline@gmail.com, for anyone with relevant information.
Ugly Duckling had been working for the past several years on a TV series about the Doodler with writer Ryan J. Brown when the Police Department reopened the case. That’s when Ugly Duckling decided to team up with The Chronicle’s team to produce a podcast.
“That’s when we thought, ‘ Hang on, this is an ongoing investigation — they believe the killer is alive and residing in the Bay Area,’ ” said Sophia Gibber, producer for Ugly Duckling.
Gibber visited San Francisco last year with Ugly Duckling Films founder Lena Bausager to meet The Chronicle team and said, “We were incredibly struck by Kevin, his voice, the work that he’s done.”
Fagan said the police department’s cold case unit thought it was a great injustice that no one was ever found back then and that the killings of so many gay men were left unsolved. The murder spree happened before the assassination of Harvey Milk, before sodomy laws were overturned in the U. S., before gay marriage was a reality.
“Apart from really wanting to be part of finding the killer, we wanted to put some closure and remedy some of the things that were not done by the world at that time,” said Bausager. “I feel there’s a great ... picture of San Francisco we’re going to portray so you get a true feeling of what it was like ( back then).”
In other ways, the project’s intent is to hold up a mirror to what’s still unfolding in the present world — minority communities that still live in fear; bigotry and rampant racism around the U. S., Bausager said.
“What you’ve got happening in this story, contextually, is a microcosm of a lot of disenfranchisement,” Gibber added, noting that the Doodler’s victims were isolated characters, people who didn’t have many ties.
“You might have thought a few of them were lonely figures without strong foundations or strong families or strong homes,” Gibber said. “And I think that in light of the pandemic, this forced period of reflection, it’s really taught us to look outward at everyone around us, and the importance and strength of community.”