'My Brother's Killer' Review
- Matthew Creith
- 3 days ago
- 3 min read
Release Date: --/--/-- [TBA]
Genre: Crime. Documentary. History. Mystery.
MPAA: Not Rated.
Distributor: TBA.
The Verdict: A Must-See
Director Rachel Mason's new true crime documentary, My Brother's Killer, opens with the familiar machinery of modern detective-level storytelling. Having premiered this weekend at the South by Southwest Film & TV Festival, the movie immediately showcases a brutal, unsolved murder, decades-old evidence, and a filmmaker determined to play the role of detective alongside the audience. Piecing together a mystery the police never managed to solve is a daunting task for any talented director like Mason, but her personal stake in the crime at hand makes for an intriguing look at unsolved cases.
At first glance, My Brother's Killer seems poised to follow a well-worn path that many Netflix-style documentaries typically take. However, Mason's film gradually shifts its focus from the investigation to a broader look at LGBTQ+ history and the many fragile lives that passed through it.
Circa 1990, the dismembered remains of 25-year-old William Arnold Newton (aka gay adult actor Billy London) were discovered in a dumpster in West Hollywood, California. The discovery shocked the famously queer community, a section of Los Angeles already living through the devastation of the AIDS crisis and the constant threat of anti-gay violence that the late 1980s and early 1990s resembled. For many people in the area, London's murder felt less like an isolated act and more like yet another reminder of how vulnerable queer lives could be at the time.
Despite early investigative efforts, the case went cold, remaining unresolved for decades.
Mason came to the story through personal proximity, similar to her previous documentary, which chronicled a famous West Hollywood bookstore her parents owned, Circus of Books. In My Brother's Killer, she places herself at the center of the investigation, working alongside a loose-knit team of collaborators that includes a retired homicide detective and an amateur online researcher who becomes deeply invested in the case.
Mason and her fellow amateur sleuths revisit old police reports, interview surviving witnesses, and chase down theories that had circulated for years. The film flirts with several possible suspects, including members of London's social circle, and some clues suggest the decades-old mystery might finally yield a much-needed resolution.
But the movie's most interesting moments occur when it pauses the search for the killer and turns its attention to the world London inhabited. Through interviews with friends, family members, and figures from the adult film industry, My Brother's Killer slowly sketches a portrait of a young man who was far more complicated than the sensational details of his death might suggest. London appears in these recollections as a sensitive and artistic person, a poet and visual artist who once dreamed of moving on from being considered a pornographic actor.
As Mason's investigation continues, the documentary gradually builds toward a revelation about the identity of London's killer. This reveal is unsettling to say the least, somehow restructuring much of the audience's opinions of this crime up to that point. The quasi-resolution opens up deeper themes surrounding identity and internalized hatred, something the queer community knows more about than most others.
The individual responsible for London's death turns out to share certain unexpected parallels with their victim. Even with that dramatic conclusion, My Brother's Killer remains somewhat ambivalent about the conventions of the genre it inhabits. On one level, the film delivers the satisfaction of solving a mystery that lingered for more than three decades, yet it raises uncomfortable questions about what justice can actually mean in a case like this.
The film acknowledges the complicated relationship between law enforcement and queer communities during this period in West Hollywood and America's history, though it stops short of examining those tensions in depth.
What ultimately lingers after the film ends is not simply the identity of the killer but the portrait of the world that surrounded the crime. Mason's documentary suggests that London's story cannot be separated from the historical moment in which he lived, a time when queer people were carving out spaces of freedom while confronting prejudice, violence, and profound social upheaval.
My Brother's Killer functions as both a cold-case investigation and a memorial of one man's life. Rachel Mason pieces together fragments of what is known about London's life while giving the victim some much-needed humanity. This humanity is what makes this particular true-crime documentary worth the watch, as the real Billy London comes into full focus by the time the credits roll.
