Paul Bateson

Paul F. Bateson (August 24, 1940 – September 15, 2012) known as The Bag Murderer was an American convicted murderer and radiographer. He appeared as a radiologic technologist in a scene from the horror film The Exorcist, which was inspired when the film's director, William Friedkin, watched him perform a cerebral angiography the previous year. The scene, with a considerable amount of blood onscreen, was, for many viewers, the film's most disturbing scene; medical professionals have praised it for its realism.

In 1979, Bateson was convicted of the murder of film industry journalist Addison Verrill and sentenced to a minimum of twenty years in prison; in 2003 he was released on parole, which ended after five years. Prior to his trial, police and prosecutors implicated Bateson in a series of unsolved slayings of gay men in Manhattan known as the "bag murders," killings he had reportedly boasted about while in jail, with prosecutors bringing it up at his sentencing. However, no additional charges were ever brought against Bateson in the killings. The experience inspired Friedkin to make the film Cruising (1980) which, while based on a novel written a decade earlier, incorporated in its storyline the city's leather subculture, with which Bateson had identified.

In 2012, Friedkin recalled having visited the jailed Bateson prior to his trial and having a conversation which suggested that either Bateson had committed the additional "bag murders" or merely that he was considering confessing to them in exchange for a lighter sentence. However, other than the alleged comments made during the Friedkin interview and the assertions by police and prosecutors immediately prior to and during Bateson's trial that he had admitted to the serial murders while in jail, there is no other record of definitive incriminating evidence that he committed the "bag murders," though he remains the most consistently proposed suspect. Despite the lack of conclusive evidence, Bateson is often described as a serial killer. Early life Paul Bateson was born on August 24, 1940, and grew up in Lansdale, Pennsylvania, the son of a metallurgist. He would later suggest that his appearance in The Exorcist (1973) was revenge on his father for punishing him as a child by making him stay home from Saturday matinées at the local movie theater and listen to opera on the radio instead. Bateson served in the United States Army in the early 1960s, where he began drinking heavily out of boredom while stationed in West Germany, beginning a lifetime struggle with alcoholism. After his discharge, he returned to Lansdale and stopped drinking for a time.

In 1964, Bateson moved to New York City and began a relationship with a man (he would later describe himself as "not exclusively gay") whom he said was "involved in music." The relationship was marked by heavy drinking, either in the form of cocktails at The Pierre and frequent parties at the couple's home, or weekends in the Fire Island enclave of Cherry Grove⁠‌both with food cooked by Bateson. Five years later, Bateson's mother died of a stroke and his younger brother died by suicide. Medical professionals, including Lane and the others involved in the scene, have also praised it as a realistic depiction of the procedure, of special historic interest since it is no longer performed with a carotid puncture,

There was no evidence of forced entry. Verrill had likely let his killer in to the apartment; there were several empty beer cans and half-full liquor glasses at the scene. Gay rights activist and journalist Arthur Bell, a friend of Verrill's, wrote an article about the case in The Village Voice, setting it against the larger issue of how murders of gay men, several of which occurred yearly Greenwich Village, were rarely taken seriously by police or reported on in the media since they were seen as the results of sexual encounters gone wrong. The police, Bell wrote, had learned that Verrill had been at the Mineshaft, a popular leather bar, until 6a.m., talking to many other patrons.

In a story that ran on the Voice front page, the caller recounted the events of the night that ended in Verrill's murder. "I'm gay and I needed money and I'm an alcoholic," he said. After three months of sobriety, he claimed, he had gone out to Badlands, a Christopher Street bar, in the early hours of September 14 where Verrill, whom he did not know, offered to buy him a beer, a proposition the caller accepted. That beer became several, with the two consuming poppers and cocaine in addition to the drinks. when he was asked if he knew why he was being arrested, he pointed to an open copy of the Voice with Bell's article and indicated that that was probably why. A detective went to the bar and brought Mitch in for questioning as well; he was released after a few hours. Bateson eventually gave police a handwritten confession that was consistent with what he had told Bell. and the dismemberment of the bodies appeared to have been done by someone skilled in using a knife, investigators began to suggest publicly that Bateson might be a suspect in, as they were referred to officially, the "CUPPI" killings (for "Circumstances Unknown Pending Police Investigation")

Media portrayals Bateson was portrayed by Morgan Kelly in the second season of the Netflix series Mindhunter.