Series Review: "Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields" (2022).

From the director of Without and The Pearl comes Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields. This crime documentary series directed by Jessica Dimmock. An overgrown field and a stretch of highway connect a series of grisly murders spanning several decades as grieving families search for answers.

Situated a mile from Interstate Highway 45 and approximately twenty-six miles southeast of Houston, the Texas Killing Fields is a twenty-five-acre patch of land in League City, Texas. Since the early 1970s, thirty-three bodies of murder victims have been found along the I-45 area. They were mainly the bodies of girls or young women. Furthermore, many additional young girls have disappeared from this area; these girls' bodies are still missing. It is believed that many of the murders are the work of multiple serial killers. Most of the victims were aged twelve–twenty-five years. Some shared similar physical features, such as similar hairstyles. However, efforts by the League City, Texas police, along with the assistance of the FBI, very few of these murders have been solved, and those that have been solved were predicated on confessions given by prisoners, or confessions given under duress from the police. The fields have been described as "a perfect place [for] killing somebody and getting away with it". Also, despite the fact that many popular true crime podcasts have grouped the murders of Dean and Tina Clouse with these victims, Dean and Tina Clouse were actually found in Houston off Interstate 10 in the thirteen-thousand block of Wallisville Road, not League City (the location of the Texas Killing Fields).

Jessica Dimmock's methodical approach means the film is sometimes plodding; then again, they deserve credit for honing in on each police failing even when they become repetitive. What's smart and sensitive about the film, directed by Dimmock, is that its focus isn't on . With an evocative mix of archival material and testimony from many who were involved in aspects of the case, the narrative reveals both monstrous crimes and an ineffective response. The whole "true crime documentary" genre is a minefield of the very good, mixed in with the tasteless, the exploitive and the crass. The series of killings featured in The Ripper may have been fascinating at the time, but the series lacks a point-of-view that makes them feel relevant today. The film could stand to have a tighter sense of chronology, with some temporal deviations that don't do it any favors. It becomes as challenging for the viewer to distinguish between the victims as it did for investigators. But the series nimbly shows how economic despair caused by a rapid rise of neglected American women into the streets. The film is persistently captivating as a crime-story, riveting in its investigative mode, and stimulating in its commentary mode. It is everything true-crime fans ask for. Fascinating to us because it will examine the underlying factors that slowed down the investigation, instead of talking about the killer himself.

Simon says Crime Scene: The Texas Killing Fields receives:

Also, see my review for Captive Audience.