Episode 8, The Quarter

When each victim of the rope murders was found, investigators didn’t make any public mention of a serial pattern or perpetrator. But, within a month after the discovery of John Doe’s body in St. Helena Parish, at least one newspaper ran a story about the boys being “male hustlers” who may have been stalked by a “sex killer”. The hustling scene in the French Quarter of New Orleans has been a real thing for decades. Whether these victims were part of that scene is far less certain, but the stigma it placed on the cases was hard to deny. What was it like in the Quarter when the murders took place? We take a journey back to a time full of nostalgia, but also violence.