From the archive: What lies beneath: the truth about France’s top serial killer expert

单集文稿 ...

• 00:00

  This is The Guardian. The Guardian Archive Long Read My name is Scott Sayre.

• 00:22

  I'm the author of What Lies Beneath?

• 00:25

  The Secrets of France's Top Serial Killer Expert.

• 00:28

  published in 2021.

• 00:32

  This story actually began with the editor of The Long Read, David Wolf,

• 00:37

  who wrote to me asking if I might be interested in writing about it.

• 00:41

  And to be candid, my initial response to myself was no, because I don't usually write true crime.

• 00:48

  I don't have an abiding pre-existing interest in serial killing.

• 00:53

  But in looking into it a little bit,

• 00:55

  I realized that actually this was a story both about a particular person and a particular narrative,

• 01:01

  but also about the broader cultural phenomenon of the serial killer.

• 01:07

  And what I realized is that the serial killer culture that we're familiar with is actually quite distinctive and is the product of the past 30 or 40 years and comes straight out of the United States of America.

• 01:20

  And I realized that writing about this case was a way at understanding the culture as a particular thing and tracing its roots a little bit.

• 01:32

  And that got me excited.

• 01:34

  As far as what's changed since the time of publication,

• 01:37

  the main characters' fortunes as a result of the stories recounted in the piece have suffered significantly.

• 01:45

  I do think the way to think about this piece is that it's full of twists and turns and is very specific to this one particular character and the many,

• 01:55

  many, many, many many lies that he told over the course of a long life.

• 02:00

  But it's also, and maybe more importantly,

• 02:04

  a story about our own obsession with the serial killer and where that comes from and how it's been transmitted to us.

• 全部文稿