As a stark indictment on the climate that allowed a serial murderer to operate unbothered, Nilsen Tapes shares a devastating kinship with another Netflix crime doc, The Ripper.
The delivery system finds a rhythmic sweet spot, oscillating between the Nilsen tapes and the accounts of investigators. It’s interesting to see where the stories diverge.
On the lawman side of things, it’s a unique case in that, with a serial killer and unidentifed remains in front of them, they had to backwards-engineer their investigation to trace and name the victims. Most dread-inducing are the accounts of the near-misses and escaped survivors.
