How to uncover a true crime scam

For decades, Stéphane Bourgoin was a media star: an international expert on serial killers, author of 75 books on true crime, producer of dozens of films about murder. He was also a fabulist, a cineaste who was inspired by films like The Silence of the Lambs whose success was based on lies.

Bourgoin's origin story set him apart from other true-crime media personalities. He claimed that as a young man in America, he experienced the terror of a serial killer firsthand when he discovered the dismembered body of his girlfriend in their shared apartment. This seemingly offhand anecdote became Bourgoin's calling card, giving him access not only to the dozens of serial killers he would interview over the years, but also to victims of violent crime and their families. And his star rose when the facts about that girlfriend, “Eileen,” came to light.

This is what director and executive producer Ben Selkow examines in the three-part series. Killer Lies: On the hunt for a true criminal con artisthis matryoshka-like insight into the life and mind of Bourgioin, based on a story from 2022 New Yorkers investigative piece by Lauren Collins (who appears in the series). It's a story that's about a renegade union of online detectives, secret families, broken trust and the exploitation of one's worst impulses. It's also a reckoning with our cultural obsession with crime and a pointed examination of how narratives are established, who gets to tell the stories and how consumers become responsible for perpetuating misinformation. Selkow spoke to GQ about making Killer lies and what he hopes viewers will take away from it. Watch the series starting Wednesday, August 28, on National Geographic and the next day on Hulu.

GQ: What attracted you to this story and what challenges did you face in adapting Collins' very detailed article?

Ben Selkow: I'm really interested in our participation as filmmakers and audiences and how we contribute to the things we see. [Lauren’s article] offered a really amazing story to explore and examine, to question ourselves as creators, storytellers and also as audiences. I wanted to explore how we got here to this moment of true crime while telling a true crime story. So it became a kind of complicated web of a meta-story with a true crime story at its center, which was a unique opportunity.

And this story, for me, was different from many other stories because of its approach. Stéphane is the perpetrator and the instigator. He becomes the antihero and antagonist at the center of the story. Lauren had already done an incredible job of excavating the story. The whole idea of ​​the series was to build on that story and delve deeper into the genre. So it's not just a rehash of her article, it becomes actively and present-day investigative.

There's definitely a sense of tension building within the series, similar to a crime-solving movie, but this is different. How did the ambiguities shape the narrative?

The audience can join in. They can look at the guy and say, “Is he Mr. Magoo who just stumbled into this series of events and went through life, or is he a series of accidents?” Or is there something more deliberate, more nefarious going on here? I think there's a spectrum of compulsion and deliberation that allows the audience to investigate and make up their own minds in some ways, which is what makes the show really entertaining. Because it's still open to interpretation, which allows the audience to be the final investigators, so to speak.

What is your interpretation?

My theory is that he's a smart adapter who could gauge audience reaction. He was prescient in some ways, he was a kind of pre-internet troll, and the best trolls are actually key observers of audience reaction.

The goal is attention. Attention is the most valuable currency for someone like Bourgoin. For him, it starts with this one film that gets a little bit of attention. It's outrageous and offensive and, you know, it gets even more attention. Then he writes a book, becomes an expert, gets on TV. That becomes his world.