Know what a darkroom is? Then you’re doing better than the officers investigating these murders. Not that this documentary’s lacklustre explanations would have helped them
Have you ever been to Berghain? The legendary German techno club is a major landmark in this three-part true crime docuseries about the hunt for the man dubbed the Darkroom Killer by the press, despite the fact that none of these events actually took place there. But then Berghain is standing in for the whole of Berlin’s nightlife and its dual reputation: to some this is a terrifying Gomorrah of sin and perversion, to others it’s a paradise of pleasure and acceptance.
And do you know what a darkroom is? Those dimly lit anonymous sex spaces that are a feature of gay clubs around the world? Andreas Voges, a straight-talking officer of Berlin’s landeskriminalamt (state police agency) says he hadn’t a clue, not until a body turned up in one, at the bar Grosse Freiheit 114, in the city’s fashionable Friedrichshain district. This was 5 May 2012 or “day one” in the methodical, race-against-time investigation that followed.
