For TV, Crime Is Drug of Choice

Crime continues to pay--if not always for perpetrators, at least for the television industry.

From local newscasts to grimy tabloid series to prime-time docudramas, crime stories have become a drug on which TV gets high. TV snorts crime the way an addict snorts white powder, ensuring that every sensational case will ultimately find its way to TV, and vice versa.

No surprise, then, that Sunday’s 9-11 p.m. time slot pits California’s “Night Stalker” against Oregon’s Mother Who Shot Her Three Children.

Creatively it’s no contest. Given the enormous profile and hair-trigger timeliness of its subject, NBC’s “Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker” (Channels 4, 36 and 39) may turn the most heads. But ABC’s two-part “Small Sacrifices” (Channels 7, 3, 10 and 42) is the one to watch--simply because it’s overwhelmingly superior both as entertainment and as an expose of the sociopathic mind. Part 2 of this stunning crime story airs at 9 p.m. Tuesday.

At the conclusion of NBC’s movie, recently convicted “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez remains a creature of the shadows, nearly as obscured from public view as he was when he carried out the serial killings that have brought him a death sentence.

On one level you appreciate a sober and relatively straightforward serial-murder biography like “Manhunt,” which seems infinitely more honest than last season’s “Hillside Strangler” movie on NBC. If TV is indeed to be the nation’s ultimate criminal archive, however, then we should demand something more of these stories than mere regurgitation of the public record. TV newscasts and newspapers did that in closely following the “Night Stalker” story as it unfolded. So beyond ratings, what’s the point of the movie?

Something more--much, much more--is exactly what “Small Sacrifices” does give us in presenting a fascinating criminal character study without altering basic facts.

Guided by Ann Rule’s mesmerizing book of the same title, director David Greene and scriptwriter Joyce Eliason have shaped “Small Sacrifices” into a heartbreaking, transfixing, harrowing psychological thriller that’s less whodunit than whydunit as it strips back the layers of a disturbingly bizarre crime.

It begins on the night of May 19, 1983, when Diane Downs (Farrah Fawcett) arrives at a Springfield, Ore., hospital with her three critically wounded children, claiming they were shot on the road by a bushy-haired stranger who had demanded her car. She too has been wounded, in the arm.

Almost from the beginning, the pieces don’t fit, and Diane Downs and the shootings (two of the children survive, but her toddler son is paralyzed and her eldest daughter is physically and emotionally maimed) fuse into a single mystery. It seems obvious that Downs herself did the shooting--that beneath her professed concern for her children and sometimes demure exterior lurks a calculating destroyer, a demon incapable of true love or compassion. As one detective observes: “She’s weird, the woman is really weird.”

Lethally weird, as Asst. Dist. Atty. Frank Joziak (John Shea) and Detective Doug Welch (Gordon Clapp) learn during the tortuous process of looking for the murder weapon and building a case against Downs as she taunts authorities and bewilders them with her erratic behavior.

“Small Sacrifices” features gleaming performances by Fawcett, Shea and Emily Perkins as the eldest daughter, Karen (not her real name).

Even when she’s soft, there’s a revealing hardness in the eyes of Fawcett’s nerve-jangling Diane, a narcissistic, manipulative, dominant personality. Fawcett superbly captures the enigma: Diane is at once drawn toward and contemptuous of men. She needs to have a baby in her belly, yet feels nothing for her children. She seems so vulnerable, yet seconds later is utterly vicious. Although she is brilliant, there are curious gaps in her intelligence, blind spots that narrow her perceptions and ultimately betray her.

Shea’s relentless, methodical Joziak (Fred Hugi is his real name) is meticulously measured, outwardly stolid, yet inwardly seething, so emotionally swept up in the case and paternalistic toward Karen that he becomes, in effect, her surrogate father.

Perkins is breathtaking--and beautifully directed by Greene in scenes where the traumatized Karen probes her mind’s inner regions to confront the horrible reality of her mother’s actions. Her testimony in court is devastating.

Occasional minor shadings of truth for dramatic effect fleetingly move “Small Sacrifices” onto far-fetched turf, and the story dramatically slows at the beginning of Part 2. But then it’s on to knockout courtroom sequences that have you on the edge of your seat.

Even from her prison cell, the real Downs has continued to blame the “bushy-haired stranger,” a view forcefully espoused in her own book on the subject. Her two surviving children were ultimately adopted by Hugi and his wife. Although he’s portrayed as heroic, Hugi has publicly denounced the TV story as being “fictional” and damaging to the children.

That came as a surprise to Rule, because the TV version is generally faithful to her book, which Hugi never criticized, the author said by phone from her Seattle home. She added that she was pleased with ABC’s treatment.

However, the question of the TV program’s potential impact on the children cannot be easily dismissed. Once victimized by their mother, are they now being victimized a second time by television in behalf of rating points?

Rule said she understands the concern. “It’s valid, but the book and the miniseries portray (Karen) as the hero. I’m sure the children have accepted what has happened and have talked about it with their friends. After all, this is not new.”

Still, the uneasiness lingers.

In contrast, little more than emptiness lingers after “Manhunt,” which views the “Night Stalker” case through the eyes of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detectives Frank Salerno (Richard Jordan) and Gil Carrillo (A Martinez). Meanwhile, there is a parallel investigation by a TV reporter (Lisa Eilbacher), a composite character who faces a moral and ethical dilemma over whether to report information that could compromise the police investigation.

Bruce Seth Green directs suspensefully, and although Joe Gunn’s script somewhat awkwardly weaves Salerno’s and Carrillo’s personal lives into the story, it seems free of the hyperbole that typifies so many crime docudramas. (Ironically, this movie parenthetically credits Salerno and Carrillo with achievements in the “Hillside Strangler” investigation that were credited to another detective in that earlier NBC movie on the infamous strangler murders.)

All right, the “Night Stalker” is pursued, caught, tried and convicted. When the story ends, however, you have learned essentially nothing, and you feel nothing except the same compassion for the victims and hatred for Ramirez (Gregory Norman Cruz) that you felt before the movie. So again, what is the point?