What's made 'Mindhunter' so thrilling in both seasons is how it blurs reality with fiction to make for some of the most compelling TV you're going to see this year.
While last season focused in on interviews with real-life serial killers, the current season takes its cue from the Atlanta Child Murders. However, a fictional subplot with Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and his adopted son, Brian (Zachary Scott Ross) actually has a basis in reality.
The story involves Brian and two local boys placing the body of a dead child on a makeshift cross, with the idea being that the dead child would be resurrected. It's pretty disturbing stuff, to say the least, but what makes it even more chilling is that it's based in truth.
In an interview with Vulture, former FBI profiler John Douglas - who is the basis for the character of Holden Ford - discussed Season 2 and explained where the story with Tench's son came from. "It was up in San Francisco," Douglas explained.
"A woman in a park with a 20-month-old toddler. Two brothers, 10 years old and 7 years old, snatch the child. They kill the child in the basement with a brick and then they attach a cross to the child, believing that the child’s going to be resurrected. So that did happen."
As well as this, the scene with Charles Manson stealing Ford's glasses was also real. "He (Manson) wanted to show everyone that he ripped us off because everyone would know that he was talking to the FBI," Douglas explained, pointing out that Manson kept his sunglasses - Ray-Bans, by the way - and didn't give them back, unlike it went down in the show.
You can read the full interview here, along with our review of 'Mindhunter' Season 2 here.
