Snuff film

Snuff film link (Crime, Murder, Satanism?)
Type	Film
Films in which people get murdered

In a snuff film (or snuff movie) somebody gets murdered for the "entertainment" of the viewer, who supposedly has paid for it to be made.

Official narrative

The ON has it that there is the persistent belief in the existence of an underground where such films are produced, but that this is in contrast to real world law enforcement agencies who have failed to produce a single example of a non-faked snuff movie - even though characters like Peter Scully come very close with what they wanted to offer on the DarkWeb. English Wikipedia (as of January 2023) cites an old Snopes article to "prove" that "there has never been a verified example of a genuine commercially produced snuff film".

Concerns

Since murder can be ordered, in the sense that a person gives money to another person to kill a third person, how much of a stretch of the imagination is it that somebody would film the act to sell to another party that is interested in such material? Serial killers like Leonard Lake filmed their crimes, but reportedly with no commercial interest (he killed himself with cyanide pills after arrest).

Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, who was the Independent Commission for Dealing with Sexual Abuse of Children for the German government from 2011 to 2021, in a 2016 interview with the German newspaper Die Welt (Die Welt, or just Welt), said that: "Children are even killed in front of the camera. These are unimaginable cruelties that people inflict on children". Reports of the production of this type of material is going back decades. The production of suspected "snuff films" might come from child rape rings and satanic sects primarily.

Dnepropetrovsk maniacs

In the trial of the Dnepropetrovsk maniacs (Viktor Sayenko and Igor Suprunyuk) one witness said they were in contact with an unknown "rich foreign website operator" who ordered forty snuff videos and would pay much money once they were made.

Ralph Rieckermann TMZ interview

In 2012 Ralph Rieckermann, formerly bassist for the Scorpions, was approached by a TMZ reporter for an ad-hoc interview. In the video cut by TMZ he seems to say that he attended a fetish party where somebody is getting murdered and people pay up to 100.000k to attend. Rieckermann in a video uploaded to his own Youtube channel clarified later (when that interview got some attention) that he did not say he attended such a party (TMZ apparently having cut a 25 minute interview into some 30 seconds), but that he was at a fetish/S&M party that he wanted to leave, then was shown another area/room/basement where things were in such a way that that he became disgusted, then being told by the host about snuff parties and the attendance fee.

Midnight Productions

Midnight Productions is a suspected criminal group and offshoot of the Hells Angels in Phoenix, that used this name as a label for their own porn films at it's beginning in the 1980s. There is speculation about it's existence online, but little of substance. Homeless people who are interviewed on the street do mention Midnight Productions in connection with missing members of their group.

In popular culture

The 1999 film 8 mm depicts the search for such movie, but wants to deliver the message that no such thing exists, but the story ends with one example having been produced.