‘The Real Manhunter’ Recap: ‘The Bus-Stop Killer – Levi Bellfield’

Written by John Edward Betancourt

Amélie Delagrange, one of the victims of the ‘The Bus-Stop Killer’.

Whenever a horrible crime has been committed and reaches the airwaves, the general public’s reaction is one of targeted curiosity. Specifically, everyone wants to know, what on earth motivated such a crime so that we as a society can take steps to prevent it from ever happening again and that pushes the media and anyone interested in the case to pour over the life of this newly famous criminal, to understand the genesis of their evil. But while that has led to a bevy of true crime stories and podcasts and books and documentaries about how evil is born in the world, our obsession with the end result really doesn’t change all that much and doesn’t prevent someone that is currently causing harm to be brought to justice.

Which in turn begs an important question… how exactly then do we stop evil in its tracks before its disgusting nature gets out of hand? Well, that is a question that the next episode of The Real Manhunter on AcornTV, takes the time to explore. For ‘The Bus-Stop Killer – Levi Bellfield’ reflects upon one of the worst cases that DCI Colin Sutton ever had the displeasure of investigating. Simply because Levi was stalking young woman in the suburbs of London and causing them great harm of varying levels. Because in some cases, he killed his victims outright, and in others… he hurt them badly with a blow to the head or by running them over with his car, as he did in one instance and well… once Colin and his team dug into this case and began to put the pieces together, what they found was supremely unsettling.

Because it turns out, that Levi was likely doing this for years on end, and it wasn’t until death became involved that the Metropolitan Police poured some serious resources into the matter. The kind that eventually allowed for CCTV evidence and a fleet of officers doing detailed interviews to finally figure out that Levi was their guy and needed to be behind bars and thankfully, he was eventually arrested for a battery of charges involving murder and assault. The kind that had such incredible evidence behind them that he was indeed found guilty of the charges in question and sent to jail for multiple life terms. But while that is a happy ending of sorts, his being found guilty of also killing a thirteen-year-old girl named Milly Dowler, years into his sentence… is what brings about the exploration of the question this episode poses.

For it also turns out that the Surrey division, had a chance to bring him down after that murder happened. Since he was clearly present in the area the day Milly went missing and had they dedicated the resources and time to solving her disappearance, Levi would have been caught and likely would have been behind bars, allowing for so many not suffer through his crimes. But alas, this episode made it clear that different resources go to different crimes, and the public’s attention only fixates on the worst of the worst and because of that… a perfect storm happened here. One where indifference and a lack of resources allowed for a monster to grow and thrive and well, if by chance we changed how police funding is used and if by chance… we the people viewed all violent crime in the same regard as murder… then perhaps we can stop evil before it grows.

Which might be too deep of a message to take away from this, but that really doesn’t seem like the case. Because there were so many opportunities to bring Levi to justice, and it is frustrating to see how often he talked his way out of trouble and continued along his dark path. But perhaps, that is the point of watching a documentary this honest. So that we do get upset about what we see and enact change. Either way, this really was quite the powerful story when all is said and done, one that really does demonstrate how brilliant a detective Colin truly is. Since he was able to take a mountain of data and details and streamline them into a timeline that brought a viscous killer to justice and now that this chapter has come to a close, it’s time to hit play on another case from his illustrious career, one that revolves around a classic catalyst for crime… money.

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