This fourth episode of True Detective wants you to know two things: Everyone’s a suspect, and Mamie Gummer’s Lucy Purcell has the soul of a whore. While I’m not sure what the latter actually means—it sounds like some more True Detective poetic bullshit like “time is a flat circle” back in Season One.
Anyway, this investigation takes some baby steps forward with a number of shady characters. Roland West doesn’t trust the priest. And I certainly don’t trust the little old lady who makes the spooky dolls that were left surrounding Will Purcell’s body. I’m calling it right here: That little old lady did it.
For what it’s worth, she directs Hays and West to a black man with one eye who bought all of those dolls from her at the church fair. Hays and West track down a man who fits this description. But after a racially charged showdown in his neighborhood, this man claims he has no idea what they’re talking about. He claims to have an alibi from that night and says he never bought a bunch of dolls at a church fair. Though he claims there are other people who look like him in the community.
“I ain't the only one-eyed nigga in these parts. Farm work. The killing line at the chicken plant. Half the mother fuckers out here are missing fingers, toes or somethin’.”
It’s one tiny word, but it means everything in this story. Last episode, West and Hays briefly visited Hoyte Foods Plant where local Soul of a Whore Lucy Purcell used to work. They didn’t find much other than some uncooperative dickish suit. But last week I wrote about a very compelling fan theory that hints at a big cover-up surrounding Hoyt Foods.
The owner of the business had mysteriously been on safari for a month and could not be reached. But this fan theory suggests that this powerful local businessman is secretly funding some sort of underground pedophile ring. And because either the police botched the investigation or covered it up, he got away with it.
In that same episode, West and Hays also visited a man whose property was near where they found toys that seemingly belonged to the Purcell kids. During that conversation, he said he saw a black man and a white woman driving a brown car near the property. When the episode jumps forward to 2015, documentary film producer Elisa Montgomery is grilling 70-year-old Hays about looking into this man and the brown car in their initial investigation.
Now back to the one-eyed man. He briefly mentions “the killing line at the chicken plant.” It’s not clear what he’s referring to here—if it’s how he lost his eye or if that’s how a number of people in this community were maimed.
Either way, it’s a subtle connection back to the Hoyt Foods Plant, which might be behind this whole murder mystery. Is a Hoyt Foods employee behind these murders? Did the powerful businessmen at the company instruct one of their employees to go buy these dolls to be placed by the body to throw off investigators?
Matt Miller is a Brooklyn-based culture/lifestyle writer and music critic whose work has appeared in Esquire, Forbes, The Denver Post, and documentaries.
