Philippe Mora's Death of a Soldier stars James Coburn, Bill Hunter, Maurie Fields with Reb Brown as Eddie Leonski. I watched it this afternoon because I was doing this Parkville research and of course Leonski was at Camp Pell in Royal Park (according to the film he also committed one of his murders in Royal Park, I don't know if this so). It's on YouTube if you want to spend the time but I wouldn't advise it.
I put this film in the same bag as Gross Misconduct, a very shitty reading of the Orr case directed by George T. Miller. I hope you saw the 'T'. They're both based on true stories and in both cases the film attempts to create sympathy for the central criminal. Since Gross Misconduct is a fictionalised version of the story to the degree that everyone's names are changed etc, perhaps I shouldn't be making the comparison.
Anyway, Death of a Soldier tries to make the case that Leonski had a specific condition that meant he was not responsible for his actions, and that his execution by the US army was politically motivated. Whatever, that may be true, but in making a big deal out of this possibility - particularly via the title - the film really wants us to forget that three women died as well as Leonski. Curiously, the film also makes no attempt to turn Leonski into any kind of an appealing character - I mean, sure, hollering and screaming and grabbing women in the street is not per se a hanging offence, but he's basically a jerk. We get precisely no back story on the man at all except at the end where there's some kind of eugenicist explanation for why he likes to kill.
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