If you stroll through Times Square around this time of year, you’ll see Christmas lights, tourists taking selfies in front of flashing billboards and grand window displays enticing holiday shoppers. However, what’s now known as New York’s tourist mecca wasn’t always that way.

Directed by Academy Award nominee Joe Berlinger, Crime Scene returns for an even more chilling second season. This time, we go back into Times Square’s dark past and learn how it provided a conducive setting to the heinous crimes that took place there. The three-episode series revisits the late ’70s and early ’80s, when the area was home to a growing sex industry. Sex work wasn’t the only thing on the rise; crimes were rampant on every corner. While some treated the neighborhood as a playground for pleasure, a serial killer was on the loose hunting their next victim. 

The series explores how these factors allowed crimes to go unnoticed, but more importantly, how they made the search for a serial killer nearly impossible. When it comes to true crime, Berlinger is an expert at compelling — and frightening — viewers. If we know anything from his previous titles like Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes and Crime Scene: The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel, it’s that this new season will have us sleeping with the lights on. Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer streams Dec. 29. 

‘Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer’ Trailer Unravels the Tourist Fantasy