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Claim A says An Exorcist extra was later convicted of murder. Claim B says The director fired an extra after police arrested him on set. Claim A is true, and Claim B is completely made up.
The extra in question was Paul Bateson, who briefly appears as a radiological technician's assistant during the hospital scene where Regan undergoes testing. At the time of filming in 1973, Bateson was just a working actor with a small, forgettable role in a horror classic.
Years later, Bateson's story took a dark turn. In 1979, he was convicted of murdering a journalist, and investigators began looking at him for something much bigger.
Authorities came to suspect Bateson was connected to a string of unsolved killings in Manhattan's gay community during the 1970s, a case that later inspired the film Cruising. He was never formally charged in those additional deaths, but detectives considered him a prime suspect for years.
So somewhere in the background of one of horror cinema's most iconic films, a man walked the set who would go on to become one of New York's most chilling true-crime footnotes — hiding in plain sight, badge and all.
The made-up claim gets it backwards: nobody was arrested on set, and the production wrapped without incident. Bateson's crimes didn't surface until years after the film was released, long after the cameras stopped rolling.
Would you have guessed a horror movie extra had a real-life crime story scarier than the film itself?
