Naman Shrestha
What is otherwise the most wonderful time of the year, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, were turned into horrible days filled with worry for the loved ones of Kevin Bacon as he had vanished into thin air. In the coming days, their worst fears and nightmares were turned into reality when the police found his body. The episode titled ‘I Know That There is True Evil Out There’ of Hulu’s ‘How I Caught My Killer’ brings the horrific case of Kevin Bacon’s murder into the spotlight. It also covers how the authorities apprehended the killer, Mark Latunski, and what came out of his trial.
Mark Latunski’s Basement Held a Gruesome Secret
Mark David Latunski, under the name of Olykos, met Kevin Bacon, a gay hairdresser, on an online dating website in December 2019. On Christmas Eve, the two decided to meet up, and that was the day Kevin was last seen alive. The next morning, when he did not join the rest of his family for breakfast, his loved ones started getting worried about him. Since he had already attempted suicide the previous year, they were all the more concerned about his well-being and whereabouts. Taking matters into their own hands, his parents began looking for him and found his car several miles away from his residence, in the parking lot of a strip mall.
When the police were called for help and an investigation was launched, they interviewed his roommate, who claimed that he had gone to meet someone from Grindr on Christmas Eve and never returned. Through the missing man’s phone, they were able to pull out the chats between them and knocked on the door of Mark Latunski’s Bennington Township home. On December 28, 2019, the investigators questioned him in his residence and asked if they could look around the property to see if everything was in place. During their search, the detectives went to the basement and found a secret doorway behind which they discovered the body of Kevin hanging upside down from the ceiling.
Mark Latunski Allegedly Held At Least Two More Men Hostage in His Basement
Right after the gruesome discovery was made, Mark admitted to stabbing Kevin in the back and slitting his throat before hanging him up with a rope from the rafters and eating a portion of his genitalia. It was alleged that he had plans to make use of the victim’s blood and bones to fertilize his plants and his muscles to make jerky. Mark also claimed that it wasn’t murder as after indulging in sex, Kevin had asked him to kill him. After his confession, the police took him into custody and charged him with homicide and mutilation of a dead body. Not long after the murder of Kevin and the arrest of Mark, one of the latter’s neighbors, Michael Parks, came forward and claimed that he saw a man covered in blood in November on his front door, asking for help.
Parks told Fox10, “He’s got purple hair, he’s wearing a leather skirt and he’s got a couple of belts across his chest. This gentleman is grasping my arm with deathly fear (screaming) ‘help me, keep him away’ just screaming at the top of his lungs ‘he wants to hurt me, he wants to hurt me’. Another vehicle pulls in my driveway and out comes, who I now find out is Mark, wearing a leather skirt, belts across his chest, no shoes, no shirt on, his beard is braided. (A) very odd-looking gentleman.”
Although the police arrived in time and took the bleeding man with them, nobody was charged for causing harm to him. Park believed that it was another victim of Mark Latunski. It turned out that Kevin Bacon was not the first target of Mark’s twisted mind. In 2020, James Carlsen filed a lawsuit against Mark, claiming that he had chained him up in his basement in October 2019. He somehow managed to escape and called 911. No charges were filed that time either.
Mark Latunski is Currently Incarcerated at a Michigan Prison Facility
In 2022, Mark Latunski was ordered to trial, but just three weeks before the commencement of his trial, he pleaded guilty to the charges against him on September 22 of the same year. About a month later, in October 2022, he stood in court for his hearing. By the end, Mark was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder. A couple of months later, on December 15, 2022, he returned to court for his sentencing. However, before the judge announced his sentence, Kevin’s mother, Hannah, wrote in the victim impact statements, “In your sick, twisted mind, you probably don’t think you did anything wrong. This Christmas, I hope you suffer like we have.”
Mark Latunski went on to receive a life imprisonment sentence without the possibility of parole for the murder of 25-year-old Kevin Bacon. While the defendant declined to speak on it, his attorney admitted that the outcome of the sentencing was inevitable. Currently, he is being held at Gus Harrison Correctional Facility at 2727 East Beecher Street in Adrian, Michigan, where he serves his life sentence.
Read More: Mark Gooch: Where is the Killer Now?
