The General Homicide killer storyline was an excellent story and how it was revealed that Julie, brainwashed by Cooper, was the person doing it at his direction. What was bad was that the writers came back and rewrote it and made it bad in the process. They should have left it with Julie being the serial killer.
My favorite day in this storyline was when the killer attempted to kill Matt by electrocuting him in the shower, and Matt fell out of his shower. Mitch Longley (Matt) said that the PC producers wanted to get a stuntman for him to fall out, because Mitch is a paraplegic. But Mitch would Not hear of it. He wanted to do the stunt himself, and that he did, lol.
I think that was done to "redeem" Julie somewhat so she could try to reclaim her daughter and succeed (at least for a while). I think the actor who played Greg Cooper was great and Lisa Ann Hadley did a great job with all that she was given.
I do remember that many fans and even the soap mags disliked the rewrite as well.
The General Homicide storyline was ABC's second attempt to repeat the Loving murders storyline from 1995. They did it again in 1996 with The City's "Happy Now?" storyline, which didn't quite work because the show was still new and the characters killed were minor characters and the main characters were only attempted to be killed.