The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (26 page)

and mentality, Christine picked up spending money by Thus far, physicians had sympathized with Christine as baby-sitting for neighbors and relatives. On February 25, an unfortunate “victim of circumstance,” but their view 1980, one of her charges—two-year-old Cassidy John-changed on July 2, 1982, when 10-week-old Travis Cole-son—was rushed to a doctor’s office in Blountstown, ten-man died in Falling’s care. This time, an autopsy revealed tatively diagnosed as suffering from encephalitis. The girl internal ruptures caused by suffocation, and Christine died on February 28, an autopsy listing cause of death as was hauled in for questioning. In custody, she confessed blunt trauma to the skull. Christine described the baby to killing three of the children by means of “smothera-

“passing out” and falling from her crib, but she was tion,” pressing a blanket over their faces in response to unconvincing. One physician wrote a note to the police, disembodied voices chanting, “Kill the baby.”

advising them to check the baby-sitter out, but it was

“The way I done it, I seen it done on TV shows,”

“lost” in transit and the case was closed.

Christine explained. “I had my own way, though. Simple
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FICTION and Film Portrayals of Serial Murder

and easy. No one would hear them scream.” Convicted puter game. Jack has visited the American West, trav-on the basis of her own confession, she was sentenced to eled through time, and pursued “Amazon women” on a term of life imprisonment, with no parole for the first the Moon in the film of that name, while matching wits 25 years.

at least 28 times with master detective Sherlock See also SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME

Holmes. (In one bizarre outing, Holmes was the Ripper, plagued by multiple personalities as he chased himself through fog-shrouded London!)

FAZEKAS, Julia
See “ANGEL MAKERS OF NAGYREV”

No other real-life serial killer can match Red Jack’s tally of fictional works, although quick-trigger William Henry McCarty, AKA “Billy the Kid,” has drilled more
FICTION and Film Portrayals of Serial Murder
enemies on screen than he ever did in 19th-century A volume larger than the work in hand would be New Mexico. More interesting, in terms of weirdness, required simply to list the novels and short stories, TV

is the case of Wisconsin’s EDWARD THEODORE GEIN, shows and movies, plays and operas that incorporate acknowledged as the inspiration for two movie series serial murder as a major theme or plot device. Some of ( Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, nine films those works are justly famous, ranked among enduring in all), plus at least three other films and four novels.

classics; others are so poorly executed (or so frankly Unlike that of Jack the Ripper, though, Gein’s name is exploitative) that they linger with the reader/viewer for rarely mentioned in the works that echo his ghoulish entirely different reasons. Most, unfortunately, are so career, which leave the action to such fictional doppel-crudely imitative of their literary/cinematic forebears gängers as Psycho’s Norman Bates and Chainsaw’s that they fail to satisfy on any level and become simply Leatherface. (The exceptions are Ed Gein, a 2000 film forgettable.

starring Steve Railsback in the title role, and Harold We cannot say with any certainty when random

Schechter’s novel Outcry [1997], set in modern times killers first appeared in fiction, but their roots go deep.

with Gein long dead and his illegitimate son picking up The Danish “fairy tale” of Hansel and Gretel is one where the old man left off.) British poisoner Thomas prime example, its child-eating witch of the woods Neill Cream stars in three novels, including The Gen-nothing more than a sadistic dabbler in black arts and tleman from Chicago (1973), The Ripper’s Apprentice CANNIBALISM. (Her crimes were mirrored in the real-life (1986), and Jack (1988). Herman Mudgett’s gruesome case of MARTI ENRIQUETA, a Spanish “witch” executed 19th-century career is dramatized in The Scarlet Man-in 1912 for murdering at least six children, cannibaliz-sion (1985).

ing their bodies, and boiling the leftovers down for the Cinematic psychos run the full gamut from chilling love charms she sold on the side.) Likewise, the mythi-to childish, their impact based in roughly equal parts on cal Chevalier Raoul, better known as “BLUEBEARD,”

quality of writing and the actor’s skill. Low-budget whose seventh wife finds the corpses of her predecessors shockers like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer (1989) (or, some versions say, their severed heads) while snoop-may achieve “cult classic” status, but they rarely offer ing in a room to which she is forbidden access. Blue-much in terms of insight into the killer’s twisted psyche, beard may have borrowed his nickname from

and the films inspired by real-life crimes almost invari-15th-century child killer GILLES DE RAIS, but his behav-ably cite “dramatic license” to explain wholesale revi-ior (and his downfall) prefigures scores of cases wherein sion—if not outright fabrication—of events and killers for profit or passion have murdered a series of characters. (In Henry, for example, HENRY LUCAS mur-wives.

ders and decapitates crime partner OTTIS TOOLE. In While some vocal critics dwell in fear of life imitating Charles Pierce’s film The Town That Dreaded Sundown art, blaming this or that film/novel/TV program for the

[1976], police wound and nearly capture Texarkana’s latest incident of carnage in the news, it seems that

“MOONLIGHT MURDERER” in a wild chase that never authors and directors lean more often in the opposite occurred.) Monster (2003) avoided most of those pit-direction, lifting plots and characters (albeit typically in falls, and earned actress Charlize Theron an Oscar for garbled and distorted form) from prior events. It comes her portrayal of condemned killer-prostitute AILEEN

as no surprise, therefore, that many real-life murderers CAROL WUORNOS.

have found their way into fiction and film. London’s Elsewhere in fiction and film, renowned author Joyce anonymous “JACK THE RIPPER” is the hands-down

Carol Oates has penned a novel and a story inspired by favorite in that regard, appearing (by a very conserva-the crimes of JEFFREY DAHMER ( Zombie, 1995) and tive estimate) in no less than 76 novels, 25 motion pic-Tucson “Pied Piper” Charles Schmid (“Where Are You tures, eight stage plays, three short-story anthologies, Going, Where Have You Been?,” 1966). Toni Cade two poetry collections, one rock opera, and one com-Bambara’s posthumously published novel, Those Bones
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FICTION and Film Portrayals of Serial Murder

Are Not My Child (2000), examines the ATLANTA “CHILD

(1989), and Slashdance (1990), in which the directors’

MURDERS.” Russian cannibal ANDREI ROMANOVICH

sole purpose seems to be the gratuitous display of ersatz CHIKATILO is depicted in the 1995 HBO movie Citizen X, blood and entrails. The result is sometimes unintended and director Spike Lee revisits the panic inspired by comedy, as with Blue Steel (1990), wherein a New York DAVID RICHARD BERKOWITZ in Summer of Sam (1999).

stockbroker (Ron Silver) witnesses a violent robbery, British serial poisoner Graham Young gets a black-comic deciding on a whim to steal the fallen gunman’s pistol treatment on screen in The Young Poisoner’s Handbook and begin killing random strangers on the street.

(1995). William Friedkin. author of The Exorcist, Suspense is more difficult to maintain on the printed directed Rampage, a 1988 film treatment of the “Sacra-page than on screen, without the potential for visual mento Vampire,” Richard Trenton Chase. One of the shocks, but certain novelists succeed admirably in their more disturbing fact-based novels currently in print is efforts to make readers squirm, while simultaneously Hunter (1989), a zealous homage to racist serial killer exploring police forensic techniques and the dark side JOSEPH PAUL FRANKLIN written and published by neo-of the human mind. In that respect, Thomas Harris Nazi William Pierce under the name Andrew Macdon-clearly leads the field with 1981’s Red Dragon (filmed ald. From death row, Franklin proclaimed that he was as Manhunter in 1986), 1988’s The Silence of the

“honored” to have Hunter dedicated in his name.

Lambs (filmed under the same title in 1991), and 1999’s Unsolved serial cases have always been fair game for Hannibal, all of which present the exploits of deranged fictional sleuths, with “Jack the Ripper” as a primary psychiatrist Hannibal (“The Cannibal”) Lecter. Other example. Author Dan Lees pursued San Francisco’s noteworthy novels in the field include Shane Stevens’s infamous “ZODIAC” slayer in the aptly titled Zodiac By Reason of Insanity (1979), Jonathan Kellerman’s (1972). Five years later, crime writer Jim McDougall The Butcher’s Theater (1988), and Caleb Carr’s The tackled Michigan’s child-killing “Babysitter,” with Alienist (1994). Each offers an unsparing look at the Angel of the Snow. London’s “JACK THE STRIPPER”

method and madness of serial murder, while preserving came alive for Dell Shannon in Destiny of Death the humanity of its characters and transcending the for-

(1991), while Roderick Thorp unmasked TEAM KILLERS

mulaic approach described by some publishers as in River, his 1996 treatment of Washington’s Green

“slice-and-dice.”

River murders (published seven years before the capture A handful of authors and producers have carved of real-life killer GARY LEON RIDGWAY). In such works, enduring niches for themselves in the serial murder fiction may provide at least an illusory closure to cases genre, managing the “careers” of recurring fictional that have haunted detectives for decades.

characters, although the approach differs radically The roots of psycho-cinema are traceable to 1915’s between print and celluloid. On screen, the killers rule, Trilby, and while much of what followed has been returning time and time again to stalk new victims: wasted celluloid, some outstanding productions have Norman ( Psycho) Bates, Michael Myers (of Halloween also resulted. One such, loosely based on the real-life fame), Texas Chainsaw’s “Leatherface,” Jason case of PETER KURTEN, was M (1931), combining Fritz Voorhees ( Friday the 13th) and scar-faced Freddy Lang’s dark vision with a chilling performance from ( Nightmare on Elm Street) Krueger boast 27 titles Peter Lorre as the baby-faced killer. A quarter-century between them, a record sustained in equal parts by pub-later, Lang scored another hit with While the City lic appetite for sequels and the supernatural ability of Sleeps, based on the crimes of Chicago “Lipstick each protagonist to survive fatal wounds, regenerate Killer” WILLIAM HEIRENS. Robert Mitchum’s perfor-severed limbs—do whatever it takes, in fact, to guaran-mance as a switchblade-wielding preacher distin-tee one more installment of the series.

guished Charles Laughton’s directorial debut in The The only literary peer of those immortal psychopaths Night of the Hunter (1955). Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho is Daniel (“Chaingang”) Bunkowski, the 500-pound (1960) made bathtime traumatic for millions of Ameri-

“precognate” brainchild of author Rex Miller. Stripped cans with its infamous shower scene, while the great of human feelings by hideous childhood abuse, rescued director’s last take on serial murder— Frenzy (1972)—

from prison by a secret military program which offered a new look at the case of London’s “JACK THE

unleashed him on a hapless enemy in Vietnam, Chain-STRIPPER.” More recently, The Silence of the Lambs gang shambles through five novels, chalking up “one (1991) became the most-honored psycho-film in his-victim for each pound of his weight” and somehow tory, sweeping the Oscars with Academy Awards for evolving from mindless villain to a kind of super-anti-best picture, best actor (Anthony Hopkins), and best hero in the last three books. He also demonstrates a actress (Jodie Foster).

physical resilience that would make his cinematic peers At the other end of the scale lie such efforts as Driller lime-green with envy, returning for the third installment Killer (1979), Maniac (1980), Woodchipper Massacre of the saga after being sliced in half with a samurai
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FISCHER, Joseph J.

sword in part two! On the reverse side of the vigilante tizes adolescent viewers, while the frequent depiction of coin, rogue FBI agents (or ex-agents) track serial killers brutal murders from the killer’s point of view (often with no thought of taking them alive in novels such as peering through a mask, to the accompaniment of asth-A. J. Holt’s Watch Me (1995) and Thinning the Preda-matic wheezing) allegedly “teaches children to kill.”

tors (1996) by Daina Graziuna and Jim Starlin. The G-Feminists join the debate with claims that the prepon-men (or G-women) thus become serial killers

derance of young, half-naked women slaughtered in themselves, in effect, albeit embarked on a righteous such films is part and parcel of a “war on women” in crusade.

America.

A very different series of novels with a serial-killing In fact, while few would argue that there is an up protagonist concerns Tom Ripley, the affable creation side to presenting young, impressionable children with of author Patricia Highsmith. A chameleon-like slayer a daily dose of blood and gore, there is (at least to date) who assumes the identities of his victims, Ripley no evidence that viewing any certain film or reading a debuted in The Talented Mr. Ripley (1955), then specific novel “causes” anyone to kill. The critics got a returned for Ripley Under Ground (1970), Ripley’s momentary boost in 1992, when a Maryland suspect Game (1974), The Boy Who Followed Ripley (1980), detained for beheading his mother identified himself to and Ripley Under Water (1991). Cinematic treatments police as “Hannibal Lecter,” but such aberrant antics of Ripley’s lethal adventures include The American are nearly always the prelude to a lame INSANITY