Posted by Five real crimes that inspired horror and thriller films: the cannibal Albert Fish, the young Argentine killer Cayetano Santos Godino, the murder of Sylvia Likens, the “lonely hearts killers” Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, and the geisha Abe Sada.
5 true stories that were made into horror movies
Often reality is stranger than fiction and things happen that are worthy of a horror movie. Here are 5 true stories that inspired horror movies.
1. Albert Fish
Albert Fish (in Italian) was an American serial killer, pedophile and cannibal, born in 1870. Suspected of many child murders, he was convicted of that of little Grace Budd, to whose family he had even sent a letter describing the crime. He was executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in 1936.
He was also a deep masochist. His story was made into the 2007 documentary “Albert Fish: In Sin He Found Salvation”, which tells his life and shows reconstructions of his heinous crimes.
2. Cayetano Santos Godino
Cayetano Santos Godino, nicknamed el petiso orejudo (“the big-eared shorty”), was an Argentine serial killer born in 1896 in Buenos Aires to Italian immigrant parents. What makes him unusual is that he committed his first murder as a child, and his first attempted murder dates back to when he was only seven. He was arrested in 1912, at sixteen, and died in 1944 in the Ushuaia prison, in Tierra del Fuego. The 2007 film “El niño de barro” (The Mud Boy) is inspired by his story.
3. Sylvia Likens
Sylvia Likens was the daughter of two carnival workers. Since they were always on the road, in 1965 they left her and her sister in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski, the mother of a friend, in Indianapolis. Unfortunately the woman turned out to be cruel and tortured Sylvia for months with the help of her children and some neighborhood kids, until she died. Sylvia was only 16. Two films were made from her sad story, both in 2007: “An American Crime” and “The Girl Next Door”.
4. The lonely hearts killers
The lonely hearts killers, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, were two lovers who in the 1940s lured lonely women through lonely hearts ads, then robbed and killed them. It is a story of love, passion, jealousy, violence and death, which ended with their execution at Sing Sing in 1951. It inspired the film “The Honeymoon Killers” (1970), as well as “Deep Crimson” (1996) and “Lonely Hearts” (2006).
5. Abe Sada
Abe Sada was a Japanese woman who had worked as a geisha and a prostitute. In 1936, while working as a maid in a Tokyo restaurant, she met its owner, Kichizo Ishida, a married man, who became her lover. Jealous and obsessed with him, she strangled him and cut off his genitals, which she carried with her until her capture. She served five years in prison. The story has inspired several films, the most famous being “In the Realm of the Senses” (1976), by Nagisa Ōshima.
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