In the debut season of SBS thriller Cardinal, detectives Cardinal (Billy Campbell) and Delorme (Karine Vanasse) are in a race against time to catch a serial killer. The show is based on the novels by Giles Blunt, who uses cases ripped straight from the headlines for inspiration. It’s an intoxicating genre if done right, especially if the rich vein of real-life serial killers is tapped effectively, as it was for these TV shows and movies.
John Wayne Gacy: IT (1990/2017)
John Wayne Gacy's clown suit and self portrait displayed at the National Museum of Crime & Punishment, Washington DC, and Pennywise in 2017's 'IT'. Source: Wikimedia Commons/Warner Bros
Chillingly, Gacy performed at children’s parties as Pogo the Clown, and between 1972-78 murdered 33 teenage boys and young men at his Chicago home, most of whom he sexually assaulted as he tortured them to death. Most were found buried under Gacy’s house. He was convicted in 1980 and executed in 1994.
Ivan Milat: Wolf Creek franchise
Backpacker serial murderer Ivan Milat is one of the inspirations for the chilling Mick Taylor (John Jarratt) in 'Wolf Creek'. Source: Wikimedia Commons/Roadshow Films
Ed Gein: Psycho (1960) / The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) / The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Deranged killer Ed Gein (far left) inspired Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine), Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) and elements of 'The Texas Chainsaw Massacre'. Source: Wikimedia Commons/Orion Pictures/Paramount Pictures/Bryanston Pictures
In November 1957, police discovered a sickening scene inside Gein’s farmhouse in Plainfield, Waushara County, Wisconsin that would make the mild-mannered handyman famous. From above, hung the butchered corpse of local woman Bernice Worden. Below, were recently used soup bowls made from human skulls, chairs made of human bones, and wastebaskets and lampshades made from human skin. There was a box of noses and another of preserved female genitalia. Also, a belt made of nipples, and leggings, aprons and a vest made of human skin. On the wall were the faces of nine women. Any of this sound familiar?
All of this depravity perhaps reflected the warnings of his religious mother, Augusta, about “the lasciviousness of women”. Gein committed at least two murders, with the rest of the body parts gleaned from graveyards, or so he claimed. He was declared insane and committed to the Central State Hospital in Wisconsin, dying there in 1984.
Author Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel, Psycho, the basis for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 film, was heavily influenced by Gein and his obsession with his dead mother. Thomas Harris also used Gein to inform his supremely creepy cannibal character Jame Gumb aka Buffalo Bill when writing The Silence of the Lambs. And Leatherface’s skin mask in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Yep, that's Gein’s influence, too. Just imagine the royalties.
The Axeman of New Orleans: American Horror Story: Coven
1919 song "The Mysterious Axeman's Jazz" popularised the crimes of The Axeman of New Orleans, played by Danny Huston in 'American Horror Story: Coven'. Source: Wikimedia Commons/FX
The Axeman, or The Cleaver as he was also known, made his first attack in the Big Easy in 1910, with his first fatality in 1911. Mysteriously, he disappeared for six years before resuming his brutal reign of terror between 1918-19, targeting Italian grocers. It’s believed he attacked around 12 people.
Bizarrely, the jazz scene that energised the city could, as lore would have it, also be its savior. In the Times-Picayune appeared a letter purportedly from the Axeman. The writer described himself as "a fell demon from hottest hell” who was also a jazz lover. He vowed to prowl the city the following Tuesday for his next victim and declared any New Orleanian listening to a jazz band would escape the axe. It almost sounds like some kind of ingenious ghost tour cross promotion, no?
Interestingly, no one was attacked that night, and the killer’s identity has never been discovered.
The Hwaseong Serial Murders: Memories of Murder
Song Kang-ho (left) and Kim Sang-kyung play policeman on the trail of a sadistic serial killer in 'Memories of Murder'. Source: CJ Entertainment
The police procedural set in 1986 was inspired by the work of a killer still unknown to this day who raped and murdered 10 women aged 14 to 71 in Hwaseong, Gyeonggi Province, South Korea between 1986-91. The women were found bound and gagged, with most strangled by their own clothes. The cold case has been compared to that of the Zodiac Killer.
Watch Cardinal on Wednesday at 10:30pm on SBS. If you want to catch up on it from the first episode, the full first season is streaming now at SBS On Demand:
