10 Real Life Crime Scenes and the Movies They Inspired

Not all scary movies are fake. Many popular horror films are based on crimes that actually happened, taking real world evil and making viewers come face-to-face with it. The plots in horror movies are often true stories showing you what your fellow man is truly capable of: violence, malice, serial killing and hatred.

This list contains horror movies that were based on real-life atrocities. These true stories shook the very core of the towns they took place in, and some remain unsolved to this very day. Warning: some of the images are very graphic. This list contains actual crime scene photos that are highly disturbing and not for the faint of heart.

Ed Gein was a murderer and a grave robber, but he is most famous for being the inspiration behind Leatherface, the killer in Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. After Gein's mother died in 1945, he began stealing female corpses from a local cemetery and stripping them of their skin and hair. In 1957, he killed Bernice Worden. When police came to his home, they found female bone fragments, a corset made from female skin, a mask made from female skin, and dresses made for young girls, among many other things. 

He was found guilty of first degree murder and died in jail in 1984. 

The book turned horror film The Girl Next Door was based on a disturbingly true story of the torture and murder of a 16-year-old girl in Indianapolis, IN.

On October 22, 1965, teenager Sylvia Likens died in a dank basement after months of abuse. The official cause of death was brain swelling, brain hemorrhaging, and shock from the prolonged damage done to her body.

Likens and her sister Jenny were left in the care of Gertrude Baniszewski by their family. Baniszewski, along with her children and some neighborhood boys, took to abusing the Likens girls. They tied Likens up, scalded her with boiling water, put out cigarettes on her, and on at least two occasions, she was sexually brutalized with objects like soda bottles.

Baniszewski told Likens's family she ran away. Likens tried to escape but she never made it out of that basement alive. Police officers came to investigate the alleged runaway and met with Jenny. Once in the safety of police custody, she told them everything. Jenny then testified against her sister’s killers.

Baniszewski was sentenced to life in prison, and was released on parole in 1985. She died of lung cancer in 1990. Her children and the neighborhood boys implicated in the crime served anywhere from two to 20 years. 

The 2007 horror film Borderland, written and directed by Zev Berman, is loosely based on the gruesome story of cult leader Adolfo de Jesús Constanzo. 

A practitioner of dark magic, Constanzo became a mythical adviser to drug dealers. He would offer his services and perform rituals for his clients, including human sacrifice. His followers helped him find victims and dismember them.  In 1989, after Constanzo and his cult kidnapped Mark Kilroy - an American citizen and University of Texas student - for one of their rituals, the US government intervened. They asked the Mexican government to solve these ongoing crimes. 

Police raided Constanzo's ranch and the remains of 15 people were discovered on the property, including the brain of the missing American student. Before his arrest, Constanzo ordered one of his followers to kill him so he wouldn't have to go to jail. 

Tobe Hooper’s 1977 horror film Eaten Alive is based on the horrific crimes of Joe Ball. Ball was a bootlegger, a gambler, and a bar owner in Bexar County, TX, back in the 1930s. He had an alligator pond in the back of his bar and would make a spectacle out of feeding them live puppies and cats for his drunk bar patrons.  

Ball also had a habit of getting romantically involved with his waitresses and barmaids - many of whom wound up missing. Ex-girlfriends, wives, and female employees seemed to vanish around Ball. As it turned out, he was dismembering them and then feeding their remains to his alligators after hours.

In 1938, two Bexar County Sheriff's deputies questioned Ball and he immediately pulled out a gun from his register and shot himself. After Ball’s death a handyman named Clifford Wheeler confessed to helping Ball hide two bodies and led police to Hazel Brown and Minnie Gotthard. Wheeler also informed police that all the other remains were ingested by the gators, and believed his former employer killed somewhere around 20 women.

The real-life psychopath Henry Lee Lucas, portrayed by Michael Rooker in Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, was charged with 11 confirmed murders, but it is possible Lucas raped, strangled, and stabbed many more.

Lucas was one of the rare serial killers who found a companion, he befriended and had a sexual relationship with another serial killer named Ottis Toole. According to Tool, he and Lucas committed 108 murders together.  Both men died in prison.

On November 13, 1974, Ronald “Butch” Defeo Jr., stalked the halls of his own home at 112 Ocean Drive. Armed with a .35 Marlin rifle, he shot both of his parents, his two brothers, and two sisters. While there has been some speculation that DeFeo didn't act alone, he did confess to the killings, telling police he heard voices inside his head that prompted him to kill his family. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to prison.

After the murders, George and Kathy Lutz moved into the home and reported strange paranormal behavior inside the house. This was the basis for Jay Anson's book The Amityville Horror. Soon, the tales of the DeFeo and Lutz families and the home in. Amityville became a pop culture phenomenon. There have been countless documentaries, TV shows, books, and movies written about both families and the truth surrounding the mysterious house. 

The unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short has haunted investigators - and fascinated authors and filmmakers. Short's severely mutilated body was discovered in the Leimert Park neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1947. The inspiring actress had been severed at the waist, completely drained of blood, her face had been sliced from ear to ear, and her body had been washed. She was given the nickname The Black Dahlia and the film of the same name is based on her gruesome murder and the frustrating case that followed.

Most of the books and movies following Short's death focused on who was responsible for killing her. Author Steve Hodel believed his father, Dr. George Hill Hodel was responsible for the murder. But he was cleared of any wrongdoing in the case, and died in 1999.

In 1981, between the evening of April 11 and into the morning of April 12, a brutal murder occurred in Cabin 28 at the Keddie Resort in California. Sue Sharp, a 36-year-old mother of five, her 15-year-old son John, and his 17-year-old friend Dana Wingate were found bludgeoned to death.

Sharp's 14-year-old daughter Sheila discovered the bodies, finding her mother and brother bound with electrical wire and medical tape. They had been stabbed multiple, and had been brutally beaten with multiple hammers. Wingate was also bound and beaten, but was strangled to death by hand. Sharp's two youngest sons and their friend were found unharmed, still asleep in the next room of the cabin. Her daughter Tina, 12, was missing. Years later her remains were found 50 miles away on the anniversary of the murders. 

The murders remain unsolved, and many any accused the police of covering up the crime. The new sheriff, Greg Hagwood reopened the case in 2013 and is still pouring over evidence. The murders inspired the 2008 film The Strangers starring Liv Tyler written and directed by Bryan Bertino. 

Texarkana, a small town located between Texas and Arkansas, was made famous in the 1976 film The Town That Dreaded Sundown. The gruesome film was based on the true story of the Texarkana Moonlight Murders, which are far more disturbing than the fiction, especially since these murders remain unsolved. 

In 1946, a masked man terrorized Texarkana. He attacked young couples who were out at night in isolated area, like local make out spots. The couples were confronted by an armed man wearing a crude white sack over his head with eye-holes cut out. The maniac dubbed the “Phantom Killer” murdered five people in 10 weeks. Only three people survived the attacks. Police departments on both sides of the state line desperately tried to figure out who was behind these crimes.

The murders remain a mystery. 

The 2005 Australian horror film Wolf Creek is loosely based off the Backpack Murder that occurred in Australia throughout the early 1990s. Serial killer Ivan Milat murdered seven people, ranging in age from 19 to 22. He targeted backpackers in New South Wales because they were unfamiliar with the area. He stabbed, shot, strangled, raped, beat, and even decapitated his victims, often using their severed heads for target practice. He disposed of their bodies in Belangalo State Forest at a site known as Executioner’s Drop.

It wasn’t until 1992 when a couple of runners discovered a decomposing corpse in the woods until anyone noticed anything amiss. Police discovered several more bodies over the next few weeks. After hearing about murders on television, a man named Paul Onions recalled an encounter he had while hitchhiking. The driver of a car pulled a gun on him, and when Onions took off, he started shooting. 

Onions was able to give police a description matching Milat, who already had a record for sexual assault. Police found the packs and personal items of the victims at Milat's house, and Milat was convicted of seven murders. He died in prison in 1998. Police suspect he had more victims that were never identified.