5 Heinous Real Life Crimes Inspired by Works of Fiction

Often, works of fiction are inspired by real life crimes. Emma Cline’s bestseller The Girls, for example, is based on the Manson family murders. However, the coin is flipped in some cases, wherein the perpetrator of a crime claims to have been inspired by a work of fiction. Here are seven crimes said to have been influenced by books. 

 

1. John Lennon’s killer Mark David Chapman was obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye. 

 

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Okay, so we all know The Catcher in the Rye does strange things to people. Mark David Chapman related so strongly to the protagonist Holden Caulfield that he signed the note he left inside the copy of the book he carried the night he shot John Lennon as Caulfield. The note read ‘This is my statement —Holden Caulfield.’

 

Lennon’s shooting is the most famous crime associated with Salinger’s novel, however it is not the only one. A copy of the book was found among the possessions of would-be Ronald Reagan assassin John Hinckley, Jr., and Rebecca Schaeffer’s murderer Robert John Bardo carried a copy when he killed her in 1989. 

 

2. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy—Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and Second Foundation — inspired a Japanese doomsday cult to carry out a gas attack on the Tokyo subway, killing twenty-seven and injuring 5,500.

 

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Asimov’s Foundation trilogy was published between 1951 and 1953, follow the fall and subsequent rise of an empire, and inspired the leaders of Aum Shinrikyo’s cult. Though the attack took place in 1995, ten of those involved may be executed within the next week, having been on death row for the past twenty-three years.

 

According to ABC News, the group was “founded in 1984, [and] attracted many young people, even graduates of top universities, whom Asahara hand-picked as close aides. The cult amassed an arsenal of chemical, biological and conventional weapons to carry out Asahara’s escalating criminal orders in anticipation of an apocalyptic showdown with the government.The cult claimed 10,000 members in Japan and 30,000 in Russia. It has disbanded, though nearly 2,000 people follow its rituals in three splinter groups, monitored by authorities.” Wired notes that “Aum was using the Foundation series as the blueprint for the cult’s long-term plans.”

 

3. The Unabomber repeatedly turned to the works of Joseph Conrad, prompting authorities to request the help of Conrad scholars in understanding his behavior. 

 

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Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent was published in installments between 1906 to 1907, and deals with a plot to blow up Greenwich Observatory. Infamous letter-bomber Ted Kaczynski AKA The Unabomber, read Conrad repeatedly, and, Britannica notes that “the parallels between The Secret Agent and Kaczynski’s own life prompted the FBI to contact Conrad scholars in an attempt to better understand his campaign of mail-bomb terror.”

 

4. Serial killer Robert Berdella was inspired by the John Fowles novel The Collector.

 

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As a teenager, future-serial-murderer Robert Berdella saw a film adaptation of The Collector, a book by Joseph Fowles in which a woman is kidnapped and kept in her assailant’s basement. Berdella tortured and killed at least six men and boys before being caught, and according to Ranker, the film inspired him to commit these crimes.

 

5. In 2003, Allan Menzies killed his friend and drank his blood, claiming her was acting on the orders of Akasha, the vampire queen of Anne Rice’s novel, and its movie adaptation, The Queen of the Damned.

 

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According to The Guardian, Menzies said he had “been ordered to kill by a character in the film Queen of the Damned, with which he was obsessed and had watched more than 100 times… Menzies said… Akasha had appeared before him, and promised him immortality. “At the end of the day, I knew I would have to murder somebody anyway, so … if you did not murder somebody you could not become a vampire,” he told the court.” Menzies took his own life while in prison the following year. 

 

Featured Image Via NPR.