13 Serial Killers Who Should Be Movies
Nannie Doss
Bumped Off: 11 assorted husbands and relatives between 1927 and 1954. Convicted of eight.
Why A Movie? There's something particularly chilling about her nickname - The Giggling Granny - bestowed due to the barely-disguised mirth with which she recounted her evil deeds to police after being caught.
"He sure did love those stewed plums," was one of her more notorious chuckles, while gleefully recounting one hapless husband's agonising death from arsenic poisoning. Er, LOL!
Starring: Kathy Bates, in more or less a straight reprisal of her screamsome Misery lead.
Ahmad Suradji
Bumped Off: 42 women in Indonesia, over 11 years until his 1997 arrest.
Why A Movie? The details are spectacularly bizarre: a local dukun (sorcerer), Suradji was regularly visited by women keen to benefit financially or romantically from his 'powers'.
He ritualistically buried them waist-deep in the ground, strangled them, then buried them fully - with every one of his victims heads facing his house, which he felt certain would increase his magic abilities.
Starring: Danny Trejo. Completely wrong ethnicity, but he looks sort of magical and sort of bonkers.
Robert Hansen
Bumped Off: 17 to 21 Alaskan sex workers in the 1980s. 'Only' convicted of four, in return for info on further grave sites.
Why A Movie? In a vile twist ideal for tacky exploitation horror, Hansen would fly captives in his Piper Super Cub out from suburban Anchorage to a mountain cabin, then release and 'hunt' them through the surrounding woods.
Our runty ghoul was also heavily acne-scarred and spoke with a severe stutter: lashings of hammy overacting ahoy.
Starring: Mark Hamill, especially if he'll bring his Joker laugh (opens in new tab). And yes, we know that's entirely too much. Sorry.
Luis Garavito
Bumped Off: A current (ongoing) count confirms 138 Colombian street boys, for an almost meaningless total of 1,853 years' slammer time. Well, in theory...
Why A Movie? A baffling quirk of Colombian law meant that, at the time of Garavito's 1999 capture, the longest sentence available for any crime was 30 years.
Worse, this was squished to 22 years for helping locate bodies; with good behaviour, he could be out this decade. We imagine this one as a morally and politically charged courtroom yell-fest.
Starring: Are we the only ones trying to avoid yelling "I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE"...?
Gerald Stano
Bumped Off: Hmm, tricky one. Officially 41 women; that's what he got the chair for in Florida, 1998.
Why A Movie? During his 18-year death row stay, controversy over Stano's cases raged. Specifically, many psychological profilers suspected he was no serial killer, merely a serial confessor.
In particular, one case sergeant - later struck off - was repeatedly observed plying Stano with details of unsolved crimes, which the alleged perp would then spit back verbatim in later 'admissions'.
Starring: Paul Giamatti, in a hairier and considerably more upsetting version of his frazzled American Splendor turn.
Gilles De Rais
Bumped Off: 200? 800? 6000? Impossible to say; this French knight's child-slaying rampage lasted from 1435 to 1440, when he was hanged AND burned. Just in case, like.
Why A Movie? Mostly for the historical context - before 'torturing sex maniac', he was more nobly known as a companion-in-arms of Jeanne d'Arc.
More interestingly, occult types such as Aleister Crowley (opens in new tab)have claimed De Rais was heavily into demonology, murdering kids as sacrificial offerings to an entity known (chiefly by the gibbering, we assume) as Barron.
Starring: Check that bowl cut - Gérard Depardieu, obviously.
Bla Kiss
Bumped Off: At least 24 women circa 1900, luring them to his little town near Budapest. We don't know exactly - he was never caught.
Why A Movie? Quality moustache, plus his story gets more interesting after the 24 bodies were found at his home (several pickled in metal drums) during his WWI service .
Police traced Kiss to a Serbian hospital, only to find a dead soldier's body left in Kiss's bed - the latter had fled the ward undetected. Credible sightings were reported for decades, as far away as Turkey and even New York, but never confirmed.
Starring: Slight age discrepancy aside, John Malkovich all the way.
Lee Boyd Malvo
Bumped Off: Officially, six of the Beltway sniper victims across Maryland, Virginia and Washington DC in Oct 2002.
Why A Movie? Clarity. As naive minor to John Allen Mohammad's manipulative elder, Malvo's exact role has been tough to establish definitively.
He initially claimed all 13 shootings to spare Mohammed the death penalty; when this failed, his story changed. He seems to have been convinced by the elder's crazed plan to create racially exclusive micro-states using ransom money from the spree.
Starring: Elijah Kelley. Yes, straight from Hairspray 2: White Lipstick .
Dnepropetrovsk Maniacs
Bumped Off: 21 random Ukranians over a month in summer 2007.
Why A Movie? The arbitrariness of the sickening crimes perpetrated by these teenagers with hammers makes them feel unutterably alien. They're almost absurd in their depravity: a human zoo, in the bleakest possible sense.
The fact that conviction followed a leaked, self-shot video of their vile actions also raises the potential role of the web as a legal tool - an unusually contemporary issue to offset the timeless ethical ones.
Starring: Unknowns would be far more effective than famous faces.
Belle Gunness
Bumped Off: 40+, mainly suitors lured by lonely hearts ads to her Indiana death farm (a literal pigsty) over a couple of decades or so in the early 1900s.
Why A Movie? A rather brutish woman who killed for pure financial gain, she was never caught, making her murderous exploits doubly screenworthy.
Sacrificing her own children in an arson attack to aid her flight, Gunness also placed the body of an unknown victim in place of hers, framing the home help for her 'death' as she slipped the net.
Starring: She's far from brutish, but we reckon Glenn Close could nail the ruthlessness bit.
Jack Unterweger
Bumped Off: An alleged 15 prostitutes in various countries; convicted of nine in 1994. Life, no parole.
Why A Movie? It wasn't his first murder rap: he'd already been given 'life' for strangling a young woman with her own bra in 1974.
Weirdly, Unterweger embarked on a flourishing literary career behind bars, becoming quite the poster boy for reform and enjoying vocal support from the highbrow arts world. Upon early release, he presented TV shows while, um, continuing to slay women.
Starring: Malcolm McDowell; we're assuming Anthony Hopkins might be 'busy'.
Richard Kuklinski
Bumped Off: 200+, he says, in a long and unspeakably grizzly life as a mob hitman. Convicted on five counts.
Why A Movie? Allegedly, Mickey Rourke's already on it. You can see why: one fascinating thing about Kuklinski was that neither his wife nor children claimed to have had the slightest inkling at any point during his 37-year career.
Nicknamed 'Iceman', he killed people by slamming them in chest freezers. Oh, and his brother was convicted rapist and murderer Joseph Kuklinski. Nice lads...
Starring: Zach Galifianakis could clearly rock the requisite 'portly 1972 vibe' for the early years.
H. H. Holmes
Bumped Off: Between 27 (for which he was convicted) and 230 across the US and Canada, over six years as the 19th century waned.
Why A Movie? The man built and lived in a 'murder castle' - a freakin' MURDER CASTLE, mind - in the heart of suburban Chicago, half of which he pimped as a hotel. Guests seldom checked out.
The top floor comprised an insane maze of 100+ windowless rooms tricked out with gas vents, acid baths and soundproofed furnaces: the man was practically a cartoon. A very, very scary one.
Starring: Are we the only ones trying to avoid yelling "I DRINK IT UP"...?
See comments