Scream was a spine-chilling parable on the dangers of horror movie desensitization.
But beneath all the cinematic commentary, there actually was a real-life murder spree
that inspired the slasher flick.
Screenwriter Kevin Williamson was first moved to write the film after seeing news coverage
of a figure known as the Gainesville Ripper.
He was so spooked by the story that he armed himself with a butcher knife and called a
friend, who started laying it on thick about horror genre tropes.
Sound familiar?
"You know the one with the guy in the white mask who walks around and stalks babysitters?"
After enduring terrible nightmares that night, he woke up and started writing the screenplay
for Scream.
So, what was it about the murders that had such an impact on Williamson?
Here are the horrifying details about the true story that inspired Scream.
The body count
It all started on August 24, 1990, when 18-year-old Sonja Larson and 17-year-old Christina Powell
were attacked in their own apartment.
Larson passed first after being bound and attacked, and Powell was assaulted before suffering
the same treatment.
The entire thing seemed straight out of a horror movie, as their attacker messed with
and posed the bodies.
The horrors continued the very next night, with the murder of Christa Hoyt.
She, too, was attacked, bound, and attacked in the back.
Her body was also hacked and repositioned.
Law enforcement eventually found her head on a bookshelf.
Three days later, a maintenance man was asked to check on a pair of roommates named Manny
Taboada and Tracy Paules.
He walked into their apartment and saw that Taboada was gone, and Paules — like previous
victims — had been bound, , and stabbed.
The maintenance worker had seen her body when he opened the door, and later said she was
laying next to a black bag.
By the time police got there, the bag was gone.
The media dubbed the figure The Gainesville Ripper.
The first suspect
It wasn't long before authorities made their first arrest.
University of Florida student Edward Lee Humphrey was taken into custody on August 30 on completely
unrelated charges of assaulting his 79-year-old grandmother.
Humphrey had stopped taking his medications for bipolar disorder and started carrying
a knife with him on supposed secret missions.
On the same days as the tragedies, Humphrey was reportedly acting bizarrely, making serious
threats, and brandishing knives he'd hidden under his clothes.
Another college student even told police they'd talked about what it would be like to dissect
humans.
And the incidents stopped while he was in custody.
However, Humphrey's DNA didn't match what was found at the scene of the crimes, and
Humphrey was released, free to reclaim his life.
Another suspect surfaces
In May of 1990, a man named Danny Rolling shot his father twice before fleeing the state
of Louisiana.
He was later implicated in a grocery store robbery in Florida, and when police located
his forest campsite, they were alarmed at what they discovered.
Among his possessions were bloody clothing items, weapons, dye-stained cash, and a tape
where he recorded his dark thoughts.
"I know I have to run the rest of my life.
But I'm gettin' pretty good at it, if that means anything."
On the tapes, he was recorded detailing the most effective way to hunt deer — and also
claimed to possess other personalities named Ynnad and Gemini, a claim which he'd later
present to the authorities.
"One personality is a gentleman named Ynnad who is a Jesse James type."
Perhaps most eerily, the tape also included him singing songs with lines like "little
girls are not all sugar and spice" and "You're a weirdo, a drifter gone insane".
He was tried for robbery in 1991, but wouldn't face trial for the crimes until 1994.
The confessions
A month before Rolling was due to go on trial, he buddied up with another inmate named Bobby
Lewis.
Rolling spilled all the details of the Gainesville murders to Lewis, and when it came time to
talk to investigators, he would only do so through his new friend.
Through Lewis, Rolling not only confessed to the incidents, but he also claimed he hadn't
finished his mission before being apprehended.
He had wanted to off a total of eight people, rather than five.
He then pled guilty to the offings in court.
"I've been running from first one thing and then another all my life…
There are some things that you just can't run from and this being one of those."
A few years later, however, Rolling said that he had reached his desired count and
confessed to yet another set of offings: a triple offing that had taken place in Louisiana
in 1989.
Rolling said he had been the one who'd offed 55-year-old Tom Grissom, his 24-year-old daughter
Julie, and her 8-year-old nephew, Sean in their home, while they were in the middle
of making dinner.
The mind set
One of the most frightening things about Scream was how cavalier the criminals were about claiming
people's' lives.
"See, it's a lot scarier when there's no motive, Sid."
That, too, was drawn from these real life slayings.
In 1998, a reporter from The Hillsdale Daily News spoke to Rolling while he sat on death
row.
And while he refused to comment directly on his own actions, he did share some of his
opinions on the role serial criminals play in society.
He said society was filled with hypocrisy, giving medals to soldiers who killed, while
condemning the serial criminal who took matters into his own hands.
He went on to suggest that society should start a "hunting season" where serial killers
were allowed to "thin the herd" as a means of satisfying their natural instincts to harm
other humans.
The execution
Rolling was executed on October 25th, 2006 and sang a hymn he had composed himself as
he was administered the lethal injection.
He never asked for forgiveness or expressed any remorse for what he'd done.
"I let the evil in and the evil just took over."
And while the shock of the murders he committed has since subsided since his execution, the
community of Gainesville hasn't forgotten what happened.
A mural is still painted on a wall on Southwest 34th Street to commemorate the names of the
victims.
In 2015, the city held a memorial service for the slain students on the 25th anniversary
of their deaths.
The surviving families of the students sat with the law enforcement officers who put
an end to Rolling's spree.
And, because of the enduring presence of Scream, people won't soon forget the true tragedy
that inspired it.