Episode 40: Crimes That Inspired Horror Movies

Let's Go To Court!

True Crime, History, Comedy

4.8 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 31 October 2018

⏱️ 104 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Happy Halloween, and welcome to a very spooky episode of Let’s Go To Court! This week, we discuss crimes so terrifying that they inspired horror films.

Kristin starts us off with the most disgusting story of all time. Ed Gein was just a quiet bachelor who lived alone on his isolated Wisconsin farm. But there was more to Ed than met the eye. When police went to question him about a murder, they were horrified by what they discovered. Body parts littered his filthy home. There were lamp shades and chairs made of human skin. There was a collection of noses, and face masks on the walls. Ed’s story is so sickening that it inspired the movies Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.

Then Brandi tells us about an entire family who was killed in their sleep. Well… not an entire family. One family member, Ronald DeFeo, lived to tell the tale. A year later, a new family moved into the home. The disturbing story was the basis for the Amityville Horror movies. Brandi recommends the 2005 Amityville Horror remake, starring Ryan Reynolds. She’s a fan of his muscle definition. And his acting.

And now for a note about our process. For each episode, Kristin reads a bunch of articles, then spits them back out in her very limited vocabulary. Brandi copies and pastes from the best sources on the web. And sometimes Wikipedia. (No shade, Wikipedia. We love you.) We owe a huge debt of gratitude to the real experts who covered these cases.

In this episode, Kristin pulled from:
“Ed Gein,” episode of A&E’s biography
“Ed Gein Biography,” Wisconsinsickness.com
“The Ultimate Ghoul,” Crime Library
“10 skulls found in house of horror,” Oshkosh Daily Northwestern
“Judge orders Ed Gein back to mental hospital,” The La Crosse Tribune
“Order Ed Gein tried on murder, robbery,” The Oshkosh Northwestern
“Ed Gein found guilty of murder,” Ironwood Daily Globe
“Ed Gein,” Wikipedia

In this episode, Brandi pulled from:
“The Real Life Amityville Horror” by Douglas B Lynott, Cirme Library
“Couple and 4 children killed in ‘Amityville Horror’ murders” by Jerry Schmetterer and Daniel Driscoll Ronald Defeo Jr.
“The Amityville Horror” wikipedia.org
AmityvilleFiles.com

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	One semester of law school.
0:02.2	One semester of criminal justice.
0:04.3	Two experts!
0:06.2	I'm Kristen Pitts.
0:07.4	I'm Brandi Egan.
0:08.6	Let's go to court!
0:10.0	On this episode, I'll talk about the man who inspired Psycho,
0:13.6	the Silence of the Lams, and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
0:17.6	And I'll be talking about the real story behind the Amityville Horror.
0:22.0	Oh, God.
0:24.8	Brandi, let's just explain what your idea was.
0:29.4	So, let me just start by saying that Kristen is real pissed at me for this idea.
0:35.6	That I had the idea for this very special Halloween edition of Let's Go to Court
0:41.4	that we would do cases that inspired horror movies.
0:47.4	When I first heard it, I thought you were a genius.
0:50.4	I loved the idea.
0:52.2	Then you were like, hey, why don't you do that Ed Gingai?
0:56.2	Did you know that he is what?
0:57.6	Okay, and the reason that I recommended him to you is because I know you've seen Psycho.
1:01.8	Yep.
1:02.8	And I know you don't love horror movies.
1:04.8	So, I figured you'd seen nothing else.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Let's Go To Court!, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Let's Go To Court! and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.