5 true crimes inspired by movies

Between 2010 and 2011, a group of men carried out approximately 62 successful robberies in Brooklyn and Queens, using techniques they saw in the crime thriller Dangerous Attraction (2010) as a strategy. In the film, the FBI goes after Boston criminals who use various strategies to avoid getting caught.

In real life, thieves have used methods such as throwing bleach at ATMs and cash drawers to destroy DNA evidence, cutting off electricity at theft sites, and using miners’ headlights to see what they’re doing without drawing too much attention. The gang managed to steal a total of $217,000.

In 2011, the group was captured because, unlike in the movie, where the thieves wore masks and disguises, in real life they were dressed in regular clothes.

In the early hours of Memorial Day 2009, a pipe bomb was activated near a Starbucks on the Upper East Side of Manhattan around 3:30 am. No one was hurt in the explosion, but the force of this bomb damaged all the windows of Starbucks and a nearby bank.

Kyle Shaw, 17, was arrested in July 2009 after bragging to friends about the explosion, ordering them to watch Memorial Day news. After the boy’s arrest, it is revealed that he wanted to start his own “Project Mayhem”, a plan from the movie Fight Club (1999) that destroyed several corporate facilities.

Since the movie also includes a scene where several characters destroy a Starbucks, it was clear to the officers that Shaw wanted to emulate Tyler Durden (the character played by Brad Pitt). The young man even started his own “Fight Club” where he and other boys fought each other all over New York.

Several more bombs went off in New York before the Starbucks bombing, but none of them were linked to Shaw. Shaw pleaded guilty to attempted arson and possession of a weapon in 2010, but was released soon after in 2013. In 2018, the young man claimed he had nothing to do with the crime, showing that he only agreed to the deal so that his sentence would be commuted. .

Imagine watching a movie with your boyfriend and getting stabbed the next day? Well, that’s our next business. On November 17, 1994, 23-year-old Lisa Stellwagen and her boyfriend Daniel Sterling were watching the movie Interview with the Vampire, and the next night the girl was stabbed 7 times by her boyfriend, who claimed he would kill her. we drank your blood.

Lisa luckily survived and told the police that her boyfriend tried to drink her blood for several minutes before convincing him to stop stating that if she died, he would be arrested. He was arrested for attempted murder and spoke of the impact of the film: “The film influenced me. I like the movie. But I can’t sit here and blame the movie.”

In 1997, Daniel was found guilty by a jury, causing the judge himself to testify in court about the Interview with the Vampire connection: “Perhaps this gave him an additional incentive to suck her blood, but this has nothing to do with the crime. .”

This crime was committed in January 1998, involving two young people and the mother of one of them. According to the case, Mario Padilla (16) and his cousin Samuel Ramirez (14) killed Gina Castillo, Mario’s mother. The teenagers inflicted about 45 stab wounds on the woman with knives and a screwdriver.

Gina managed to call the police shortly before her death and it was revealed that her son had stabbed her while another young man was holding her. When the boys were asked about the motives for such an act, Padilla says that his mother forced him to take out the garbage and left him on the ground. However, no one expected his real motivation….

The two boys planned the crime after watching Scream and Scream 2, films in the franchise in which a masked killer (Ghostface) kills his victims for fun and revenge. Both young men were not in suits, but in shirts tied together to hide their faces.

In 1999, the case was heard and Padilla was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of negotiating parole. It took Ramirez 25 years, as it was alleged that he was too young at the time of the murder to suffer the same sentence as his cousin.

On March 30, 1981, then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan was attacked, during which he was shot in the chest with a firearm. The perpetrator of the crime was John Hinckley Jr. (25 years old), who fired six shots at the president and eventually hit three more escorts.

The President was leaving a meeting at the Washington Hilton Hotel and ended up with a left lung injury, but he survived and was taken to the George Washington University Hospital. The other three victims also survived.

John was among a group of reporters and was immediately arrested and imprisoned for attempting to assassinate the president. Unlike other presidential assassins, his motivation was not political, but film. Taxi driver (1976).

Travis Bickle is trying to kill a politician in the movie to get a girl’s attention, so why not do the same? Hinckley’s original target was President Jimmy Carter, but after Reagan was elected in 1980, the target changed.

Eventually, on June 21, 1982, Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity, with the man’s biggest defense being the man’s obsession with Taxi Driver.