Ripped from the Headlines!: The Shocking True Stories Behind the Movies' Most Memorable Crimes

Bestselling true-crime master Harold Schechter explores the real-life headline-making psychos, serial murderers, thrill-hungry couples, & lady-killers who inspired a century of classic films.

The necktie murders in Alfred Hitchcock’s Frenzy; Chicago’s Jazz Age crime of passion; the fatal hookup in Looking for Mr. Goodbar; the high school horrors committed by the costumed slasher in Scream. These & other cinematic crimes have become part of pop-culture history. And each found inspiration in true events that provided the raw material for our greatest blockbusters, indie art films, black comedies, Hollywood classics, & grindhouse horrors.

So what’s the reality behind Psycho, Badlands, The Hills Have Eyes, A Place in the Sun, Arsenic and Old Lace, & Dirty Harry? How did such tabloid-ready killers as Bonnie and Clyde, body snatchers Burke & Hare, Texas sniper Charles Whitman Jr., nurse-slayer Richard Speck, & Leopold & Loeb exert their power on the public imagination & become the stuff of movie lore?

In this collection of revelatory essays, true-crime historian Harold Schechter takes a fascinating trip down the crossroads of fact & fiction to reveal the sensational real-life stories that are more shocking, taboo, & fantastic than even the most imaginative screenwriter can dream up.