In 1991, Anthony Hopkins saw the film released in theaters that would win him his first Oscar: The silence of the lambs. His interpretation of murderer, cannibal and former psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter He elevated him to the annals of cinema history and, certainly, the character managed to encompass everything, both in the plot and on the screen.
So much so that we often forget that The main plot of the film does not revolve around Lecter, but around another serial killerat large, whom Lecter helps catch through his conversations with Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster).
That murderer, in fiction, is baptized by the police and press as “Buffalo Bill”, although his name turned out to be Jame Gumb. A psychopath who brutally killed his victims, all women of the same complexion, with no apparent sexual motivation, whom He tears off the skin in order to make a “woman’s suit”.
The film is a adaptation of the novel of the same name written by Thomas Harris in 1988, which is also a sequel to his 1981 novel Red Dragon (which would also later be made into a film with the same title).
Yes ok In the novel, a large space is dedicated to detailing Jame Gumb’s childhood and adolescence. (of whom it is claimed that his misspelled name is due to a mistake in the record that no one bothered to correct), in the film it is resolved with an accurate phrase by Lecter: “Our Billy was not born a criminal, Clarice. He became one after years of systematic abuse.
The character of Gumb hates his own identity and, after being rejected for gender reassignment surgery on several occasions, he skins women to make a “woman’s suit”, although several characters throughout the story claim that Gumb is not a transsexual person. In the novel, furthermore, also multiple examples are given of how Gumb does not fit the psychological profile of a real transsexual.
For the creation of your murderer, Harris collected items from three real-life serial killers:
Ted Bundy. With more than thirty brutal murders behind him, Bundy was one of the most prolific serial killers in US history. He died in the electric chair in January 1989, at the age of 42.
Until his arrest in 1975, Bundy used two modus operandi different to assault their victims. Although, especially in the beginning, he sneaked into women’s homes to rape and kill them, he later refined his strategy and He feigned some type of physical disability, using a cast on his arm or crutches, which made it difficult for him to carry anything in his car. With this technique he attracted women who offered to help himand then incapacitate, rape and kill them. This technique is exactly what Buffalo Bill uses in The silence of the lambsand as seen in a scene from the movie.
Gary Heidnik, the collector of women. Between 1986 and 1987, Gary Michael Heidnik He kidnapped, raped and tortured six women, whom he held in a pit that he had dug in the basement floor of his home in Philadelphia.. The first of them was Josefina Rivera. He would later kidnap four more women, and one of them, 24-year-old Sandra Lindsay, would die from a combination of starvation and untreated fever. The next to die would be Deborah Dudley, who died from electrocution. Heidnik would replace her with the youngest of his six captives, Jacqueline Askins, only 18 years old. Rivera later helped him kidnap another woman, Agnes Adams, and the next day he asked her to visit her family. Heidnik agreed, and Rivera contacted the police, who immediately went to arrest Heidnik at the gas station where he was waiting for what had been his first victim.
The survivors were rescued from the well and Heidnik was convicted and sentenced to death. He died by lethal injection in 1999, aged 55. The well is a key element in both the novel and the film.
Ed Gein, the Plainfield Butcher. Gein grew up with an abusive father and an overbearing mother on a Plainfield farm, and became one of the most chilling killers in U.S. history.
Although he is not considered a serial killer, because he confessed guilty to having killed two people (three are needed to be considered a serial killer) and in one of those cases no evidence was found, which the police found in his house in 1957 was beyond reason: in the record They found, among other things, human bones; a trash can, chair seats and lamps made from human skin; skulls on his bedposts and as bowls; nine vulvas in a shoebox; four noses; masks made from the skin of women’s heads; leggings made from human skin or a belt made from female nipples. The bodies for his household paraphernalia, except for the two women he admitted to having killed (Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden), he stole from various cemeteries over the years. In 1968, Gein was declared legally insane and spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric institution. He died at the age of 77, in July 1984, from respiratory failure caused by lung cancer.
Edmund Kemper, the schoolgirl killer. Ed Kemper is a classic in the study of US serial killers and probably most important in the work of John Douglas, the FBI’s first criminal profiler. Extremely intelligent and skilled at deception, Kemper raped, killed and mutilated at least ten women between 1964 and 1973.
Although it is not a recognized reference and there is nothing of the modus operandi of Kemper in the murderer of The silence of the lambsa common detail between the two draws powerful attention:
In the novel, Harris recounts how as a child Gumb is adopted by his grandparents, who end up becoming his first victims when he is 12 years old..
In the same way, Kemper went to live with his grandparents due to his mother’s rejection, and they would become his first victims when he was 15 years old. He said he killed his grandmother “to know what it felt like,” and his grandfather “because she was going to be angry with him for having previously killed his grandmother.” His mother would be his ninth recognized victimin April 1973. Then he invited a friend of his mother’s home to kill her too. It would be his last victim. Kemper called the police that same day, said he was the murderer of schoolgirls, confessed to his necrophilia and cannibalism and said where they could find him to arrest him.
Edmund Kemper was sentenced to eight life sentences with the possibility of parole. He is currently 75 years old and has refused parole. He says he is happy in prison.
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