15 Horror Movies That Inspired Real-Life Crimes

The old ‘movies made me do it, guvnor’ defence isn’t just a modern-day phenomenon. In fact, way back in the 1920s one man claimed a terrifying vision of a character from one of cinema’s most famous lost films, London After Midnight, caused him to commit bloody murder.

In 1928, an Irish housemaid named Julia Mangan was found dead in London’s Hyde Park with a cut-throat razor inflicted wound to her neck while nearby lay out of work carpenter Robert Williams, apparently the victim of a failed suicide attempt.

After he was charged with her murder and his case came to trial, Williams said that he and Mangan had been courting and the night of her death she had rebuffed a marriage proposal from him. He then claimed he’d been suddenly plagued by an apparition of actor Lon Chaney as the sharp-toothed, vampire-like character he’d played in London After Midnight and had no memory of Mangan’s murder taking place.

The details get a little shaky here seeing as the murder took place so long ago, but Williams was either sentenced to death by hanging or was granted a reprieve and lived out his days at Broadmoor then not-so politically correct called Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum.