The True Crimes Behind Your Favorite Lifetime Movies Are Seriously Messed Up

The Craigslist Killer

In the flick, Jake McDorman from Greek is a medical student in love who is preparing for his future and — oh, yeah — has violent encounters with women he finds on Craigslist, including murdering a woman. IRL, the so-called "Craigslist Killer" was Philip Markoff from Boston, MA. After meeting his future fiancée while volunteering at an emergency room, they set a wedding date for August 2009. He also started attending Boston University School of Medicine. It was while he was in his second year that the crimes were committed.

On April 10, 2009, Trisha Leffler was tied up and robbed in a hotel room after posting about escort services on Craigslist. Four days later, Julissa Brisman was found dead in a hotel room after posting about massage services. Another two days later, Corinne Stout, who had offered lap dance services online, was the target of an attempted robbery at a motel in Rhode Island. Security footage, cell phone activity, and email data led police to Philip Markoff — he was arrested on April 20 and later charged by the state of Massachusetts for first-degree murder, among other lesser charges. Over the next year, he was expelled from school and dumped by his fiancée, and in August 2010, he gruesomely took his own life in jail, writing his fiancée's name in his own blood on the cell wall.

Blue Eyed Butcher

Aquamarine's Sara Paxton faces off against soap-star Justin Bruening and House's Lisa Edelstein in a movie about one woman's court case after she brutally stabbed her husband to death. The film is based on the story of Susan Wright, a Texas woman who stabbed her husband, the father of her children, 193 times before burying him in the backyard on June 13, 2003. The day after, she made a domestic violence claim about him to the police and attempted to get a restraining order. But only five days after the crime, she called her attorney to come over to her house and confessed, resulting in her own arrest after the police were called.

During the trial, prosecutors alleged that Susan Wright had seduced her husband before tying him to the bed and murdering him, all done for a life insurance policy payout. (And by the way, that trial scene where the prosecutor gets on the bed to reenact that crime was taken straight from real life.) She and her legal team plead not guilty by reason of self-defense, arguing that her marriage had included a long history of physical and emotional abuse that had eventually lead to a break-down. She claimed that she stabbed him so many times because she couldn't believe that he was dead, afraid that he would get up any moment and kill her himself. She filed the false police report because she truly thought he'd come back any minute. And she waited to admit what she'd done because it took her almost a week to truly understand what she'd done.

Nonetheless, she was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Though her sentenced was reduced by five years in 2010, she's still behind bars today. And you can read a fascinating interview with her in a Texas Monthly article that speaks with her and several others related in the crime.

Death Clique

In a slightly more fictionalized telling, best friends Sara and Jade make nice with new girl Ashley when she transfers to their high school. When Ashley is more interested in getting close to Jade, the two team-up to get Sara out of the picture — for good. The true story the movie is based on is the July 5, 2012 murder of Skylar Neese by her former best friends, Shelia Eddy and Rachel Shoaf. The news made national headlines after Skylar, who had run away before, went missing. Police suspected Shelia and Rachel knew more than they were letting on, considering they admitted they'd met up with the missing teen that night to do drugs, but they insisted they'd dropped her off at home after.

Initially, investigators posited that Skylar had died an accidental death that her friends had covered up. However, the much more violent truth came out after Rachel had a breakdown, confessed to the cops, and lead them to where she and Shelia had hidden Skylar's body in January 2013. Together, the girls had stabbed their friend more than 50 times because they simply didn't want to be friends with her anymore. During her disappearance, both girls tweeted vague references to the crime and posted pictures with their former friend and victim on social media. Both girls were tried as adults with Rachel pleading guilty to second-degree murder and Skylar eventually pleading guilty to first-degree murder.

Taken in Broad Daylight

Aptly named, the movie stars James Van Der Beek of Dawson's Creek fame as a man who snatched a girl out of populated parking lot while the sun was bright and shining overhead. The real life story starts off pretty much the same after Anthony Steven Wright, better known as Tony Zappa, kidnapped 17-year-old Anne Sluti out of a mall parking lot in Nebraska on April 6, 2001. He held her for six days, chaining her up and subjecting her to sexual assault. Throughout that week, the kidnapper kept them on the move, breaking into a series of cabins until they ended up in Montana.

During the ordeal, Anne's parents made several media appeals to her assailant and Anne was able to leave behind several clues to their whereabouts as they kept moving. She even managed to call both 9-1-1 and her mother during the length of her kidnapping. On April 11, police finally caught up with Tony Zappa, and after an eight hour stand-off, he let Anne go and surrendered. Though his lawyer tried to argue in court that everything had been consensual, the kidnapper was found guilty and given a life-sentence, which he's still serving today.

Beautiful & Twisted

With a relatively star-studded cast (for Lifetime), Rob Lowe, Paz Vega, Seychelle Gabriel, Michelle Hurd, and Candice Bergen acted out the story of a hotel heir who suspects his wife of killing his mother and is later murdered by her himself. The true story is that of Bernice Novack and Ben Novack Jr., owners of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach hotel. On April 5, 2009, Bernice was found dead in her home, the victim of an apparent accidental fall. After her son inherited her $2 million estate, he was found bound and beaten to death on July 12, 2009.

It turned out that Narcy Novack, Ben's wife, had been the driving force behind the crimes after she and her brother hired hit men to execute them. Ben had allegedly been having an affair at the time and was talking about divorce, but his and his mother's deaths would mean that Narcy would inherit the family fortune. Narcy and her brother, Cristobal Veliz, were arrested for the crimes and sentenced to life in prison, and the Novack fortune instead passed to Ben's step-daughter, Narcy's daughter, and her children. However, family disputes about the money have continued for years.

The Happy Face Killer

Scream's David Arquette took his own turn on Lifetime as a serial killer who left notes taunting the media, police, and the public about his crimes, all signed off with a smiley face. The real killer was Keith Hunter Jesperson, who started exhibiting violent tendencies towards animals as young as age five. Even as a child, Keith attempted murder twice, beating one friend and trying to drown another. As an adult, he took a job as a truck driver, killing women while on his routes. His first-known victim was Taunja Bennett, who he beat to death on Jan. 23, 1990, but he went on to kill at least nine people, though he claims to have murdered more.

His messages to the public started when someone else took credit for his first murder, writing an anonymous confession on a bathroom wall along his driving route, smiley face included. He wrote additional letters to the press and to prosecutors, desiring the media attention that the false killer had gotten for his crime. In March 1995, he was finally arrested and confessed to murdering victims in California, Florida, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming, and is serving three consecutive life sentences.

The Girl in the Box

Perhaps the most haunting of them all, the movie features From Dusk till Dawn's Zane Holtz as a sadistic man who kidnaps a hitchhiker with his wife and keeps her locked in a box under his bed for years. In real life, that woman was Colleen Stan, who had felt comfortable accepting a ride from Cameron Hooker on May 19, 1977 because his wife, Janice Hooker, and their baby were in the car with him. However, the couple abducted her, forcing her head into a wooden box in the car so that she couldn't see or hear where they were going. The kidnapping was allegedly motivated by Cameron's sexual bondage fantasies that his wife was no longer willing to play out with him.

After being kept in a box for up to 23 hours a day, Colleen was eventually forced to sign a contract with Cameron in which she agreed to be his slave for life under threat of "The Company," a shady organization Cameron purported to have ties to. The secret organization allegedly existed to enforce her slavery as well as others by threatening her family with violence if she tried to escape or didn't follow orders from her "master." Eventually, she was allowed more freedom around the home to help take care of the family's needs, all still under threat from "The Company" if she tried to escape. She even visited her family, accompanied by Cameron, who pretended to be her boyfriend. But eventually, Colleen was forced to return to the box under the bed.

By 1983, Cameron wanted to make her his second wife, at which point Janice began to turn against him, confessed to her own abuse at his hands, told Colleen that her husband wasn't part of "The Company," and helped her escape by 1984. Three months later, Janice went to the police and testified in exchange for full immunity while Cameron was sentenced to 104 years in prison for multiple counts of sexual assault and kidnapping.