Curse or coincidence? The catalogue of 'Scream' killings

Sunday June 9, 2002
The Observer

England

1999 Thirty-four violent films, including Scream , found in the rooms of two male college students at Hadlow, Kent, who stabbed a friend to death, dismembered his body and burnt it.

1999 Two schoolboys who brutally stabbed a friend and left him for dead after watching Scream convicted of attempted murder at Hull.

2000 Man shot dead in Liverpool after two men, one wearing a Scream -type mask, burst into his house.

France

2000 A youth aged 15, who said he was obsessed by Scream , wore the mask while stabbing his sleeping parents to death.

2002 Schoolgirl aged 14 tortured and left for dead by two friends who had watched Scream , near Mulhouse in Eastern France.

2002 A youth aged 17, arrested for the murder of a 15-year-old stabbed at Saint-Sébastien-sur-Loire, western France, admitted he was obsessed by Scream .

United States

1997 Three male teenagers who had repeatedly watched Scream murdered two girls in Salem, Mass.

1999 With the help of two cousins, a teenager stabbed his mother to death, after watching Scream , in Lynwood, California.

2000 A woman and two men, wearing Scream masks, robbed a store in Lowell, Mass, and shot a man dead.

2002 Man accused of shooting two men dead in a bar in Pennsylvania wore a Scream mask.

Belgium

2001 A lorry driver put on a Scream costume before killing a 15-year-old girl with two enormous kitchen knives, in the town of Gerpinnes.

Source: Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2002