Much like some of the series’ other killers, the nurse murdered from American Horror Story’s second episode is based on a harrowing real-life figure.
One of many TV franchises created by Ryan Murphy, American Horror Story is an anthology of spooky and terrifying affairs. Featuring ghosts, cults and even aliens, the show has now been running on FX for over a decade. While many of the supernatural elements are entirely fictional, there are some parts of each season’s story that ring all too true, namely one story that loosely adapted an infamous 1996 home invasion.
AHS’s Nurse Murders Were Inspired By Real Events
“Home Invasion” opens with a flashback set in the late 1960s. In the episode, two nursing students are shown studying in their dorm before answering a knock at the door. They find a seemingly beaten and bleeding man, but quickly realize the wound on his head is a ruse. Before the nurses can respond, however, the mysterious stranger attacks them, killing one of the young ladies before forcing the other to wear a nurse’s uniform and then killing her, as well.
This mysterious killer is established as R. Franklin — a home-invading killer whose vile actions predated those of Charles Manson and his cult. In the universe of Murder House, Franklin “changed the culture” through his homicides, with a group of serial killer enthusiasts in the episode’s present day storyline trying to imitate what he did. The idea of serial killer fanboys and copycats is sadly a reality, but so are the actions of R. Franklin — sort of.
AHS’s First Serial Killer Is Based On Richard Specik
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Shockingly enough, the American Horror Story home invasion is based on a real-life crime, making its murders even more visceral. Series creator Ryan Murphy confirmed that R. Franklin and his murders in the American Horror Story home invasion were somewhat inspired by those of real-life killer Richard Speck. In 1966, Speck broke into a dormitory for nursing students, and brutally assaulted and killed eight students with a knife.
Out of the student nurses staying in the dormitory that night, only Corazon Amurao — a ninth student — escaped with her life as she was able to hide from Speck under a bed for several hours. Amurao later identified Speck as the killer at his trial, and her accusation was supported by Lieutenant Emil Giese, who verified that the fingerprints found at the crime scene matched Speck’s.
Apart from their names starting with the letter “R,” the similarities between American Horror Story: Murder House‘s R. Franklin and Richard Speck is that they both murdered nursing students. R. Franklin supposedly did so due to a bad experience involving nurses and mercury in a thermometer. The latter is a possible allusion to Mary Telfer — a British biochemist — incorrectly speculating Speck had XYY syndrome as part of the insanity defense his attorney, Gerald W. Getty, was pushing for. Speck was karyotyped twice for the extra “Y” chromosome, but was proven to have the normal XY genome both times. Additionally, the features and angular face of Franklin’s actor Jamie Harris somewhat resemble those of Richard Speck.
Other Adaptations of the 1966 Home Invasion Murders
R. Franklin and the slaying of the American Horror Story: Murder House nurses isn’t the only fictionalized version of the story, however. The movies Violated Angels and Naked Massacre are also based on Speck’s life without directly adapting it. Violated Angels told a similar story to the American Horror Story 1966 home invasion, though with one major difference. The film was shot and set in Japan, and it was one of director Kōji Wakamatsu’s infamous “pink films.” These were movies known for their nudity and graphic sexual content.
Like a lot of other movies in this genre, the film was seen as being almost exploitative and potentially offensive to women. This sentiment is exacerbated by the brutality seen on display, though the actual murders of the nurses are mostly off-screen. Coming out in 1967 (one year after the crime itself), the movie showed how prolific the real life American Horror Story 1966 home invasion murders were around the world.
Naked Massacre (also released as Born for Hell) released a decade after the nurse murders that inspired American Horror Story: Murder House. Once again, it changes the locale to a foreign country (Ireland) and is mostly fictionalized. 10 to Midnight had a storyline seemingly inspired by the home invasion nurse murders, though it wasn’t an explicit adaptation. The movies Speck and Chicago Massacre: Richard Speck finally brought the true story into movie form, with true-crime TV shows also detailing the case. Jack Erdie portrayed Speck in the ninth episode of the Netflix TV series Mindhunter, though the series as a whole was not centered around his crimes.
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American Horror Story is the first of creators Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk’s American Story franchise. These shows are anthologies with largely unrelated stories in each season, with American Horror Story fittingly being based around the gruesome and macabre. The season-long stories of this show draw from the events of actual killings, namely the 1966 home invasion shown in American Horror Story: Murder House. While some actors in the series appear in different seasons, they’re usually playing different characters in unrelated stories. American Horror Story‘s numerous seasons have attracted major Hollywood talent, with the current season prominently featuring Kim Kardashian.
The other entries in the franchise are the similar-sounding American Horror Stories (which tells different stories across each episode instead of each season) and the politically-driven American Crime Story. Murphy and Ian Brennan have also created the fairly similar Monster anthology franchise for Netflix, with each season based on a notable real-life murder case. While his actions were horrendous and despicable, the real-life nurse murders Speck nurse didn’t make him a pre-Manson “culture changer in the same vein as his American Horror Story Season 1 counterpart, which is likely for the better.
