Influences
Harris based various elements of Gumb's M.O. on six real-life serial killers:
- Jerry Brudos, who would dress up in his victims' clothing and keep their shoes.
- Ed Gein, who fashioned trophies and keepsakes from the bones and skin of corpses who he dug up at cemeteries. He also made a female skin suit and skin masks.
- Ted Bundy, who pretended to be injured (using an arm-brace or crutches) as a ploy to ask a select few of his victims for help or assistance. They helped him, and this was when he subsequently incapacitated and killed them, dumping their bodies far away.
- Gary M. Heidnik, who kidnapped six women and held them prisoner as sex slaves.
- Edmund Kemper, who, like Gumb, killed his grandparents as a teenager "just to see what it felt like."
- Gary Ridgway, the Green River Killer, who, like Gumb, dumped women's bodies in rivers and inserted foreign objects into their corpses.
Read more about this topic: Buffalo Bill (character)
Famous quotes containing the word influences:
“However diligent she may be, however dedicated, no mother can escape the larger influences of culture, biology, fate . . . until we can actually live in a society where mothers and children genuinely matter, ours is an essentially powerless responsibility. Mothers carry out most of the work orders, but most of the rules governing our lives are shaped by outside influences.”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)
“Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. Once and again one of those great influences which we call a Cause arises in the midst of a nation. Men of strenuous minds and high ideals come forward.... The attacks they sustain are more cruel than the collision of arms.... Friends desert and despise them.... They stand alone and oftentimes are made bitter by their isolation.... They are doing nothing less than defy public opinion, and shall they convert it by blows. Yes.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)
“I am fooling only myself when I say my mother exists now only in the photograph on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on in everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was, and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.”
—Hope Edelman (20th century)