Content Warning: The following recounts crimes involving sexual assault and extreme violence.
Ever since the first film of the franchise premiered 40 years ago, the Nightmare on Elm Street franchise, and its legendary antagonist, Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), has rooted itself in the collective consciousness. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who doesn’t know anything about the franchise, especially its iconic villain, a child murderer who exacts revenge on those who killed him by killing their children as they sleep from the depths of their nightmares. That explains the “nightmare” part of the title, but why Elm Street? Director Wes Craven consciously selected the street name based on its infamy as the name of the street where John F. Kennedy was shot, revealing that to him, “it was where the innocent world ended.” But that’s not the sole reason.
As Freddy himself says, “Every town has an Elm Street,” and he’s not all that far off. ABC News references research from the Census Bureau that cites “Elm Street” as the 15th most common U.S. street name at 5,233. The ubiquitous nature of the name and Freddy’s chilling observation suggest that murder can happen anywhere. Investigation Discovery has run with that idea, using the infamy of the Elm Street name and its commonality as the premise for its new true-crime documentary series, The Real Murders on Elm Street. The series, which has already caught on with viewers, looks at the true stories behind six murders, mixing dramatic reenactments with testimonies from those associated with the crimes, crimes whose only connection is that they all occurred on one of the many Elm Streets across the country.
‘The Real Murders on Elm Street’ Begins With Daniel LaPlante, the “Killer in the Walls”
The Real Murders on Elm Street begins with “Killer in the Walls,” which recounts the chilling tale of Daniel LaPlante, a social outcast who grew up in Townsend, Massachusetts, in an unassuming home on Townsend’s Elm Street (one of six associations LaPlante has to an Elm Street). In his teens, LaPlante was arrested multiple times for breaking into homes and stealing jewelry, money, and other goods. But it was after being caught breaking into the Bowen family’s home on December 8, 1986, where LaPlante’s story goes from tragic to disturbing. For weeks prior, Tina and Karen Bowen told their dad, Frank, about odd things happening around the home, like misplaced objects and TV channels changing when they left the room. Were the girls just pranking one another or signs of poltergeist activity? Neither.
On the 8th, Frank noticed someone had used their toilet and searched the home only to find LaPlante, clad in face paint and a hairy jacket, wielding a hatchet and a steel wrench. LaPlante forcefully but calmly led Frank, his two daughters, and their friend into a bedroom. Luckily, Tina, who had dated LaPlante once, escaped and got help, only LaPlante had disappeared. Two days later, acting on a report that Frank had seen a man in the window when he returned to the home to gather belongings, Officer Steven Bezanson, one of the officers interviewed for The Real Murders on Elm Street, opened the door to find two pictures on the wall, held up by knives, with “I’M STILL HERE. COME FIND ME” and “I’M GOING TO KILL YOU ALL” written on them. Police did find him hiding behind a bathroom wall and discovered that LaPlante had been living in the walls for weeks, secretly watching and playing mind games with them. LaPlante was arrested and held in custody until October 1987, when his mom remortgaged their home to pay the $10,000 bail.
Releasing LaPlante on bail would prove to be an egregiously bad decision. On December 1, 1987, LaPlante broke into the home of Andrew and Priscilla Gustafson for the second time in under a month. While LaPlante was inside, Priscilla returned home with William, their 5-year-old son. Normally, LaPlante told investigators, he would have left to avoid being caught but, for some reason, opted not to. Instead, he locked William in the closet before tying a very pregnant Priscilla to her bed. He then proceeded to rape her before shooting Priscilla twice in the head with a stolen handgun. He then drowned William in the upstairs bathtub and did the same to Abigail, 7, in the downstairs bathroom when she came home from school. Police would eventually track down LaPlante on the evening of December 3, hiding in a trashcan in Ayers, and LaPlante would be sentenced to 45 years in prison after being convicted of all three murders in 1988.
“And We Have Serial Killers” Features a Gruesome Killing of a Group of Friends
On February 28, 2008, Spokane firefighters responded to a call from a driver reporting smoke billowing out of a home at 512 E. Elm Street. What they find inside kicks off “And We Have Serial Killers,” the second episode of The Real Murders on Elm Street. The story begins only two weeks prior with the arrival of Justin Crenshaw, 20 and freshly out of a rehab program for heroin addiction in Las Vegas, to the Spokane area, looking to visit his long-lost sister, Nikki Vanvlymen. He soon began dating 18-year-old Sarah Clark, a friend of his sister’s and made the decision to stay in Spokane. They hung out with Tanner Pehl, 20, who was a friend of Sarah’s and a coworker of Justin’s at a local restaurant, and on that night, were known to have been at the home Pehl shared with his mother and brother, drinking.
Per the previously cited The Spokesman-Review, Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll posits that Crenshaw may have killed Clark for not wanting to have sex with Pehl, responding to Clark’s screams, and becoming overpowered by Crenshaw before also having his life taken. It may be what instigated the killings, but nothing could possibly excuse the horrors meted out by Crenshaw on their corpses. Clark was stabbed 26 times before her body was posed with a Samurai sword by her nearly severed head. Pehl was stabbed over a dozen times, had a blanket placed over his body, and then had a broadsword plunged through his abdomen four times before it became lodged in the young man’s spine.
Crenshaw then set cardboard pizza and beer boxes on the stove in order to cover up the murder by starting a fire, only to be implicated by his bloody fingerprint at the back door. Katie Hayes, who took part in The Real Murders on Elm Street, recalls the reasoning Crenshaw asserted during the trial: “He went into this really strange defense with a doctor saying if he has even one drink of alcohol, he goes into blind rages and doesn’t remember anything.” It didn’t work, and Crenshaw found himself serving two consecutive life sentences.
The “Wheel of Punishment” Spins on ‘The Real Murders on Elm Street’
Set up just outside of Salida, California, a small farming community, “the Camp” was a quasi-military compound led by Gerald Cruz, a master manipulator raised to believe he had special powers. He was the absolute authority of the group, and the beliefs he spewed were a hybrid of voodoo and white supremacist ideology. The people of Salida were intimidated by them, but acknowledged that the Camp largely kept to themselves, and they didn’t really do anything that caused concern for local law enforcement. That is, until May 21, 1990, the day that landed Cruz on the shortlist for The Real Murders on Elm Street.
That’s the day sheriff’s officers happened upon four bodies in a home on the corner of Mason Avenue and — take a wild guess — Elm Street. In an interview for Oxygen’s Deadly Cults, Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department Lead Investigator Gary Deckard summed up what they found with this oddly prophetic statement: “There was blood everywhere. It was truly a nightmare on Elm Street.” One woman, Donna Alvarez, had escaped the attack and was able to describe one suspect, Jason LaMarsh, who was a member of the Camp. Investigators descended on the Camp, which was all but deserted, save for Cruz, who denied knowing anything about the quadruple homicide. Nevertheless, a search warrant was gathered for Cruz’s home, where they found bombmaking materials, masks, Satanic literature, and the titular “wheel of punishment,” a device that would be tossed in the air to be caught by a follower, and where they caught the wheel determined their specific punishment for transgressions, anything from eating off the floor to sodomy.
Police tracked down LaMarsh, who told them that one of the victims, Franklin Raper, had been cast out of the Camp for allegedly using and selling drugs on the property. According to the previously cited court documents, Cruz was known to have made his wishes to “get his hands on Raper” clear to other Camp members, and on May 20, 1990, he tasked LaMarsh, Richard Vieira and James Beck to “do them all and leave no witnesses.” Around midnight, the Cruz and his team stormed the home where Raper, Darlene Paris, Richard Ritchey, and Dennis Colwell were forced into the living room where they were brutally murdered. LaMarsh broke Raper’s arm before hitting him in the head repeatedly until he was dead. Paris was screaming, so Cruz told Vieira to “shut her up,” which he did by nearly decapitating her by sawing through her throat with a combat knife. The horrific murders on Elm Street led to Cruz, Beck, and Vieira being convicted and placed on death row, while LaMarsh was sentenced to 64 years to life.
The Real Murders on Elm Street doesn’t tweak the true-crime documentary format like Netflix’s entry Worst Ex Ever, nor change it like Casting JonBenet, but it’s a fascinating watch for the premise alone. As of this writing, details surrounding the remaining three episodes — “Halloween Horror,” “What Lies Beneath,” and “Cruel Intentions” — are scarce. But if the numbers hold up like they have, the odds of a second season or more become likely. After all, “every town has an Elm Street.”
The Real Murders on Elm Street is available to stream in the U.S. on ID and Max, with new episodes released weekly on Mondays.
WATCH ON MAX