In honor of Ireneparalegal who just helped me find an answer to my question in the previous post, my question goes to all :

Know of any movies form the 70's 80's maybe early 90's (typically tv movies)
which portrayed a true crime case, abduction, murder, serial murder in freaky UM form such as INTO THIN AIR and I KNOW MY FIRST NAME IS STEVEN and WITHOUT A TRACE ETC ? - you know images that will stick with you forever type of thing...

Now that i finally fixed my password I'll try to be as active a participant here...

Some of the In the Line of Duty films were pretty memorable.

Adam, A cry for help: The Tracy Thurman Story and there were a couple from the files of Unsolved Mysteries.

I'm dying to see the one based on the Shannon Mohr case.

How about Armed and Innocent, the true story of a young boy who shot a couple of intruders at his home? Starred Gerald McRaney.

Also, Megan Follows was in a movie called Cry in the Wild: The Taking of Peggy Ann, the true story of a kidnap victim forced to participate in her captor's crimes.

There was a tv movie called Fortress (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091069/)from the 1980s which was I remember seeing a few times when I was a kid. It starred Rachel Ward as a schoolteacher in Austrailia. A bunch of guys in creepy masks come and kidnap her and the school children. They make an escape, but the kidnappers keep hunting them down. Apparently, it's based on the Faraday School Kidnapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_School_kidnapping), which happened in Australia in the 1970s. I remember being totally freaked out by it!

I saw that film once a long time ago. Weird.

A 1993 TV-movie entitled They've Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping was based on the real life incident of July 1976.

"Without a Kiss Goodbye" was apparently based on the Stallings case.

Here are a few serial killer ones:

The Deliberate Stranger - 1986 TV movie with Mark Harmon playing Ted Bundy.

To Catch a Killer - 1992 TV movie with Brian Dennehy as John Wayne Gacy. (this is a terrific true crime movie, better IMO than many theatrical movies)

Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker ????? - Can't remember the title, but this aired in the late 1980's on TV.

:wave:

A 1993 TV-movie entitled They've Taken Our Children: The Chowchilla Kidnapping was based on the real life incident of July 1976.

Did this star UM host Karl Malden? I suppose I could do a search and find out but I do remember seeing him in movie about this case.

Yes, I think so.

Some of the In the Line of Duty films were pretty memorable.

The "In the Line of Duty" TV movie starring David Soul of "Starsky and Hutch" fame or infamy, depending on your tastes, was pretty good.

My favorite tho was about militia/separatist folk hero Gordon Kahl. That song, written for Gordon during the manhunt and urging him on was very strange.

There was a tv movie called Fortress (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091069/)from the 1980s which was I remember seeing a few times when I was a kid. It starred Rachel Ward as a schoolteacher in Austrailia. A bunch of guys in creepy masks come and kidnap her and the school children. They make an escape, but the kidnappers keep hunting them down. Apparently, it's based on the Faraday School Kidnapping (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faraday_School_kidnapping), which happened in Australia in the 1970s. I remember being totally freaked out by it!
I remember that one! It certainly freaked me out as a kid when I saw it on TV one night.

The first Dirty Harry movie was based on some of Zodiac's crimes in the late 60s and early 70s.

Robert Graysmith said in his book that the third Exorcist movie, the killer was also based on Zodiac.

There was a little scene movie in the mid 70s called The Town That Dreaded Sundown. It was about an unsolved series of murders committed by someone dubbed, "The Phantom". His murders were in the mid 40s and were very similar to Zodiac's decades later.

Then, there was the 1995 Sigourney Weaver / Holly Hunter movie Copycat. The killer in that movie copies all kinds of notorious killers from the past.

Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker ????? - Can't remember the title, but this aired in the late 1980's on TV.


Probably "Manhunt: Search for the Night Stalker" with Richard Jordan.

It used to be on Lifetime a lot in the early to mid-nineties. I remember watching it and thinking it was pretty good for a movie on Lifetime.

Small Sacrifices with Farrah Fawcett was a good one as was The Burning Bed.

I've seen The Town That Dreaded Sundown a few times, it's been on the Scream channel. Pretty cheesy movie, but it's one that does stay factual at least.

I Know My First Name is Steven is another one that comes to mind.

A Woman Scorned: The Betty Broderick Story (1992), with Meredith Baxter as Betty Broderick.

Right to Kill? (1985) with Justine Bateman as Deborah Jahnke.