A Nightmare On Elm Street And Daniel Gonzalez
New Line CinemaDaniel Gonzalez told police he wondered what it would be like to be Freddy Krueger for a day.
With its imaginative dream sequences and inventive kills, Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) birthed a new icon of horror in Freddy Krueger. Armed with knives for fingers, the dead, supernatural burn victim stalked teenagers in their dreams. Tragically, one Londoner was lethally captivated by the figure.
Determined to become a famous serial killer, Daniel Gonzalez went on a drug-fueled killing spree across London, Hampshire, and Sussex. He dreamt of emulating both Nightmare‘s antagonist and Jason from Friday the 13th (1980) — as Freddy vs. Jason (2003) had hit theaters mere months before the murders.
Between Sept. 15 and 17, 2004, the 24-year-old Surrey resident stabbed four elderly people to death and tried to kill two others. The disturbed horror movie fan had armed himself with large knives and a hockey mask.
Gonzalez murdered 76-year-old Derek Robinson and his 68-year-old wife Jean of Highgate. The horror fan also killed 73-year-old Marie Harding in Worthing, Sussex, before butchering 46-year-old Kevin Molloy in Tottenham. Peter King and Koumis Constantino, 61 and 59 respectively, survived Gonzalez’s attacks.
Gonzalez was diagnosed as schizophrenic — after confessing to police that he wanted to know what it would be like to be Freddy Krueger for a day.
Metropolitan PoliceGonzalez committed suicide in prison in 2007.
“I watched horror movies and that all the time, fantasy and not real and that,” Gonzalez told detectives. “I just thought about doing it, man — what would it be like just to be maybe Freddy Krueger or something like that, just for one day.”
Prosecutor Richard Horwell claimed Gonzalez had tried to convince psychiatrists he was insane to avoid murder charges. The defendant’s mother Lesley Savage argued that her son was denied medical care for months before the attacks. She had desperately written Britain’s National Health Service (NHS) for help:
“Does my son have to commit murder to get help? Please, please, help me, this is very urgent.”
The NHS later apologized and confirmed it should have done more for Gonzalez, who was, nevertheless, sentenced to life in prison in 2006. He committed suicide by cutting his wrist with a CD case on Aug. 9, 2007.
