From Creepy Coincidences To Eerily Similar Deaths — 11 Terrifying Things That Happened During Or After The Filming Of These Iconic Horror Movies
Cut to 2001, Kenneth Dean Hunt — a handyman — was convicted of “killing two women, including an actress who was a body double for Janet Leigh in the film Psycho.” The body double in question, Myra Davis — was simply a stand-in to test lighting angles — not to appear in nude scenes. The press quickly reported that “Myra Davis” was the nude body double, Marli Renfro’s true identity.
However, Graysmith wasn’t content with the media’s narrative and began investigating the story even further. In December 2007, Davis’s granddaughter, Sherry, admitted her confusion regarding her grandmother’s supposed shower scene. “My grandmother would never have done any nude work,” she claimed.
Graysmith’s solo investigation later revealed that Myra Davis and Marli Renfro were, in fact, two entirely separate people. And Renfro — Leigh’s actual nude body double — was still alive.
In the book The Girl in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shower, Graysmith suggested that Kenneth Dean Hunt was a Psycho fanatic who set out to kill Leigh’s body double — without realizing he murdered the stand-in by mistake. “Everyone confused them,” Graysmith explained, “even a murderer. I discovered Marli was still alive. It turns out she’s been so busy fishing in Utah, hiking in Alaska, swimming with dolphins in Florida and generally living life to the full that she had no idea she was meant to be dead.”
The scene, which was filmed at night — and therefore a direct violation of child labor laws in the first place — called for Morrow’s character to carry his two children out of an abandoned village and flee across a river. At the same time, American soldiers were supposed to be “chasing” them in a hovering helicopter. An actual Vietnam veteran, Dorcey Wingo, was piloting the helicopter during the scene.
While hovering close to a large explosive effect, Wingo positioned the aircraft close to the ground and then turned it 180 degrees for the following shot. The special effect was detonated while the helicopter’s tail rotor was flying directly above it, and a metal lid from the explosion struck the rotor, causing the aircraft to spin out of control. At the ensuing trial, the defense claimed the special effect had been detonated prematurely.
The three actors on the ground could not escape the plummeting aircraft or its blades and were killed instantly. Chen was crushed to death by the right landing skid, and the helicopter’s still-spinning blades decapitated both Morrow and Le. The New York Times reported that the helicopter sequence was both “poorly planned” and “badly rehearsed.” Between 1986 and 1987, an investigation was conducted surrounding the events of the ill-fated scene, and five members of the crew — including Dorcey Wingo — were tried for manslaughter and later acquitted.
The strangest part of the entire situation? Nine years earlier, in 1973, Morrow insisted on having a life insurance policy while filming any scenes in which he had to ride in a helicopter. When asked why he was so hesitant towards this type of scene, it was reported that Morrow replied, “I have always had a premonition I was going to die in a helicopter crash!”
