Posted 1 hour agoSubscribe to That Got Dark NewsletterCaret Down27 True-Crime-Meets-Pop-Culture Moments People Still To This Day Cannot Believe Actually Happened"John Hinckley Jr. shooting the President to impress Jodie Foster. It sounds like a Mad Lib."by Crystal RoBuzzFeed StaffFacebookPinterestLink A while back, Reddit user lammastide posed the question, "What is a true crime/pop culture moment that makes you go I can't believe that f*cking happened?" to the folks over at r/popculturechat. Many people in our BuzzFeed Community also had moments they wanted to add, too. Here are their shocking, tragic, and truly dark combined responses: Warning: Mentions of sexual assault, murder, and suicide ahead. 1. "Paul Bateson, the murderer cast in the movie The Exorcist. The radiographer was hired as an extra in the film, and his scene is one of the most horrific. He was convicted of murder just a few years later. He is a suspected serial killer, even inspiring a movie about a serial killer called Cruising in 1980." Warner Bros. -kerriwilsonWhat happened: Paul Bateson was a radiology technician who appeared briefly in The Exorcist before becoming notorious for the 1977 murder of film journalist Addison Verrill. He was cast in The Exorcist after director William Friedkin visited NYU Medical Center to observe a real angiography procedure and was so impressed that he hired Bateson and the team to perform the scene for his film. In 1977, Bateson met Verrill at a Greenwich Village bar, went home with him, and later killed him, leading to a conviction for second-degree murder. While in jail, he allegedly hinted he had killed other men connected to the unsolved "bag murders," though no evidence ever linked him to those crimes. His case, and Friedkin's jailhouse conversations with him, inspired the director's 1980 film Cruising, about violence against gay men in New York's leather scene. 2. "The unsolved murder of Bob Crane (Hogan's Heroes) is kind of a creepy story." Silver Screen Collection / Getty Images -kbbpllWhat happened: Bob Crane, best known as the star of the 1960s World War II sitcom Hogan's Heroes, was found bludgeoned to death in his Scottsdale, Arizona, apartment on June 29, 1978, in a case that remains unsolved. Crane, who had a long-documented history of videotaping his sexual encounters, often did so with the help of his friend John Carpenter, a video equipment salesman. Carpenter quickly became the prime suspect after blood matching Crane's type was found in his rental car, but with limited forensic technology and conflicting evidence, he was acquitted when the case finally went to trial in 1994. No one else has ever been charged. 3. "John Hinckley Jr. shooting the President to impress Jodie Foster. It sounds like a Mad Lib." Donaldson Collection / Getty Images, Dirck Halstead / Getty Images -PrettyGoblinWhat happened: On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley Jr. attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan. Hinckley shot Reagan as he left a Hilton Hotel in Washington, DC, and also wounded a police officer, Secret Service agent, and critically White House Press Secretary James Brady who became paralyzed and died as a result of his injuries in 2014. Famously, Hinckley said his motive was to "impress" actress Jodie Foster, whom he'd become obsessed with after seeing her in the film Taxi Driver. In fact, even before shooting Reagan, Hinckley had spent some time stalking Foster, hand-delivering her letters and calling her.
Hinckley was released from institutional psychiatric care in 2016, and then fully "released without conditions" in 2022. 4. "An episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm was used to prove a man's innocence in court after a 16-year-old was killed. The guy was at the Dodgers stadium with his 6-year-old daughter during the time of the murder." Netflix -Rezero1234"There's an excellent short documentary about his case called Long Shot if anyone's interested!"-snoozysuzie008What happened: In August 2003, Juan Catalan was arrested for the murder of a 16-year-old girl named Martha Puebla who had been shot and killed outside of her home. Prior to her killing, Martha had testified in court against a man named Mario Catalan, which eventually led to police arresting Juan, Mario's brother (assuming revenge as a motive). However, Juan's alibi was that he had been at a Dodgers game with his daughter and some friends at the time of the murder, but it couldn't be proven. Luckily for Juan, he remembered a film crew had also been at the game shooting footage for a TV show. Indeed, a crew for Curb Your Enthusiasm was also there, filming establishing shots for an episode called "The Car Pool Lane." Juan's lawyer was able to track down footage from that night, "inspecting every person like a grain of sand," and eventually found footage of Juan (and his daughter) proving his story to be true. A judge dismissed all charges against Juan (who, by this point, had spent six months in jail awaiting trial), and a jury awarded him $320,