Surrealist filmmaker David Lynch, who handed away on Jan. 15, 2025, at age 78, leaves behind one of the distinctive filmographies of any director in cinematic historical past, releasing 10 function movies between 1977 and 2006. However arguably Lynch’s hottest contribution to well-liked tradition wasn’t a movie in any respect, however a TV present: Twin Peaks. Premiering on ABC in 1990 earlier than being abruptly canceled after its second season in 1991, the supernatural thriller collection facilities on FBI agent Dale Cooper’s (Kyle MacLachlan) investigation into the homicide of native promenade queen Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) in a small Washington city.
The collection grew to become an prompt popular culture phenomenon, spawning a polarizing prequel movie, an acclaimed third season launched on Showtime in 2017, and numerous different media, from books to music. However, regardless of the present’s immense recognition, many viewers won’t know that its premise was impressed by real-life occasions. Certainly, collection co-creator Mark Frost based mostly the story of Laura Palmer on the 1908 homicide of 20-year-old Hazel Drew in Sand Lake, New York. However, whereas ABC controversially compelled Frost and Lynch to disclose Laura’s killer, Hazel’s homicide remained unsolved for over a century — till two Twin Peaks followers determined to research the thriller themselves.
Who Impressed Laura Palmer?
In accordance with a 2017 Washington Put up article by Twin Peaks followers David Bushman and Mark Givens, Frost’s inspiration for Laura Palmer got here from tales he heard as a toddler from his grandmother throughout his many summer season holidays in Taborton, New York. Frost’s grandmother warned him that the close by woods had been haunted by the ghost of a lady who was killed close to Sand Lake, a city which carefully neighbors Taborton. That native legend was so deeply embedded in Frost’s reminiscence that, a number of a long time later, he would recount it to David Lynch in an LA espresso store as they mentioned concepts for his or her new present.
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As he and Lynch started growing Twin Peaks, Frost traveled to town corridor in Sand Lake to do extra analysis on Hazel’s homicide. He discovered that, shortly after her dying, authorities unearthed a secret stash of postcards and letters that Hazel had locked away in a trunk (which, as Bushman and Givens be aware, foreshadows Cooper’s discovery of Laura’s diary in Twin Peaks). It turned out that, like Laura, Hazel had hid a whole double life from her household, throughout which she was romantically or sexually linked to a number of native males in and round Sand Lake.
Many of those males, in addition to Hazel’s members of the family, would function the templates upon which Frost and Lynch based mostly the present’s memorable solid of characters, corresponding to an area millionaire who ran a resort that allegedly hosted orgies (like Twin Peaks‘ Ben Horne and his clandestine brothel, One-Eyed Jack’s).
Who Killed Hazel Drew?
Although Bushman and Givens shut out their Washington Put up article by conceding that the reality about Hazel’s homicide “could lie without end past our grasp,” they’d drastically change their tune 5 years later. In 2022, they launched a e book entitled Homicide at Teal’s Pond: Hazel Drew and the Thriller That Impressed Twin Peaks, through which they claimed to have discovered the possible id of Hazel’s killer — or killers.
Sure, in accordance with the New York Put up, the e book implicates not one, however two males: Fred W. Schatzle and William Cushing. Each males knew Hazel and admitted to the police that they’d collectively secured a carriage to Sand Lake the night time of Hazel’s homicide. Not solely that, however a married couple advised police that they’d encountered a fancy-looking carriage by Teal’s Pond, the physique of water the place Hazel’s physique was later discovered, on that exact same night time. The couple reported that, as they handed, the driving force turned his again on them, as if to keep away from being acknowledged, whereas one other determine might be seen on the shore of the pond, near the place Hazel’s belongings had been later discovered.
Nevertheless, regardless of the couple’s insistence that they might determine each thriller figures, the police by no means confirmed them any photos of Schatzle and Cushing, and so they had been ultimately dropped as suspects. Though the coroner later concluded that Hazel died by suicide, the authors are strongly satisfied that Schatzle and Cushing had been the probably culprits.
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A Younger Girl’s Homicide Masks the Misdeeds of Older Males
- Launch Date
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Could 23, 1990
- Finale 12 months
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November 30, 2016
- Seasons
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2
As to the lads’s motives, Bushman and Givens have a moderately sinister concept. Shortly earlier than her dying, Hazel was employed as a housekeeper by a number of highly effective Republican males within the metropolis, together with the previous treasurer who stepped down after a scandal. Moreover, along with the trunk filled with postcards and letters, a journalist later discovered a hatbox filled with payments and receipts indicating that Hazel had been taking menstrual capsules, presumably to induce a miscarriage.
This proof, the e book argues, means that Hazel might need been murdered to hide a possible intercourse scandal for one among her influential former employers, with Schatzle and Cushing being employed to hold it out. The authors even posit that the police detectives’ personal involvement in Republican politics might need incentivized them to not examine the city’s Republican officers. Because the NY Put up sums up, “Each Hazel Drew and Laura Palmer had been small-town beauties whose murders uncovered the ugly misdeeds of rich, outstanding locals.”
The connection between Twin Peaks and the homicide that impressed it’s a fascinating case of life imitating artwork — and vice versa. An actual-life homicide impressed a fictional TV present, whereas, in flip, the present led to the actual homicide being solved. Twin Peaks, then, is not only a tribute to the expertise of its late co-creator, but in addition to the younger girl with out whose story the present would not exist. Could they each relaxation in peace.
All three seasons of Twin Peaks may be streamed on Paramount+, whereas Twin Peaks: Hearth Stroll with Me (1992) is accessible on the Criterion Channel and on Max by way of the hyperlink under:
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