What’s fact and what’s fiction in Netflix’s tale of serial killer Charles Cullen?
In Netflix’s upcoming “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs,” the main characters are the FBI agent, an ex-cop with a romantic attachment to the lead actress, a TV exec who is in the midst of a personal struggle, and, of course, a small-town sheriff and school teacher. You might not know it, but this series is based on two true events, which is how I came to find out all about the show.
A lot of people have had the idea that “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” is inspired by real people, and I did too. But, of course, there is an element of fiction mixed into this tale of murder and mayhem.
“The Ballad of Buster Scruggs” tells the story of the murder of a young man who was killed on Feb. 22, 1972, in the town of Scruggs, Texas. The killer took out a sign in the windows of his trailer saying that he was a serial killer. And it was then that he killed three people in a two-day period, killing an 80-year-old woman in her bed, an elderly woman and an 86-year-old woman in their living rooms, and then shooting himself.
The story told in the series isn’t very pleasant, but it contains enough elements from the real story to make us wonder what might have been had they known then what they know now.
What is fact and what is fiction in Netflix’s tale of serial killer Charles Cullen?
I went down to Houston, Texas, for a chance to film an episode of the show. A Texas Historical Commission executive met with me and suggested that I look into real events that took place in a town of Scruggs, about four miles northeast of the Texas capital Austin.
This town, located on Highway 59, is the kind of place that I imagine a film might be shot; it’s all the things that make Texas life exciting and a little unsettling at the same time. It was a
