Unsolved Mysteries: Did Jeepers Creepers take inspiration from real events?

Volume 4 of Unsolved Mysteries was released on Netflix on July 31, 2024. With five new episodes, the true crime series returned with several cases that remain unsolved. Volume 5 of the series is already in production and will be released in October 2024.

Over the decades, Unsolved Mysteries has fascinated viewers with its dramatization of many intriguing real-life cases. One of these cases, from 1990, inspired the 2001 film Jeepers Creepers.

Jeepers Creepers is a supernatural horror that does not subscribe to much realism. And yet, the real-life case of Dennis DePue is the inspiration behind the film. In fact, the opening segment of the film references the witnesses’ description of DePue’s actions. Incidentally, the case was also featured in one of the episodes of Unsolved Mysteries in March 1991.

How is Dennis DePue connected to Jeepers Creepers?

In March 1991, Unsolved Mysteries aired an episode about Dennis DePue, who was still at large one year after killing his wife. It was after the episode aired that his then-girlfriend’s friend alerted the police about his whereabouts. What was DePue’s crime?

On April 15, 1990, Ray and Marie Thornton saw something strange while driving down a deserted Snow Perry Road in Coldwater, Michigan. They came across a green 1984 Chevrolet truck whose driver was quite aggressive on the road.

Later on, they came across the same truck, this time outside a school. The driver appeared to be pushing something wrapped in a blood-stained cloth down a hole in the ground. The Thorntons immediately sensed something was wrong and wanted to alert the police.

It turned out that the driver they came across had killed his wife that morning and was trying to dispose of the body somewhere. They were divorced, and that morning, they got into an argument since their children did not want to spend time with their father, and DePue blamed his wife for allegedly turning the children against him.

DePue killed her in front of his children and carried off her body. An alert from the neighborhood was immediately issued to the police, which was only updated by the Thorntons’ report about DePue’s latest whereabouts.

As a result, a long manhunt for the killer began. DePue was successful in evading the police until Unsolved Mysteries presented an episode on him one year after the crime. A friend of his girlfriend’s informed the police about him. Cornered, he killed himself after trying to run away.

The Thorntons’ eyewitness account was dramatized in the Unsolved Mysteries episode, starting from how they came across DePue’s truck to how they saw him trying to bury the body somewhere. It is this bit of the DePue case as represented in Unsolved Mysteries that inspired Jeepers Creepers, which is otherwise a work of pure fiction.

The opening shots of Jeepers Creepers closely resemble the shots in Unsolved Mysteries that portray the Thorntons’ account. In the horror film, two siblings, Trish and Darry, stumble upon a terrifying truck while driving down an isolated road. They also see the driver pushing a body down a large pipe leading into the ground.

While the Unsolved Mysteries episode is strictly based on the real-life case of DePue, Jeepers Creepers only uses the introductory segment and then weaves a supernatural tale of its own.

Jeepers Creepers is a terrifying classic with an even more disturbing off-screen event

Gina Philips as Trish Jenner in Jeepers Creepers (Image via MGM Distribution Co.)

The terrifying real-life case of Dennis DePue, as depicted in an Unsolved Mysteries episode, is not the only disturbing story associated with Jeepers Creepers. The director of the film, Victor Salva, has enough terrifying biographical records of his own.

A report published by the Los Angeles Times on June 11, 2006, highlighted several s*xual assault charges against Salva. In 1988, he was accused of molesting 12-year-old Nathan Forrest Winters, who was playing a role in one of his films then.

This is just one of the multiple allegations against Salva. He served 15 months in prison before being released in 1989.

The report states that, with patrons like the legendary director Francis Ford Coppola, Salva did not have to struggle much to get back to making movies. However, with a rise in awareness of his shady past, things have gotten difficult for him.

While the monster in Jeepers Creepers is a fantastical creature who is the result of creative imagination, the case of Dennis DePue only acts as a prologue to the tale. However, whether on or off-screen, the classic horror film’s legacy is haunted by several disturbing elements.