David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks,” one of the best TV shows made by movie directors, set the standard for surrealist TV, lending the legendary director’s distinctive vision to an enduring murder mystery. What fans may not realize is that the series was inspired by two real-life murder cases.
One of these cases had a close connection to series co-creator Mark Frost. The “Twin Peaks” executive producer has revealed that the series took inspiration from the horrific murder of his friend’s older sister, as well as the murder of Hazel Drew in 1908, which even provided the series with its central image of a body discovered in the water.
“Twin Peaks,” one of our favorite TV shows from the ’90s, picks up with the discovery of a dead body on a riverbank by the Washington town of Twin Peaks. The body is soon identified as that of teenager Laura Palmer. As investigations into the murder begin, it emerges that while Laura led a seemingly perfect life as her high school’s prom queen, dating the football captain, she was secretly cheating on her boyfriend and engaging in various illegal activities. The murder mystery dips into the fantastical as FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) receives cryptic visions through his dreams, leading him to uncover a supernatural killer.
Twin Peaks’ Mark Frost recalled the murders behind the series
It took a season and a half for the mystery of Laura Palmer’s murder to be resolved, with the “Twin Peaks” creators disagreeing about it — David Lynch initially wanting to keep the murder unsolved and Mark Frost convincing him otherwise. In an interview with The Guardian, Frost discussed the real-life criminal cases that sparked the creation of “Twin Peaks.”
“The germ of ‘Twin Peaks’ came from a couple of places,” Frost said. “In middle school, the older sister of one of my closest friends was brutally murdered at a boarding school in Vancouver by an escaped convict, and it was a devastating experience for the family.” He went on to recall the impact the tragic event had had on him: “I was about 14. She was a year older than me and I had a crush on her. It was a devastating experience for me, too.”
Frost also remembered being told the story of Hazel Drew’s murder “for years” by his grandmother. Speaking to The Washington Post, Frost called his grandmother’s retelling of events “a cautionary ghost story.” In the Guardian interview, he noted that his grandmother had told him about two lumberjacks who “were convinced they’d seen [Drew’s] ghost.” Drew’s body was found in Teal’s Pond in Upstate New York, near where the producer lived in his youth. “So the image of the girl lying in the water on the edge of the lake was the key,” Frost said of the story.
