The Real-Life Crime That Inspired Nicolas Cage’s Longlegs

Osgood Perkins’ 2024 horror thriller “Longlegs” is like watching three or four episodes of “The X-Files” simultaneously. The film’s protagonist, FBI Agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe), has vague psychic powers that she is using to apprehend a mysterious serial killer. The killer, nicknamed Longlegs (Nicolas Cage), has a very peculiar M.O. Every so often, a local family will be violently murdered by one of its members, and the murderer will then take their own life. A note will then be found at the crime scene, written in Longlegs’ handwriting, taking credit for the killing. Longlegs also seems to target families with nine-year-old girls who were born on or around the 14th of the month. 

As the film progresses, other eerie clues arise. Harker finds a life-size child doll in an attic, and it has a mysterious metal orb hidden inside. What is going on? Later on, viewers will learn that Harker has a strange personal connection to Longlegs. The doll will also end up playing a particular, Satanic function in the Longlegs murders, as it is somehow being used to channel dark mental energies into victims’ homes. It’s never very clearly explained, but it’s all ghostly and terrifying. Many critics loved “Longlegs” for its free-floating eeriness, and for Perkins’ nightmarish sense of style. Never mind that the story doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. 

It seems that the life-size dolls were inspired by a well-known murder case from the 1990s. In an interview with Inverse, Perkins admitted that he looked into the infamous murder of JonBenét Ramsey, the six-year-old pageant contestant who was found dead in her home on December 26, 1996. The detail of the case he found weirdest: Ramsey was murdered in her basement, only 15 feet from a life-size doll of herself.

At the time, many people assumed that JonBenét Ramsey was murdered by her family, and there was evidence of rather horrific violence and sexual assault. As the investigation wore on over the course of the next several years, DNA evidence exonerated any family members. Reports all stated that the Ramseys engaged in notorious, arguably ethical “pageant parent” behavior, however, which drew suspicion from the public. The doll, meanwhile, was considered by many to be an odd and creepy detail. One of the Christmas presents Ramsey’s parents were aiming to give her that year was a life-size duplicate of herself, dressed in a notable pageant outfit that Ramsey actually wore.

Perkins latched onto that detail, and kept it in his mind. When he was writing “Longlegs,” he recalled that detail quite sharply. Perkins decided to fold it into his serial killer narrative in an ineffably magical way. Perkins didn’t recreate any of the other details of the Ramsey killing, but that doll just wouldn’t leave his imagination. He said: 

“With voodoo dolls, if you want to inflict power on someone, you make a doll of them, and you poke it. […] Puppets, effigies, sculptures, statues, dolls — that was all in the magic of the world I wanted to create. The [Ramsey] murder took place approaching Christmas, and one present that the parents had gotten for JonBenét was a life-size replica doll of herself, wearing one of her pageant dresses. It was in a cardboard box in the basement, 15 feet from where she was killed, and there was something so insane about that, I’d cataloged it away.”

To this day, the Ramsey murder remains officially unsolved, although there have been many theories. Had she lived, Ramsey would be turning 35 this year. Her death, as we see from “Longlegs,” still lingers in the American consciousness.