9-1-1: One of the most unsettling episodes of the procedural draws from a shocking 1947 NYC case

9-1-1 is a procedural drama created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Tim Minear. The show is a part of the 9-1-1 franchise and focuses on the personal and professional lives of first responders in Los Angeles. The show covers everything from firefighters, police officers, and paramedics. Featuring Angela Bassett, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and others, 9-1-1, has eight seasons till now and has been airing since 2018. The show focuses on a number of high-stakes emergencies and often includes bizarre and peculiar incidents as well. However, the show’s steady stream of episodes often require inspiration from real-life events and there is one unsettling episode from the show’s first season, which takes its inspiration from a case that happened all the way back in 1947.

9-1-1 “Trapped”: An unsettling episode has origins in a decades-old peculiar case

The show 9-1-1, often has to rely on real events to fund its steady flow of episodes. The fact is, that reality is often stranger than fiction and therefore supplies procedural shows with some of the most astonishing content. There have been many real-life incidents and crimes that make for perfect fodder for procedural shows like 9-1-1. Therefore, when the show’s first season aired, there was an episode called “Trapped”, which featured a bizarre case that viewers would find it surprising to know has its origins in a real-life case from 1947.

“Trapped” is a segment where the emergencies are smaller in nature and the show focuses on presenting viewers with multiple situations where people are being trapped. From a mother and son stuck in a flooding elevator to a homeless man getting stuck in a garbage truck, 9-1-1’s “Trapped” features a variety of situations with people being stuck.

One such instance happens when the 118 unit arrives at a house being occupied by two brothers, Winslow and Cecil Farrier, where Winslow is stuck beneath a mountain of hoarded possessions. Cecil explains that the avalanche happened because the pair triggered a booby-trap. Bizarrely, the house of the Farrier brothers was found to be hoarded by possessions and that led to many booby traps being set into place to avoid outside visitors. The episode has a happy ending as the rescue team extricates them safely.

However, the 9-1-1 case is based on a peculiar real-life incident from 1947 and that did not have a happy ending. On March 21, 1947, New York City police received a tip from a man called Charles Smith, who informed that he had found foul smell and that had led him to the discovery of two bodies. When the cops arrived, they found an extraordinary scene. The inhabitants of the address were two brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, who became reclusive when Homer lost his eyesight. According to rumors from locals, their home had many luxury goods, which led to multiple break-ins. Therefore, the Collyers tried to booby-trap their entire house.

However, these booby-traps led to tragedy as the brothers’ house was filled with trash, valuables, family treasures, and the brothers had died under all this rubble, when they triggered a trap of theirs. Interestingly, the case revealed that Langley only ventured out at night for his work and throughout the day, stayed by his brother Homer’s side and the brothers therefore had a co-dependent relationship. Unfortunately, first Homer’s body was found and then Langley’s.

9-1-1 has a history of borrowing from real-life cases

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The overlap between the Collyer brothers’ case and the Farrier siblings’ case is not the only instance when the show got inspired from real-life incidents. As mentioned above, procedurals like 9-1-1 require a lot of content and the happenings of the real-world offer provide ample of content. Further, the show’s first seasons’ emergencies were smaller in scale, which could be easily inspired from real-life occurrences. For example, in the episode, “Karma’s a Bitch”, there’s a reference to the Miami cannibal attack. In “Under Pressure”, the prankster who cements his head inside a microwave is also shockingly based on a true event. Therefore, the long-running procedural has many episodes that have been taken from real-life instances.

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