If you don’t know who Hannibal Lecter is, you either don’t like serial killer stories, don’t like horror movies, or don’t read. There’s also the chance that the thriller genre isn’t for you, and that’s okay. Still, considering you clicked on this story, true crime and thrillers are up your alley. So here’s a good and terrifying question. Was Hannibal Lecter, a terrifying fictional serial killer, based on a true story?

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Who is Hannibal Lecter?

To start, let’s have a quick recap of precisely who Hannibal Lecter is. I am a massive fan of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) film, and I didn’t know that the movie was based on a book by Thomas Harris in 1981 called Red Dragon.

Of course, it was a psychological horror novel that followed FBI profiler Will Graham. This tied perfectly into The Silence of the Lamb, written by Thomas Harris and Ted Tally and directed by Jonathan Demme.

The movie follows closely to the book but changes things up, like Clarice Starling, a young female FBI cadet on a case about a madman and serial killer who skins his victims. To catch this killer, she has to get the help of an already incarcerated and manipulative killer who is an admitted cannibal, and that killer is none other than Hannibal Lecter.

Of course, that movie was thought to be a work of fiction. It starred amazing actors like Anthony Heald as Dr Frederick Chilton, Anthony Hopkins as Dr. Hannibal Lector, Brooke Smith as Catherine Martine, Frankie Faison as Barney, Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling, Kasi Lemmons as Ardelia Mapp, Scott Glenn as Jack Crawford, Stuart Rudin as Miggs, and Ted Levine as Jame Gumb.

Enough about the movie and the book, though. Let’s look at Dr Hannibal Lector, a forensic psychologist later discovered to be a serial killer. As a sociopath, he was incredibly skilled in masking his behaviour and tendencies. He was able to appear like any average person. The fact that he understood serial killers deeply also tied in with how he could go undiscovered for a while.

Sociopaths are usually incredibly charismatic, and the same was true for Hannibal Lector, if you manage to look past the fact that he had a tendency to kill and then eat people, he portrayed himself as the perfect gentleman, something that the 2013 TV drama Hannibal (starring Mads Mikkelsen as the man himself) was really able to portray.

While it’s undeniable that many of the more horrible aspects of this fictional serial killer were pure fiction, they say that life imitates art. Art often does the same and imitates art. Most fictional characters are based on some aspect of reality. While it can be argued that Hannibal Lecter was based on a conglomeration, a legion, if you will, of killers, it seems that there might have been one inspiration that really left an impression on Thomas Harris.

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The Convicted Killer That Inspired Hannibal Lecter

Thomas Harris has said that his creation, Hannibal Lecter, was a composite of many real-life serial killers. Still, one prisoner in particular left a long-lasting impression on the writer.

Few know that Thomas Harris was a journalist during the early years of his writing career in the 1960s, and one of the cases he was writing about required him to travel to a prison in Mexico for a highly sought-after interview with imprisoned killer Dykes Askew Simmons.

When he arrived, Harris was received by a gentleman named Dr Salazar, who seemed to be tending to the wounded Dykes Askew Simmons in the prison. Ironically, Dr. Salazar started asking more questions than Harris, and the roles of interviewee and interviewer were almost reversed.

He was incredibly insightful and had opinions and ideas about Simmons’ victims that Harris described as both intellectual and gruesome. Harris remarked that the questions that this doctor was asking and the way that he held himself was incredibly astute and that he seemed like an incredibly well-learned doctor. I’m sure you have realised why we have spent so much time on this random prison doctor…

Like the thriller twists that Harris would come to write in the future, it turned out that Dr. Salazar wasn’t actually a doctor… Well, that’s not entirely true, but he definitely wasn’t a doctor on the prison staff, and his name wasn’t Dr. Salazar.

The man in question was a former medical surgeon incarcerated at a prison in Mexico for murder. While he had played the role of Simmons’ doctor perfectly, he was, in fact, Alfredo Ballí Treviño.

Further investigation revealed him to have been a highly intelligent and skilled surgeon in Mexico and a homosexual. Of course, homosexuality has only recently become more widely accepted in North America, and the sentiment was the same in Mexico when he committed his crime.

[Content warning: the following section contains information about real murders committed in the 1950s and 1960s and details themes of dismemberment. Reader Discretion is advised; please proceed with caution.]

Treviño tried his best to fit in with mainstream society, and this really angered his same-sex partner. In a fit of anger, he killed his partner. His clinical precision came forth in how he attempted to dispose of the body, “slicing his victim into a myriad of intricate pieces and burying them”. The pieces were found, and he was convicted of the murder. Still, the terrifying part is that the method of killing and disposing of the body was linked to similar murders of several hitchhikers during the 1950s and the 1960s. Still, his involvement in those crimes was never proven.

In conclusion, while Hannibal Lecter was inspired by many killers that Thomas Harris researched, Alfredo Ballí Treviño left a lasting impression and inspired how Hannibal Lecter dismembered his victims. However, the part about eating them was fictional. Both the fictional killer and natural killer were doctors, although their fields were different, with the former being a forensic psychologist and the latter being a surgeon. Both men had impeccable taste and the manners and behaviour of a gentleman despite the situation that they were in. Also, thanks to their sociopathic natures, both had the skills to put on whatever persona they wanted.

While Hannibal Lecter has left a mark on fictional history that rivals that of some real-life killers like Jack the Ripper, it’s terrifying to think that his character was inspired by true stories.

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Did you know that Hannibal Lecter was inspired by a true story?

The Chilling True Story About The Real Life Hannibal Lecter Written by Megan Oosthuizen for Fortress of Solitude