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 Brad Falchuk, Ryan Murphy, 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, narrating stories about firefighters, police officers, and paramedics.

Featuring Angela Bassett, Jennifer Love Hewitt, and others, 9-1-1 has had eight seasons so far, since it started airing in 2018. The show focuses on a number of high-stakes emergencies and often includes bizarre and peculiar incidents. However, the show’s steady stream of episodes often require inspiration from real-life events, and there is one unsettling episode in the first season that is inspired by a case which happened in 1947.

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9-1-1: Trapped — An unsettling episode with origins in a decades-old case

The show 9-1-1 often has to rely on real events to create narratives for its episodes. It is a fact that truth 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 provide fodder for procedural shows like 9-1-1.

One such episode, in the first season, is called Trapped, and it features a bizarre case that viewers would find it surprising to know has its origins in a real-life incident from 1947.

Trapped is a segment where the emergencies are smaller in nature, and the show's focus is on presenting viewers with multiple situations where people are trapped. From a mother and son stuck in a flooding elevator to a homeless man stuck in a garbage truck, the 9-1-1 episode titled Trapped features several situations with people are stuck.

In one incident shown on 9-1-1, the 118 unit arrives at a house occupied by two brothers, Winslow and Cecil Farrier. Winslow is stuck beneath a heap of hoarded items. Cecil explains that the avalanche happened because the pair triggered a booby-trap. Bizarrely, the house was full of hoarded items and the Farrier brothers had set booby traps to avoid outside visitors. The rescue team finally extricates them safely.

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

These booby-traps, however, led to tragedy. As the brothers’ house was filled with valuables and family treasures, they had set up booby traps for protecting the items. After triggering off a trap, the brothers had died under an avalanche of such items. Interestingly, the case revealed that Langley Collyer only ventured out for work at night, and stayed by his brother Homer throughout the day, as the latter was dependent on him. Unfortunately, first Homer’s body was found, and then Langley’s.

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

The likeness 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 provide ample content. Furthermore, the 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 is a reference to the Miami cannibal attack. Under Pressure, about a prankster who gets his head caught inside a microwave, is also based on a shocking, true event.

Therefore, the long-running procedural has many episodes that have been taken from real-life instances.

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