04/06/2026
Candyman may be fictitious, but one real murder did help inspire the classic film's horrors. Though the events of Candyman may seem like they could never happen in real life, one story suggests otherwise: the tragic murder of Ruthie Mae McCoy, a lonely, mentally ill resident of the ABLA homes on Chicago’s South Side.
On the night of April 22, 1987, a terrified Ruthie called 911 to request help from the police. She told the dispatcher that someone in the apartment next door was trying to come through her bathroom mirror. “They throwed the cabinet down,” she said, confusing the dispatcher, who thought she must be crazy.
What the dispatcher didn’t know is that McCoy was right. Narrow passages between apartments allowed maintenance workers easy access, but they also became a popular way for burglars to break in by pushing the bathroom cabinet out of the wall.
Although a neighbor reported gunshots coming from McCoy’s apartment, police chose not to break down the door due to the risk of being sued by residents had they done so. When a building superintendent finally drilled the lock two days later, he discovered McCoy’s body face-down on the floor, shot four times.
The movie contains several elements of this sad tale. Candyman’s first confirmed victim is Ruthie Jean, a Cabrini-Green resident murdered by someone who came through her bathroom mirror. Like Ruthie McCoy, neighbors, including the coincidentally-named Ann Marie McCoy, saw Ruthie Jean as “crazy.”
And like Ruthie McCoy, Ruthie Jean called the police, only to die alone and without help.
No one is quite sure how the details of McCoy’s murder ended up in the movie. It’s possible that director Bernard Rose learned of McCoy’s murder after deciding to shoot his movie in Chicago. It’s also been suggested that John Malkovich had an interest in making a movie about the story, and shared the details with Rose. Either way, the case became part of the true story behind Candyman.
