For many people, horror movies are nothing more than entertainment; 90 or so minutes of terror in which they can be comforted by the fact that what they are witnessing is pure fiction.
The 2001 cult classic, Jeepers Creepers is a perfect example of this; what may at first seem as nothing more than a far-fetched story of an unidentifiable creature stalking the backroads of a country highway, preying upon passing motorists, was actually based on a gruesome true crime that occurred, with much of the case providing the backstory to the now infamous film.
Pictured: Dennis and Marilynn
In 1990, Forty-six-year-old Dennis DePue was living in Coldwater, Michigan with his forty-eight-year-old wife, Marilynn. Dennis was a property assessor and had been employed for over 20 years for the State of Michigan, at the treasury department as a tax specialist and Marilyn was a guidance counsellor at Coldwater high school.
Marilynn (Centre)
The couple had been married for 18 years and had 3 children but this marriage was not a happy one. Over the years, Marilyn had noticed that Dennis had become withdrawn and tension had arisen when Dennis began to accuse his wife of turning their children against him.
Their children however, had also noticed Dennis’ odd temperament and began to distance themselves from him. Marilyn often told friends that she was unhappy and confided in them that she had wanted a divorce. It was something she had been thinking of for a long time, and in 1989, she finally filed for one.
Dennis Depue
She told her attorney that Dennis was trying to ruin her life and would not let her make decisions on her own. He was a very controlling man and could not accept the breakdown of his marriage. He didn’t want to let Marilyn go; especially after being married for nearly 2 decades. He tried to keep the marriage intact; however, the divorce was finalised in December the same year.
Marilynn finally filed for a divorce from her husband
Dennis was granted biweekly visitation rights, but their children were often reluctant to spend time with him. He was also given access to the guest house, which he used as an office, but it was believed he used that as an excuse to maintain control over his family. Marilynn later changed the locks on the doors, but Dennis still managed to find a way to enter the home. On one occasion, Marilyn had arrived home from work, to find Dennis sitting on the couch.
On Easter Sunday, April 15, 1990, Dennis arrived at the home to pick up two of their children. Their younger daughter, Julie, had already refused to go with him. When he went inside, their son, Scott, was reluctant to go. When Marilynn tried to talk to Dennis, he became angry and began to yell at her.
He then grabbed her and pushed her down the stairs. At the bottom, he continued to beat her, even after their children pleaded with him to stop. Their oldest daughter, Jennifer, ran to a neighbour's house to call the police. Dennis then carried a seriously injured Marilynn to his car outside. He told their children that he was taking her to the hospital. They, however, never arrived there. An immediate and widespread search began for them.
Later that afternoon, a couple by the name of Ray and Marie Thorton were going on a Sunday drive down Snow Perry Road near Coldwater, when a speeding van passed them. They noticed that its licence plate began with the letters “GZ”, but did not pay much attention until a few minutes later. What’s especially interesting is that The Thornton’s were playing the license plate game like Darry and Trish in the movie, where they would try to make words and phrases out of the number plates that passed them. As the green 1984 Chevrolet truck passed them at high speed, Marie won that round of the game. The GZ on the plate made her exclaim, “Geez, he must be in a hurry”. The driver disappeared up the road and out of sight.
It wasn’t until further up the road when they passed an old, abandoned schoolhouse. Marie noticed the same truck as the one that had sped past them parked up alongside the building. Only this time, she noticed the driver carrying a sheet splattered with blood. While dumping his wife’s body, Dennis assumed that he was alone, since it was rare for anyone to drive along the isolate Michigan back roads where he was located.
The abandoned school house
The pair continued driving to find a phone and Marie wrote down what she remembered of the license plate. However, their journey was interrupted when they saw the truck coming up quickly behind them.
As they looked into the rearview mirror, it was none other than the green Chevrolet truck. The truck rode their bumper for several miles driving erratically and trying to run them off the road. Finally, Ray turned off the highway. They noticed the van pulled off to the side of the road. Marie hadn’t quite caught all of the license plate so they turned around to have another look. As they passed, a tall man wearing a white hat was standing at the back of the vehicle with the doors open, changing the number plates. He’d also left the passenger door ajar, and the interior was visibly covered in a large amount of blood. They also noticed blood on the passenger side door. They decided to return to the school, where they found the bloody sheet in an animal hole. The animal hole he’d tried to push the sheet down wasn’t large enough and when Ray and Marie went back to see what Dennis had been up to, they found it sticking out of the ground.
When police and forensics arrived on the scene, the Michigan State Police and the Sheriff’s office had already begun their manhunt for Dennis, following the call from Jennifer. The area was taped off and nearby, forensics found tyre tracks and a pool of blood. The treads would later be linked to Dennis’ truck and the blood was matched to Marilynn.
The next day, Marilynn’s body was discovered in the brush next to a quiet road, halfway between home and the schoolhouse. She’d been shot in the back of the head by her husband.
Dennis posted numerous letters to friends and family after the murder of his wife
In the days following his wife’s murder, Dennis went on the run and sent several bizarre letters to family and friends. He posted 17 letters in total, with various postmarks from across east American states; including Virginia, Iowa and Oklahoma. They were full of long rants, where he tried to justify killing Marilynn.
In one of the letters he stated “Marilynn had many, many opportunities to treat me fairly during this divorce, and she chose to string it out, trick me, lie to me, and when you lose your wife, children and home, there’s not much left. I was too old to start over.”
Dennis Depue
Three months after Marilynn’s murder, Dennis sent another letter. This time it was 13 pages in length and quoted verses from the bible and contained more rambles. This was the last of what was heard of Dennis Depue.
This case aired on an episode of Unsolved Mysteries on March 20, 1991. At 8:30pm on the night of the broadcast, one year after the murder, a woman named “Mary” arrived at her home in Dallas, Texas. She noted her boyfriend’s van sitting in the driveway, unusual because he usually kept it inside the garage.
When she went inside, her boyfriend, Hank Queen, told her that he had to leave soon because his mother was sick. Hank kept an interested eye on the Unsolved Mysteries episode playing on the TV, as he gathered up his clothes and personal items and packed them into a suitcase. He asked her to make him some sandwiches in the kitchen, a ploy to keep her distracted so she would not see the show — the second half of which featured a man named Dennis Depue wanted for the murder of his ex-wife. Hank left a few minutes later in his van. As he waved goodbye, the woman had a suspicious feeling that she would never see him again.
Dennis was seen putting false licence plates on his vehicle
Mary’s friend was the one to call into the hotline, reporting her friend’s boyfriend as Dennis DePue. She gave the operator his license plate number; this number turned out to be the false licence plate number that law enforcement already had for Dennis Depue. Mary and her friend were able to provide information as to where they thought Dennis may be headed.
It took Dennis four frantic hours to drive into Louisiana then across the Mississippi state border. Louisiana state troopers had spotted his van, and he led them on a 15-mile high-speed chase, refusing to be pulled over after he broke through 2 police barriers. Warren County Sheriff, Paul Barrett, told his team to shoot out the truck’s tyres if they couldn’t stop Dennis, and they succeeded, hitting both back wheels.
Dennis’ truck following the shootout with police
Dennis managed to drive on the rims for half a mile before the car eventually gave up and stopped just before 4am. He shot at officers with his gun, with two going through the windscreen and one through an open window. He then turned the gun around and shot himself.
Dennis was buried at Eagle Cemetery in Lagrange County, Indiana, far away from his wife’s final resting place in Oakland County, Michigan.
Dennis Depue’s grave
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