The killer, a Welsh carpenter named Robert Williams, believed that Chaney’s unnerving depiction of a near-supernatural killer in the film had driven him insane. It was reported that Williams could see Chaney in a corner, shouting and making faces at him and that he felt as if steam were coming out of his own ears.
Williams seemed to think he had been set into a dissociative
state by this apparition because he could not remember pulling a razor from his pocket and slitting Mangan’s throat or attempting then to take his own life.
The defense attempted to pin his unhinging on the disturbing visage Chaney donned for his character in London After Midnight, but the jury didn’t buy it: They sentenced Williams to death on January 10, 1929.
