One of the cartoons that marked our childhood was ‘Courage, the Cowardly Dog’, because despite it being a little scary due to its bizarre nature, we ended up loving it.
The story had no great science, but it was original; it centered on Courage, a dog who lived in a lonely town in Kansas, with his owners Muriel and Justo, who constantly faced paranormal events.
This cartoon created by John R. Dilworth first premiered in 1999 on Cartoon Network and managed to take place to be one of our favorite television shows.
Courage, the Cowardly Dog’s True Story
The adventures of this scary pink character ceased to exist in 2002, leaving us with endless unresolved questions.
Fortunately, the most devoted fans broke down his story by sharing several theories about the origin of this cartoon. One that particularly caught attention was related to a real crime.
It all happened in the 50’s, when William and Margaret Patterson, a couple of grandparents, lived with their little dog in a farm within a faraway town, between New Mexico and Texas, just like the characters in the cartoon.
But this is not the only thing they have in common as they also witnessed strange, paranormal and mysterious disappearances. They would notify the police, but as in any good scary story, no one believed them.
According to some reports, the Pattersons claimed that a creature they called Skinwalker appeared before them. They were called ‘crazy’ and ‘sick’, until they disappeared.
They were last seen between March 5 and 6, 1957. The authorities knew something was wrong when they received no calls from them, so they decided to go to the farm, only to find their dog abandoned.
The Terrible Crime Behind Courage, the Cowardly Dog
So far the case remains a mystery. There are those who believe that a secret US agency took them, others believe they were abducted by aliens, and some even say that they were the victims of a serial killer.
Among all of these, the last one is the one that has the strongest evidence. There is a theory that the Pattersons died at the hands of David Parker Ray, widely known for killing at least 60 people between the late 1950s and the 1990s.
Ray committed his atrocities inside a property located in a New Mexico town, just like Margaret and William’s home. Some testimonies describe that his process was to drug his victims and put them in his caravan, already prepped so that there would be no noise (or scream) that could escape.
In the late 1990s, David Parker was arrested and in 2001, he was finally convicted with kidnapping and torture charges. For his crimes, he was given 224 years in prison, but only a year after he was incarcerated, he died of a heart attack.
The strangest thing is that despite finding him responsible for the murders, these were never proven. There was no evidence or body to incriminate him.
The creator of Courage, the Cowardly Dog never revealed the true inspiration that led him to create this cartoon; however, this story doesn’t sound so far-fetched, does it?
This story was originally published by Nayeli Párraga in Spanish by Cultura Colectiva.