There is little denying now that the Dendermonde Joker is a Heath Ledger/Joker copycat from the film The Dark Knight.
The 20-year-old accused daycare baby killer Kim de Gelder is a big fan of movies, but now sits on suicide watch. Concurrently, The Dark Knight re-opens around the world, beginning on Friday, January 23, 2009, on giant IMAX screens everywhere.
De Gelder has been variously described by former workmates as a "film freak" and "movie addict."
Joker copycats did show up before de Gelder, but the couple of incidents picked up by the media in 2008 were actually minor in nature.
Talk of a Dark Knight curse has certainly been in the air from the beginning. The Dark Knight is dedicated to both the 28-year-old Heath Ledger, who died of an accidental overdose last January 22, 2008, and Conway Wickliffe, 41, a stunt supervisor who died in a freak accident in London while setting up a car crash. Other weird deaths have been associated with the film.
On September 1, 2008, in Johannesburg, Morné Harmse, an 18-year-old pupil in his high school in South Africa allegedly killed a fellow student with a sword and then hacked up three others. Harmse wore a clown mask and carried other masks supposedly inspired by the group Slipknot. The key to our examination here is that the killer also spoke in a voice to mimic the Joker in The Dark Knight.
Thus, the level of violence of the Dendermonde Joker is acknowledged as way above all previous examples for individuals more closely mirroring The Dark Knight's Joker.
The two specific costumed Joker arrests before the Belgium stabbing attacks mostly went unnoticed because they were so mild by comparison.
In July 2008, Boing Boing told of a Joker copycat who had been arrested.
Detective Mike Mohney stated at the time that 20-year-old Spencer Taylor (above) of Three Rivers, Michigan, had been booked for investigation of larceny and malicious destruction of property. Mohney says officers who were dispatched on that early Sunday morning of July 27, 2008, to the theater to find employees restraining a man wearing a purple suit, a green wig and face paint in the style of Batman's nemesis in The Dark Knight.
On August 14, 2008, the local media in Michigan followed up by declaring that Taylor had been sentenced.
Taylor pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of malicious destruction of property. Police from Three Rivers, Centreville, Michigan, said that Taylor wore a purple suit, green wig and face paint like the Joker when he was arrested for attempting to steal the big Batman movie poster.
Spencer Taylor was sentenced to one day in jail, 16 hours of community service and fined $685. Other charges were dropped when Spencer Taylor agreed to do a plea deal.
The Joker copycat incident in Arizona around Halloween was a bit more dangerous.
A 16-year-old Palo Verde High School student was rushed to the hospital Friday, October 31, 2008 (Halloween) for serious but not life-threatening injuries after what authorities described as an accidental stabbing by a classmate.
The injuries occurred during lunch while the student, a junior, horsed around with a freshman friend, said Ross Sheard, high school chief academic officer for the Tucson Unified School District. The 15-year-old jumped on the older student's back, causing two puncture-type wounds to the older boy, Sheard said.
Classmates said that the student who accidentally stabbed his friend was dressed up like the Joker from the Batman movie The Dark Knight, and that dressing that way was not uncommon for him. He often goes by the nickname "Joker."
"He dresses up like him a lot. He does his makeup like him a lot, and that's what he goes by," said sophomore Sara Everett, 15.
"It was not a fight," he said. "It wasn't kids being knock-down, going after each other. It was horseplay that got out of control."
Afterward, the students apparently made their way to the office and asked for help, he said. About an hour and a half later, officials tracked down the knife that was used in the incident, Sheard said.
The 15-year-old had a total of three knives in his pocket — two kitchen knives and a hobby knife — and is facing charges of carrying the concealed knives, but not aggravated assault, said Sgt. Mark Robinson, a Tucson Police Department spokesman.
Sheard said it was too early to say what might happen to the 15-year-old student, but the district has a zero-tolerance policy against weapons on campus.
Police questioned the uninjured student at Palo Verde, 1302 S. Avenida Vega, near East 22nd Street and South Kolb Road.
"We're not sure how serious the injury is," Sheard said. "There was bleeding. That was the part that had everybody very concerned."
Robinson said later that the student was undergoing surgery at a local hospital.
Many students were in costume on Halloween, he said, which caused some added confusion on campus.
Have there been other copycat incidents since The Dark Knight appeared?
