ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: SERIAL SERIAL KILLERS

Days of Our Lives will be celebrating the show’s 50th anniversary this fall, with a serial-killer story set to knock off several contract players and perhaps even a few returning fan favorites. (Which sounds like the opposite of a historical celebration to me. Then again, General Hospital commemorated its 52nd anniversary this past April by totally rewriting several characters’ histories, so maybe spitting in long-term fans’ eyes is the new hip thing.)

Of course, serial killers are a big part of DOOL‘s history. There was the Salem Strangler in 1981 (triggering one of soaps’ earliest fan campaigns to bring back Marlena, whom fans thought had been killed); the Salem Slasher in 1983 (not to be confused with the Riverfront Slasher of 1988), when Marlena’s cousin and others were killed by Tony’s lookalike cousin, Andre; and the Salem Stalker of 2003, when that same Marlena was believed to have killed many of her friends and neighbors. Except it wasn’t really her. It was Andre (again). And they weren’t really dead. Andre only made Marlena think she’d done it. The victims were actually being kept on a mysterious island. Yeah, you had to be there.

All of the above stories were great for DOOL‘s ratings, meaning other soaps inevitably jumped on the bandwagon. Check out some of those most memorable daytime serial-killer stories at Entertainment Weekly!