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Cheryl Andrews was a Millennium Group member and a medical doctor who helped the Seattle Police Department. (MM: "The Judge") She later betrayed the Millennium Group and threatened to kill retired FBI Agent Frank Black, a member of the group. (MM: "The Hand of Saint Sebastian")
History[]
Assisting Body Parts Investigation[]
In 1996, Lieutenant Bob Bletcher asked Cheryl Andrews to examine a severed human tongue which had been mailed, anonymously and without explanation, to a middle-aged widow.
While Lieutenant Bletcher, Jim Penseyres and Frank Black watched, Andrews carried out the procedure in a morgue. All four were aware that three other people had received severed body parts over the last four years. In her examination of the tongue, Andrews determined that it had been removed after the victim's death, unlike the other body parts, and that the instrument used to remove it had been more blunt and less skillfully applied than instruments previously used. Andrews doubted that her discovery related to rage or loss of control as the cuts had simply been made with imprecision, not unusual aggression. She believed that the pattern change could be accounted for if the victim had died before the killer had meant for them to die, or if the killer had been interrupted in their work.
Andrews directs Lieutenant Bob Bletcher and Detective Bob Giebelhouse to a cranberry farm in Chalen County.
Later, a severed human leg was found in the Federal Office Building in downtown Seattle. Frank Black took a soil sample from a sock found on the leg and Cheryl Andrews later analysed the sample. She searched through a database to find an identical sample and later informed Detective Bletcher that the soil was probably from a bog. The soil contained cranberry seeds but no herbicide or pesticide, suggesting that it was from a shut down cranberry farm that had been out of production for a couple of years. When Bletcher called Detective Bob Giebelhouse to enter the office, Cheryl asked both men if they were familiar with Chelan County. When Detective Bletcher replied positively, Andrews announced her suspicion that they could probably limit the origin of the soil to a few specific sites with the help of a topographical map.
As the amputee could still be alive, a task force was immediately organized to search for him. The body was found but the victim was already dead.
Back at the morgue, Cheryl Andrews and a pathologist named Curt Massey examined the remains of the body while Frank Black, Jim Penseyres and Detectives Bletcher, Giebelhouse and Teeple watched. Andrews told Detective Bletcher that the victim had died not long ago, estimating two hours or less. When Pathologist Massey noted that the victim had been kept alive by using an improvised tourniquet, Andrews added that he had used his own belt. (MM: "The Judge")
Helping Investigate Disappearances of Male Teenagers[]
In January 1997, Frank Black investigated the disappearance of teenager Josh Comstock and the death of teenager Kirk Orlando in Pierce County, Washington. After arriving in Pierce County, Frank met with Coroner John Tasini from the county coroner's office, who was about to run some tests on Kirk Orlando's body. Coroner Tasini told Frank that blood had been found in the victim's mouth and stomach, but the origin of the blood was unknown. Frank asked for a copy of the results after the tests had been completed as he wanted a colleague of his, namely Cheryl Andrews, to take a look at them.
Shortly thereafter, Josh Comstock's parents found the number "331" painted in blood on their son's bed clothing. Josh's father, Tom, later told Frank that the number referred to a hotel room number where he and another woman had had an affair.
After Frank asked Cheryl Andrews to help with the investigation, she traveled to a house in Pierce County where a third victim had been abducted. Once she entered the gates to the building, she was stopped twice. When she was finally allowed access, at Frank's approval, Andrews commented positively on the effectiveness of the security posted outside. Sheriff Paul Gerlach, a local law enforcement officer who was helping with the investigation, was also in the room. After Andrews put down a case containing forensic equipment, Frank told her that the third victim was a seventeen-year-old male named Charles Birckenbuehl who had been pulled out of his bedroom window. According to Frank, analysis of hair and fibers in the area had not provided any answers yet.
Andrews handed Frank the copy of results which Coroner Tasini had sent her. She told Frank that the blood in Kirk Orlando's stomach was that of a white male, type A-positive. The same blood had been used to paint "331" on Josh Comstock's bed clothing.
When Cheryl noticed that Frank seemed lost in thought, she asked him what he was thinking about. Andrews learned that he had spoken at a community meeting held on the previous night and had told the attendees half-truths, such as saying that the killer wanted nothing. Frank had tried to provoke the killer into acting in haste and sending the investigators another message to lead them to him, but Andrews realised that the killer had instead just taken another victim. She believed that the abduction of the third victim had been planned and that Frank had neither prompted the killer to act nor been successful in disrupting his pattern.
Frank's attention was then drawn to the third victim's fish tank, where he, Andrews and Detective Gerlach found only dead goldfish floating on top of the water. Andrews offered to have the water analyzed and helped Frank collect a sample of the water.
Shortly thereafter, Frank asked Andrews to examine a green paint swatch which had been delivered inside an envelope labeled with his name to his neighbor, Jack Meredith, presumably by mistake.
Josh Comstock was suddenly returned, found in his home by his father and Frank on January 22. Andrews examined him at approximately 3:10 am. She approached Frank as he and Detective Gerlach were talking and reported that Josh was in shock. According to Andrews, Josh had dilated pupils, a lowered body temperature and burn marks similar to cattle prod wounds previously found on Kirk Orlando's body. Like the previous victim, Josh had also been made to ingest blood. Andrews notified Frank that paramedics were about to take Josh to a local hospital, but Detective Gerlach wanted to get a description of his kidnapper from him first. Andrews realized that Josh would be unable to give a description, a claim that Frank agreed with. Frank explained that the kidnapper would not have returned Josh if there was any chance he could help the investigators. Frank also realized that the killer saw himself as a holy figure or purifier and that by forcing his victims to ingest his blood, he believed he was cleansing them. (MM: "Weeds")
Searching for Charles Birckenbuehl[]
Both Frank Black and Detective Gerlach agreed that by looking for a connection between the victims, they could save Charles Birckenbuehl, the third victim, before it was too late.
Frank sent an e-mail to Andrews, requesting crime scene photographs and police reports relating to an unsolved hit-and-run accident that had occurred on May 15, 1996. The accident had claimed the life of Carl Burke, the son of a swim coach who had tutored both Charles Birckenbuehl and Josh Comstock.
At his home in Seattle, Frank received a reply e-mail from Cheryl Andrews. As Frank was reading over the details of the accident, Andrews phoned him and asked if the e-mail would be helpful. Frank told her that he thought the death of the swim coach's son could be related to the disappearances of the other three victims. Andrews told him that she and her colleagues had isolated a foreign substance found in the fish tank water and that she had just received results which identified the substance. The fish had been killed by ingesting scotch.
When Frank began to ask Cheryl about the paint swatch he had given her earlier, Andrews replied that no fingerprints had been found on the object. The paint itself had been identified as "forest green", a three-step enamel used in a certain type of mini-van. The same type of van had been driven by the drunk driver who had killed the swim coach's son. Frank believed that the kidnapper had been deeply affected by the accident and had become outraged and disillusioned. Adding to Frank's assessment of the kidnapper, Andrews revealed that she suspected the kidnapper was now trying to eliminate sin and expose hypocrisy. Frank told Cheryl that he was going to call Sheriff Gerlach and arrange a meeting at Charles Birckenbuehl's house as he felt that they had overlooked something.
Cheryl then travelled to the house with Frank in his red Jeep Cherokee. Outside, they noticed a parked green car that belonged to Charles Birckenbuehl's father, Bob. In his son's bedroom, Frank and Cheryl met Bob Birckenbuehl, who was confused as to why they had returned to his house. Andrews explained to Bob that he was the only father who had not received a communication from the kidnapper. As Frank talked with the father, Cheryl searched the room. She alerted Frank after noticing something under Charles' bed. Frank went to the opposite side of the bed and picked up a football that was marked with the initials "CB". He told Bob Birckenbuehl that the ball was not his son's, Charles, but had actually belonged to the swim coach's son, Carl Burke. When Frank realized that the ball seemed more heavy than it normally would, he told Cheryl to hold an evidence bag under it while he squeezed the ball. Blood poured out of the carved initials and landed in a pool at the bottom of the evidence bag.
On the morning of the next day, January 23, Frank and Sheriff Gerlach arrested Bob Birckenbuehl for killing Carl Burke. Although Frank did not really believe that Bob was guilty, he thought that a public spectacle of Bob's arrest would show the kidnapper that he had confessed to his sins and would release his son. As Bob was marched out of his house, Cheryl asked Frank whether he thought the plan would work. Frank answered, "If it doesn't, I don't know what will".
By 7:20 pm that night, Bob had been returned to his house and was waiting with Frank, Cheryl and Sheriff Gerlach to discover whether the kidnapper would react to his arrest. When Andrews began to doubt that the kidnapper was falling for the trap, she asked Frank if he had an alternative plan. She recalled that the other victims had been returned within seventy-two hours, but that the current victim had been missing for just slightly less than that amount of time.
When Sheriff Gerlach reported that someone was approaching the house, Andrews went with the sheriff and Frank to the front door. She watched as Gerlach opened the door to find the swim coach standing outside, holding an audio recording addressed to Bob that had been found in the coach's mail box.
Andrews listened to the recording with the others. She looked meaningfully at Frank as they heard Charles Birchenbuehl talk about the kidnapper's warped sense of justice on the recording. After the tape was stopped, Andrews commented that the echo heard on the recording suggested that it had been made in a low-ceilinged room. She also estimated that an abandoned building or a basement had probably been used. As they listened to the tape again, she and Frank heard an echoing bang in the background. Before Andrews could identify the noise, Frank announced that he already knew what it was.
They and Sheriff Gerlach hurried to the swimming pool where the coach worked. As they entered a basement beneath the pool, Andrews tried to turn on a light switch but it would not work. She told the others that they had to work in the dark. Seeing that the basement looked deserted, Andrews suggested that the kidnapper could have moved to another location since recording the audio tape. At Gerlach's suggestion, Andrews separated from the Sheriff and Frank. She crept through the basement and soon stumbled upon something on the floor. Kneeling down, she saw that it was a cooler. She lifted the lid and called to Frank, alerting him of her discovery and advising him to follow the sound of her voice as it would lead him to her. The cooler contained an IV bag filled with blood. Andrews finally found Charles Birckenbuehl alive, tied up by his wrists to a pipe over his head. As she began trying to break him free, she shouted to the other investigators that she had found him and spoke to the victim reassuringly. While she continued her attempt to sever his bonds, the kidnapper, a local resident named Edward Petey, crept up behind her. She turned around, moments before the kidnapper assaulted her with his cattle prod and she fell to the ground.
After Frank and Sheriff Gerlach successfully detained the kidnapper, Frank raised Cheryl's head from off the floor as she tried to sit up. She was clutching her chest and grimacing in pain but assured Frank that she was alright. (MM: "Weeds")
Autopsying Teenage Females[]
Cheryl Andrews with the incinerated body of Lauren Padilla.
Later in 1997, Cheryl Andrews conducted an autopsy on 25 year-old grad student and reported self-immolation victim, Lauren Padilla. The autopsy was performed in Snohomish County Morgue under the observation of the Snohomish County Coroner. Frank Black and Peter Watts were also in attendance. Andrews used a handheld portable recorder to make an audio recording of the event, identifying the subject before she began.
The body had been severely burned and charred. By simply looking at the carcass, Andrews was able to determine that hypoxia was the cause of death, confirmed by elevated carboxy-haemoglobin. Severe thermal injuries had also killed the victim. Bone shrinkage, body posture and fourth-degree burning of the victim's extremities showed that acetone accelerants had been used. Andrews assessed that the position of the body, which Peter Watts interpreted as a voluntary kneeling position, was actually an example of the typical involuntary pugilistic attitude. She was more puzzled by the less typical position of the victim's hands, but Peter Watts suggested they could be a Buddhist mandala position indicating that the victim may have been offering something.
Andrews lifted open one of the victim's eyes to find it had a bright blue coloration. She smiled at Peter Watts, commenting that the eyes were beautiful. Continuing with the autopsy, she announced into the portable recorder that the victim had a congenital coloboma occlusion.
Cheryl then turned her attention to a peculiar symbol discovered by Frank that had been carved into the flesh on the victim's thigh. Andrews believed that the symbol had been self-inflected but was not the result of self-mutilation. When she mentioned her strong belief that the symbol probably meant something, Watts revealed that it was a sign for conjunction. Frank realised that the symbol significantly also represented alignment, but he and Watts left the morgue without disclosing any more information to Andrews.
Shortly thereafter, Frank, Cheryl and Watts examined a similar body at Malheur General Hospital in Riverside, Oregon. Frank and Watts began the procedure at 12:10 pm. A local sheriff named Camden was also in the room.
The victim, named Carlin Mather, had been discovered by local law enforcement officers in a stream near a dam. The body was concealed in a body bag that Frank opened shortly before inspecting the remains with Watts. After Andrews joined them, she remarked that the body's connective fascia was quite degraded, signifying that the body had likely been underwater for two or three days. Sheriff Camden substantiated this remark by revealing that Carlin had disappeared three days prior to the current examination of her body. Andrews lifted one of the victim's eyes open to find it was a bright blue color, just like the previous victim's.
When Carlin's distraught mother entered, Frank left Andrews and Watts alone with the body and met with the victim's mother. Andrews noticed that the body showed extremely high post-mortem estrogen levels but she assumed it was due to a false reading caused by extreme heat.
By 3:27 pm, Frank had returned. Andrews continued the autopsy, noting the same congenital coloboma and carved icon as were found on the previous victim's body. She commented that the two victims also shared a definite family resemblance before she began to carefully slice into the victim's pelvic cavity with a scalpel.
Andrews revealed that needle marks had been found on the second victim's buttocks and that a slight abscess of the surrounding adipose tissue indicated repeated intramuscular injections. Although Watts wondered if someone had been drugging Carlin, Andrews notified him that the angle of the needle marks showed that the victim had almost certainly been injecting herself. Cheryl announced her finding of elevated post-mortem estrogen levels in the first victim. After removing a layer of skin from Carlin's body, she gazed through a microscope at the exposed pelvic cavity and realised that the second victim also had extremely high estrogen levels. Andrews consequently believed that both victims had been injecting fertility drugs called menotropins.
As she continued to analyse the victim's body, she alerted the others to something she considered "truly bizzare". Carlin, a high school student who was by all indications a virgin, was super-ovulated and had seven mature egg follicles where Andrews had expected to find only one. When Frank realised that the two victims were the same, Cheryl concluded that they had to be sisters. However, Frank answered that the girls had actually been identical twins raised seven years apart in preparation for a predicted cataclysm on May 5, 2000. He likened their situation to "Noah preparing for the flood", as told in the Bible.
Andrews later showed Frank and Watts a procedure called the blastomere separation on a computer monitor. The technique had been used for decades to create identical cattle. First, a fertilized egg was allowed to divide a few times in vitro before the cells were teased apart. Each new embryo was identical to the original. Andrews theorized that a similar procedure, in which some of the identical embryos were frozen, could have been used to create two identical girls seven years apart. Andrews informed Frank that a fertilized cattle egg would practically be allowed to separate twenty times and guessed that a similar amount would probably be used in humans.
Although Andrews admitted that no one would declare they had performed the procedure in a human, any gynecologist could do so. Watts recalled that the victims' parents had claimed that someone had forced them and speculated that they may have been removed from the program. Cheryl commented that once the required genes had been obtained, the people were no longer needed. Folding his arms, Watts stated that the task of finding twenty identical humans, no longer needed and scattered over fifty states with no birth records would be a difficult one. Andrews nodded thoughtfully and looked at Frank.
Watts later discovered that the victims had both called the same telephone number just before they had died. He showed a computer model of the victims' calling patterns to Frank which showed that the person the victims had called was in contact with about twenty people in total. Frank responded, "Twenty - that's what Cheryl said". (MM: "Force Majeure")
Germany[]
Later the same year, Frank and Peter Watts investigated the murder of a Doctor Schlossburg in Germany. At Hamburg University in Bremerhaven, Frank and Peter inspected the room where Dr. Schlossburg had been killed. The two men were later involved in an explosion when their car blew up.
They returned to their hotel and were traveling in an elevator towards their separate hotel rooms when they encountered Cheryl Andrews. She was on the same floor as Frank's room and claimed that she had been looking for them. According to Andrews, all she had been able to understand from the German police was that Frank and Peter had left the crime scene an hour earlier. When she wondered where they had been, Watts replied by asking her why she had come. She explained that the Millennium Group had asked her to conduct a workshop at the police academy in Bremen.
She told the two men that she had heard they were involved in the explosion and had come as quickly as she could. When Andrews asked if they were fine, Frank answered positively but claimed that he and Peter had been having a long day. Andrews knew that they were not on vacation and therefore realised that they were currently investigating a case. She offered to assist them, but Watts claimed that their investigation was under control and politely declined her offer. Frank exited the elevator and continued to converse with Andrews while Peter headed up to his own hotel room. As the elevator door closed, Andrews and Watts exchanged the Millennium Group's motto - "This is who we are".
Andrews pushed the control for an elevator to take her to a lower level and asked Frank if he needed anything. He shook his head in negative response and declared, "I'm just along for the ride". Cheryl metaphorically answered, "Sometimes when a car crashes, it's the driver that's killed... sometimes it's the passenger". She told Frank to be careful before she left in the elevator she had called for. (MM: "The Hand of Saint Sebastian")
- Cheryl Andrews was played by renowned actress C. C. H. Pounder.