Gerald "Gerry" Thomas Schnauz Jr. was a serial killer and abductor from Traverse City, Michigan, who was unknowingly psychic and capable of psychic photography.
History[]
Schnauz was born on January 22, 1960, one of at least two children born to Gerald Thomas Schnauz Sr., a licensed dentist (DDS) and Korean War veteran (recipient of a Bronze Star medal), and an unnamed mother. In 1980, 20-year old Schnauz attacked his father with an axe handle, injuring him so severely that he was bound to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. It was noted that his sister committed suicide the same year, with the implication that their father had been abusing her either physically or sexually in secret before being found out by Schnauz.
After the incident, Schnauz was committed to Melvoin Psychiatric Hospital for six years, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. It caused him to believe in imaginary beings he dubbed "Howlers", describing them as malicious spirits inhabiting the frontal lobe of some people. According to Schnauz, they would cause Unruhe (German for "unrest") and force people to "do and say things you don't mean" and make them lie or otherwise deny their existence.
Upon his release, he began working as a construction foreman for Iskendarian Construction and took care of his father until his death in January, 1996. Following this, Schnauz took it upon himself to "save" people he believed to be afflicted by "Howlers" - mostly women - from Unruhe by performing a frontal lobe lobotomy with a self-fashioned leuctome, an outdated surgical tool, without any medical training, reusing equipment from his father's old dentist office. He would typically stalk potential victims in vicinity of construction sites he worked on, who were usually accompanied by a male associate. Schnauz would wait until they were separate and murder the man by puncturing the ear with his leuctome before subduing the woman by injecting her with a mixture of morphine, scopolamine and hydrobromid. Then, he would clothe the victim in a white nightgown, apparently similar to the one his sister would wear, and bring her to his RV, re-purposed to hold a dentist chair, where he would, in German, reassure his victims and tell them that he will make them forget their Unruhe before performing a transorbital lobotomy by puncturing the eyesocket at an acute angle with the needle. Whether the victim survived or not, he dropped the body off at a rural highway.
It is never specified why Schnauz addresses his victims in German. Since "Schnauz" is a German surname and his relatively decent pronounciation (Michigan has around 50,000 native German speakers), it could be inferred that he was raised with German as the household language or that Schnauz spent time in West Germany through his father's military service. German-speaking viewers, however, have noted that Schnauz speaks the language with a clearly American accent.
As became apparent later on, Schnauz was thoughtographic, meaning he could affect the contents of developing photographs. He was unaware of this and had no control over this ability, which, coupled with his schizophrenia, led to photos created through his presence depicting his unfiltered mind, most often his delusions and deep-seated fears.
1996 abductions[]
Schnauz abducted his first victim, postal clerk Mary Lefante, as she stopped by a drug store to take a passport picture, as she and her boyfriend Billy were planning to leave the city in fear that their credit card forgery business was about to be uncovered. When she went back in after forgetting her wallet, Schnauz killed Billy before kidnapping Lefante. Agents Mulder and Scully were called in by Officer Trott to investigate after the pharmacist developed Lefante's photo, which depicted her screaming and surrounded by ghostly beings. Scully discovers that the film was expired and suspects doctoring, while Mulder believed the bizarre photo to be the result of psychic photography. Though it was quickly believed that she faked her disappearance due to her criminal activities, it was found that the photo was not digitally altered, with Lefante later being found wandering along a roadside, permanently brain-damaged by a crude lobotomy. Shortly after, secretary Alice Brandt was taken from her workplace, where her boss Charles Selchik is murdered the same way as Billy.
Scully notices that a construction company, run by Mr. Iskendarian, had work sites near both crime scenes and visits the one closes to Brandt's office building, where she meets Schnauz to ask him about his subordinates. Meanwhile, Mulder, who had taken the Lefante picture to analysis in Washington D.C., found that the photo also contained the face of an elderly man and the shadow of a very long-legged person. Mulder calls Scully to inform her that the suspect they're looking for is either quite tall or wishes to be, with her realizing that Schnauz, who was physically short, but wearing construction stilts, was a perfect fit. Schnauz attempts to escape, but is apprehended by Scully, who also recovers a long needle from his person. Scully leads Schnauz's interrogation, who denies any involvement until Mulder shows him the photo of the old man, which he identifies as his father. He is stunned to see the entire picture before him and simply mutters that "she" was safe from the "Howlers" now. Brandt is found through his cooperation, dead by severe brain trauma near another highway stretch. Later, Schnauz has his mugshot taken by Trott, but when he examines it, he is momentarily shocked, allowing Schnauz to charge the officer and kill him with his own gun before escaping. In place of what should've been Schnauz's mugshot photo was an image of the officer with a bullet through his brain.
Very soon, Schnauz decided to target Scully as the next person to be "saved", after seeing in interrogation she was "troubled" and his own thoughtography picture of Mary Lefante. He hid under her car and drugged her, taking her away to his hidden lair, leaving behind a new photo of a screaming Scully. At Schnauz's hideout, Scully wakes up to find Schnauz preparing her lobotomy. Scully is able to make him back off by shouting at him to stop in German and tries to reason with him, asking if he is doing this because of what happened to his sister. Schnauz denies this and insists that it wasn't his father, but the "howlers", now completely convinced in his beliefs by the photo he saw at the police station. To prove they were real, he went to snap a picture of Scully, but curiousity got the better of him and he turned the camera on himself. The content of the resulting photos shocked him and he frantically consulted Scully on what they meant. While she suggested they were a sign for him to get help, Schnauz believed they meant he was running out of time and moved to lobotomize Scully.
During this time, Mulder searched furiously for any leads to his whereabouts, and noticed six "fingers" in the psychic photos - which apparently Schnauz had no idea he was capable of producing. However, the objects were not fingers, but rather an arrangement of tombstones of Schnauz's family members. Mulder and the police raced to the cemetery and discovered a camper parked on the edge of the woods. Mulder peered inside and noticed a tooth-shaped keychain, a clue that the driver may known a dentist. Before Schnauz was able to "save" Scully, Mulder broke into the camper and shot him, killing him. The photos revealed Schnauz dead on the floor of the trailer, revealing that Schnauz has subconsciously foreseen his death.
Following his death, besides an unsent letter to his father and a last will, a diary was discovered among Schnauz's things that included a list of the women he intended to save. The last entry contained the name of Agent Scully. (TXF: "Unruhe")
Trivia[]
- His middle and last name are a nod to X-Files producer and writer Thomas Schnauz.
- Schnauz seems to have not been entirely wrong about a presence in Scully's skull, as it was discovered the next year in "Memento Mori" that she had a cancerous tumor between her sinus and cerebrum, approximately the same place where he had previously identified the "howlers".
- Although never commented on, Schnauz seems to have nystagmus, a condition that causes the eyes to restlessly move. His actor, Pruitt Taylor Vince, actually has the disorder.
- According to Vince Gilligan, Schnauz was inspired by Howard Unruh, who killed 13 people in a mass murder in 1949. Unruh was similarly diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and of German origin, his surname being an alternative spelling of "Unruhe".