BUFFALO BILL (THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS)

''Hannibal Tetralogy'' character
Buffalo Bill
Real Name	Jame Gumb (a misprint of James Gumb)
Aliases	Mr. Hide John Grant Jack Gordon
Nicknames/ Other	'"Buffalo Bill",' '(William) "Billy" Rubin' (novel name Lecter gives), 'Louis Friend' (film name Lecter gives)
Gender	Male
Race	Caucasian
Birth	1948
Relationships	Benjamin Raspail (Lover) Fredrica Bimmel (Girlfriend, later victim)
M.O.	Kidnapping by acting disabled and getting people in his van. Leaving his victim in a pit for a few days, then partially skinning the victim for use of skin.
Weapon of Choice:	Pistol Gallows.
Current status:	Deceased
Portrayed by:	Ted Levine

'Buffalo Bill' is a fictional character in the 1988 novel ''The Silence of the Lambs'' by Thomas Harris and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he was played by Ted Levine.

Contents

Character overview

Character history

Character notes and controversy

Influences

References

Character overview

Bill's real name is 'Jame Gumb' ("James" was misspelled on his birth certificate). A serial killer, he murders overweight women so he can remove their skin and fashion a "woman suit" for himself; he believes himself to be transsexual but is too disturbed to qualify for sex reassignment surgery. He becomes known as "Buffalo Bill" during his murder spree because of an off-color joke by Kansas City homicide detectives; upon discovering his first victim, the detectives say "This one likes to skin his humps." Lecter describes Bill as "terrifying".

Character history

The novel reveals that Gumb was abandoned by his alcoholic mother, and raised by his grandparents, who became his first victims when he killed them impulsively as a teenager. After being released from a juvenile facility, he went on to serve in the Navy.
Gumb has transitory relationships with both men and women, most notably with Benjamin Raspail, one of Dr. Hannibal Lecter's old patients. Raspail leaves him when he murders a transient and "does things" with the skin. He later kills Raspail's lover, a Norwegian sailor named Klaus, and makes himself an apron of his skin.
He begins the "Buffalo Bill" murders by killing a girlfriend named Fredrica Bimmel in a fit of rage. Bimmel's is the third body found and the only one Gumb attempts to hide, by weighting it down in a riverbed.
Gumb's modus operandi is to kidnap a woman by approaching her pretending to be injured, asking for help loading something heavy into his van, and then knocking her out in a surprise attack from behind. Once he has a woman in his house, he starves her until her skin is loose enough to easily remove, and then shoots and skins her. He then places a Death's Head moth in her throat — he is fascinated by their metamorphosis, a process he wants to undergo by becoming a woman — and dumps the body. (In one of the film's most famous scenes, he dances around with his penis tucked between his legs as one of his victims screams for help offscreen.) Gumb thinks of his victims as ''things'' rather than people, often referring to his victims as "it". (Hence: "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again").
The FBI intensifies the manhunt for Gumb when he kidnaps Catherine Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin. Then-FBI trainee Clarice Starling enlists Lecter's help in tracking him down, as Lecter had met him while treating Raspail. Lecter gives Starling a series of cryptic clues to Gumb's identity, but never reveals his name in hopes that Starling would figure it out for herself. She eventually deciphers one of the doctor's riddles — "This man covets, and how do we begin to covet? We covet what we see every day" — and realizes that Gumb knew his first victim, Bimmel.
Starling convinces her mentor, FBI Director Jack Crawford, to allow her to follow up on the lead given her by Lecter. She travels to Belvedere, Ohio, Bimmel's hometown, to question her family and acquaintances. Over the phone she is informed that the FBI has learned the name of the killer and is deploying to Chicago with the FBI Hostage Rescue Team to take him down.
Starling, meanwhile, goes to the house of a Mrs. Lippman, Bimmel's elderly employer, only to find Gumb himself, calling himself "Jack Gordon." (Gumb had killed the old woman, and is living in her house and using it as a torture chamber for his victims). Starling realizes who he really is when she sees a Death's Head Moth flutter by, and orders him to surrender. Gumb flees into the basement with Starling in pursuit, and then cuts power to the basement and stalks her with night vision goggles. Starling hears him from behind, however, and fires first, killing him. Martin is rescued, and Starling becomes a hero, as well as a full-fledged agent.

Character notes and controversy

Neither Harris nor movie screenwriter Ted Tally delved too deeply into Gumb's pathology, but in the movie Lecter summarizes his life thus: "Billy was not born a criminal, but made one by years of systematic abuse."
The movie adaptation of ''Silence of the Lambs'' was criticized by some gay rights groups for its portrayal of the sociopathic Gumb as bisexual and transsexual. A Johns Hopkins sex-reassignment surgeon, present in the book but not the film, protests the exact same thing; Crawford pacifies him by repeating that Gumb is ''not'' in fact transsexual, though he thinks he is. Also controversial was the swastika-laden quilt Gumb had in his bedroom. It is never directly stated that he is anti-Semitic. In the director's commentary for the 1991 film, director Jonathan Demme draws attention to various Polaroids taken of Buffalo Bill in the company of strippers; these are visible in Gumb's basement in the film.

Influences

Harris based Gumb on three real-life killers:^[1]Bowman, David.''"Profiler"'' Interview with John E. Douglas @ Salon.com July 08, 1999.

★ Ed Gein, who murdered two women and dug up several graves to make a "woman suit" for himself.

★ Ted Bundy, who pretended to be injured and asked his victims for help, and then incapacitated and killed them.

★ Gary Heidnik, who kidnapped five women and held them hostage as sex slaves.
And it is possible a fourth was used:

★ Ed Kemper, who, like Gumb, killed his grandparents as a teenager "just to see what it felt like".

References

1. Bruno, Anthony. "Buffalo Bill" page 2 - ''"All About Hannibal Lecter - Facts and Fiction"'' @ Crime Library.com