Villains Beginning With 'J'

Jame Gumb
AKA Buffalo Bill

The Silence of the Lambs
by author Thomas Harris (1988)

Bill's real name is Jame Gumb ("James" was misspelled on hi

s 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."

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 method was 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. Gumb thinks of his victims as things rather than people, often referring to his victims as "it".

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 travels to Belvedere, Ohio, Bimmel's hometown, to question her family and acquaintances. She then 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.

Gumb had a pet dog, a white poodle called "Precious".

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