Eric Fraser

Eric Fraser is the one of the two main antagonists of the crime novel Forty Words for Sorrow by canadian author Giles Blunt. He is a serial killer who, along with his girlfriend Edie Soames, kidnaps, trotures and murders teenagers for his pleasure.

Personality
Eric was a cold, calculative and extremely manipulative serial killer with seemingly no standards or redeeming qualities. He manipulates his poor self-esteemed girlfriend Edie into helping him hith his crimes and made her believe that whatever he was doing was okay. Eric also believed in a twisted philosophy that people like to see when others get hurt, such as sports like boxing and wrestling. He wanted to trivialize snuff films (one of the many horrible things he did) as he thought it should be no different than watching wrestling or boxing on television: people still get hurt.

Past
Eric had a history of antisocial behaviour even as a kid as he burned the neighbours properties and killed their pets, and had to constantly be moved to different foster families because of his behaviour. Eric was eventuallt locked in a juvenile prison when he one night went into his foster sister's room and scared her till she screamed. If he tried to hurt or even kill her is unknown. Once he grew old enough to be released he had it hard to search for a job and home. Eventually, he met the equally sociopathic, but lonely woman Edie Soames.

Forty Words for Sorrow
Eric Fraser and his girlfriend Edie Soames kidnaps several young teenagers and slowly torture them till death while filming it. The victims by far are Katie Pine, Todd Curry and Billy LaBelle. The two formers bodies was found mutilated and murdered by the police: Kate was found in a mineshaft and Curry was found in an abandoned house. Billy LaBelle had yet to be found as he was buried alive.

One evening on a pub, Eric and Edie encounter the eighteen-year-old boy named Keith London and they invites him to Edie’s house. Seemingly nice at first to Keith as they are having a nice chat, Eric drugs Keith down and has him sleeping for almost a week before Keith starts to realize what is going on and decides to leave, but his body is still too tired from the drugs to make an effort to escape. Right then, to Keith’s disadvantage, Eric decides it is time to ”party” with Keith. Eric ties Keith up to a chair and plans to find a safe place to kill him.

One night, burglar named Woody breaks in to Edie’s house and he happens to find a horrified Keith being tied up to a chair in the basement. When Woody is about to help Keith escape, Eric and Edie arrives, threatening to kill them. Keith tries to escape but Eric shoots him in the leg, while Woody tries the same but but Eric shots him in the back, killing him.

Once Eric has found an old pump house which seems to be a safe place to kill someone without leaving any obvious evidence to the public, he takes Keith with him in his van and waits for Edie to come back with light to get a good camera quality on the snuff film.

The protagonist and detective John Cardinal finds out about Eric's plans and arrives to said pump house with his colleagues. Eric notices the police have found him and tries to escape and shoots some cops with his gun. He gets into his van but is attacked by Cardinal. The van starts to move backwards into a frosen lake and cracks the ice open. Cardinal manages to leave the van while Eric is left in it, drowning in ice-cold water.