  |
This article's content is marked as Mature The page contains mature content that may include coarse language, sexual references, and/or graphic violent images which may be disturbing to some. Mature pages are recommended for those who are 18 years of age and older. If you are 18 years or older or are comfortable with graphic material, you are free to view this page. Otherwise, you should close this page and view another page. |
 |
Dr. Wily has declared that this article is still under construction. This page has three weeks by which to achieve the minimum standards for a full page (or Stub minimum), after which it shall be moved to Speedy Deletion. After I finish this article, the world will be mine! MWAHAHAHAHA! |
 |
The Joker believes this article is lacking a certain flair -
namely some good quality images...
you could just leave the article without pictures, but really now...
where's the fun in that?' |
Dr. Alan Rhodes, also known as The Leopard Man, is the main antagonist of the Rizzoli & Isles novel "Die Again". Rhodes is a violent international serial killer with an obsessive pension for ritualistic hunting and mutilating of people to treat them like human prey, preferably during group expeditions in isolated nature.
Biography[]
Little is known about Rhodes’ early life, or the explanation for his sadistic psychopathy. Rhodes enjoyed killing for pleasure, finding exceeding thrills from stalking and hunting people to find power from being a human predator. His pathology was solidified from his learning about West African cults responsible for massacres and posthumous eviscerations to honor leopards and gain their skills from hunting humans. To complete his ritualistic M.O., Rhodes would steal leopard pelts to wear and fashioned a glove with steel claws, which would later get him the nickname "Leopard Man" by police. Rhodes' earliest confirmed murder is of a college co-ed named Natalie Toomes, at their shared university Curry College. He seduced her for a date under the name "Ted", an alias derived from his middle name Theodore. When Rhodes got Natalie alone, he incapacitated her with a blow to her head, strangled her to death, suspended her upside down with orange nylon ties, and gutted her dead body. After Natalie was slaughtered, Rhodes buried her in a backyard of a house plot adjacent to the Stony Brook Reservation and in spite of her roommates reporting her missing and her late mother giving a DNA sample before she passed away, Natalie stayed buried there for fourteen years, and Rhodes became a wildlife biologist specializing in wild feline families, finding employment at the Suffolk Zoo.
Over the fourteen years following, Rhodes traveled the U.S., armed and in costume, to kill more people of varied genders, races, and ages in the same distinct fashion: hanging them upside down with orange nylon and cutting them open like hunted animals after choking them to death. When Rhodes became eager to up the ante, he hunted groups in the woods, ranging from hunters to backpackers. He would stalk them all, pick them off one by one in blitz attacks, and leave only one or two of them found dead, in tree branches and trunks or reduced to skeletons. Rhodes would play mind games with the groups, make them terrified while stalking them, turn them against each other, lay the remains of their murdered friends for them to find, and even steal their weapons if he couldn’t use his own. Every time Rhodes killed, he would steal licenses, passports, and credit cards to pay for resources to murder while hiding his identity. The license would be tacked onto a cork board he kept in a storm shelter under his house, which he turned into his hideout to keep his equipment and murder souvenirs.
Rhodes decided to venture outside of the U.S. and kill in other countries. Posing as a tourist, he met Elliot Gott on a flight to South Africa and killed him in Cape Town, leaving his remains to be unidentified. He then posed as Elliot after stealing his identity, joining a safari expedition tourist group traveling through Botswana, and acting as the squeamish, nervous member to keep suspicion thrown off him. He found out about it when meeting two of the attendees, South African friends Sylvia von Ofwegen and Vivian Kruiswyk. When an encampment was set up, he killed Clarence Nghobo, the assistant to guide Johnny Posthumus, Clarence being left to be scavenged by hyenas. To prevent the group from leaving so they were vulnerable, he sabotaged the car they arrived on so it wouldn’t start. Rhodes later killed Isao Matsunaga, a Japanese banker and hobbyist sharpshooter who came with his wife Keiko, to leave him for a leopard to feed on. Johnny became the protector of the group, as well as grew closer to Millie Jacobson, a British bookseller, but her abusive boyfriend, novelist Richard Renwick, became jealous and tried to aggressively assert his own position. Rhodes noticed and exploited this, cutting his own tent with one of the knives and lying someone slipped a snake through the opening. This was enough for Richard, who was turning the whole camp against Johnny, as Richard raised a gun to subdue him, Keiko hitting him with a rock to knock him off his guard. Johnny agreed to leave, wanting Millie to join him, but she was pressured to leave him behind as well by the group. When night fell, Rhodes grabbed hold of the rifle and shot the remaining campers, Johnny, Keiko, Richard, Sylvia, and Vivian, all except Millie. Millie escaped with her life, survived from running and living off the resources in the wild, until she was rescued and taken to a hospital. The police didn’t believe her account at first, but in the end, everyone, even Millie, agreed Johnny was responsible, all while Rhodes made his escape off the IDs and currency of his victims. Millie was traumatized and hated the publicity of the murders in the UK, so she retreated to South Africa, married Christopher DeBruin, and had kids with him.
Rhodes, now staying permanently settled in the U.S. again, realized witnesses could tie him to the Botswana massacre, so he set out to kill them all, especially hoping to draw Millie DeBruin out of hiding to murder her too, as she’d know he wasn’t Elliot Gott. Petty criminals Brandon Tyrone and Nick Thibodeau stole supplies from a campground, which included a lighter with Richard’s initials. Fearing the worst, Rhodes stalked the duo when they were hunting in Maine and killed them in his usual fashion: he butchered and posed Tyrone, the disappeared Thibodeau to frame him. Then Elliot’s father Leon, a big game hunter and taxidermist, worked with Suffolk Zoo to stuff one of their dead snow leopards, Kovo, when Rhodes met Leon and saw a framed photo of Rhodes with Elliot. Leon realized the connection and called his ex-girlfriend, Jodi Underwood, who gave the framed photo to Leon as a gift after their breakup and Elliot’s disappearance. Boston PD were left with the case of Rhodes killing and mutilating Leon in his own home and workshop, which they connected to Jodi being choked to death in a blunt blitz attack shortly thereafter that night. Both their homes were robbed of the photo evidence, as well as money to add to the ruse. Rhodes also stole Kovo's pelt out of compulsion to restore his own costume.
Rhodes was introduced when the Suffolk Zoo was consulted on the case and questioned about the taxidermy arrangement. Rhodes painted as friendly a façade as he could, explaining his specialties and the bells and whistles of the zoo. Beforehand, he had killed Debra Lopez, a zookeeper who accompanied him to Leon’s house, and thrown her into the African leopard’s den, where she was eaten by Rafiki. Debbie’s ex-boyfriend, veterinarian Dr. Greg Oberlin, shot Rafiki dead and desperately tried to save Debbie, to no avail. By sheer coincidence, the couple at the house where Natalie was buried arranged for a pool installation, where the construction crew found her skeleton in a tarp. The department had yet to identify her, but the ME’s office connected the murder by several key details: cuts on their spins to suggest disembowelment, restraint with orange nylon, marks from his clawed glove on bones, and hair transfer from Leon’s pets and the animals in his shop. Detective Johnny Tam, newly hired yet capable and ambitious, worked with Dr. Maura Isles to match the M.O. in ViCAP, and they found the dozens of murders Rhodes committed across the connected U.S. Detective Jane Rizzoli realized the reason for the murders when she’d figured out Rhodes was after the photos. The team tracked Leon’s phone records, and they found he contacted Henk Andersen, the Interpol agent on the Botswana massacre, so Rizzoli’s husband, FBI Agent Gabriel Dean, arranged to speak with Andersen and bring Millie to Boston, which she reluctantly agreed to after some convincing.
As Rhodes briefly placed suspicion on Greg, they showed Millie a photo of him, but she didn’t recognize him. They realized he wasn’t the killer when Natalie was identified, Greg having an ironclad alibi. Rizzoli realized Rhodes was guilty when she found out he went to the same college as Natalie, and his alias with her matched his middle name. Rhodes realized what happened when Rizzoli called Isles to warn her, so he released the leopards to create a panic, thus a diversion to escape through. The leopards were subdued or shot, and there were no deaths of people. However, in the search for Rhodes and on his property, Mille was left alone at Isles’ house. Rhodes broke in and tried to choke Mille to death, but she slashed his face with an open cat food can. When Rhodes charged her again, Millie stabbed Rhodes in the stomach. He collapsed on the floor and bled to death, dispatch responding swiftly enough to secure the scene and ensure Mille was safe. The detectives found the storm shelter, with the pelt, clawed glove, and trophy board, and Millie was informed of the truth by showing the damning photo of Rhodes and Elliot together. Mille was reassured from the closure and returned home.
Personality[]
Rhodes was an educated, seemingly amiable scholar and wildlife professional, appearing to be the rock of his friends and colleagues, with a cool head, an empathetic outlook, and a preparedness for all eventualities. Pretending to be Elliot Gott, Rhodes acted squirrelly, naive, and interested in an adventure for the sake of a marvel more than a trek, hysterical over building suspense and danger. In reality, Rhodes was a cold, calculating, meticulously disciplined, and manipulative psychopath, a murderer with a desire for power and a rush, from hunting people until they die to marauding their bodies to monumentize his violence and scarce detection. He hides from major attention to security, misdirects to buy time for his own needs, doesn’t care for human life enough to cause disaster for his own ends and escapes, and wants dominance from feeding his ego and stamina by ritualistic in his killings. Rhodes is patient and quick interchangeably to time his moves and intentions, but as a human predator at his finest, he’s in for pain and refuses any chance at missing a brutal murder or a failure to be accomplished in any chance for conquest overall. He’s skilled at adapting to means to achieve his ultimate crimes, but he’s spiteful over missed opportunities and a coward when it comes to punishment and retribution. Up to the last second of his life, he would never accept defeat or the very moment he was dying.
Modus Operandi[]
Rhodes targeted random adults across America, then in to Africa for a change of scenery and challenges. Rhodes believed I’m making himself a killing warrior by practicing West African cult rituals in murders. He killed in evocations akin to a leopard’s means of killing prey: typically, he stalked intended victims, be in the city or the woods, or he stealthily broke into their homes to leave them compromised. When ready to strike, he typically strangled the victims, like a leopard crushes an animal’s throat with their jaws. Once dead, Rhodes suspends the victims upside down with industrial orange solid-braid nylon ropes, using double square knots for ties, cuts open their stomachs, hollows their bodies of their organs, and leaves them hoisted in their homes or trees in the woods, or draped on branches, to display the violence of his carnage for shock value. As he couldn’t financially afford his criminal escapades, he stole IDs, credits, and cash from the victims and spend them for his travels and murder equipment. In a storm shelter at his house, he kept licenses of the victims on a cork board as trophies, as well as a leopard pelt and glove with steel claws he wore and used during his murder spree, to play the part and make him more threatening and aggressive.
As Rhodes escalated, he became more daring and violent, stealing weapons from victims to use on them, targeting entire parties in woods to massacre, and even framing missing victims as suspects or blaming the killings on animal attacks. Rhodes would escalate to stabbing and shooting before dismembering the victims, as well as taunting the survivors by watching them while they were terrified and slowly killing them off one by one, In Botswana, he immersed himself into the safari part to blend in for a ruse and watch everyone squirm personally without them suspecting a thing. He also sabotaged the car for the group to strand them, then pretended he was attacked with a snake planted in his tent to rattle the group. When he killed Natalie Toombs, he seduced and lured her for a night alone. As she was one of his earliest murders, he buried her at a nature reservation, wrapped in a tarp. When he killed Elliot Gott, he beat him to death and stole his ID to pose as him in Africa. Rhodes began killing witnesses of the safari massacre, such as petty thieves Brandon Tyrone and Nick Thibodeau to get Richard Renwick’s lighter, Elliot’s father Leon and his ex-girlfriend Jodi Underwood for photos of Rhodes and Elliot, and Millie for being the survivor who could identify him. Joan was killed only by ligature strangulation, and wasn’t mutilated. Rhodes’ colleague Debra Lopez was a witness to Leon’s murder, so he killed her and fed her to the zoo’s African leopard, Rafiki, then pointed the blame at Dr. Greg Oberlin. Rhodes attempted again to kill Millie with a burglary and ligature strangulation, but she killed him instead.
Known Victims[]
- Numerous unidentified people (presumably killed and mutilated postmortem)
- Curry College, Boston: Natalie Toombs, 20 (strangled and eviscerated postmortem; buried in a tarp at the Stony Brook Reservation)
- Sacramento: Unidentified white lawyer, 50 (strangled; eviscerated and hung upside down postmortem)
- Phoenix: Unidentified Latino truck driver, 22 (tortured by cuts, burns, and castration; strangled; eviscerated and hung upside down postmortem)
- The Nevada backpackers murders:
- Unidentified woman, 35 (strangled; eviscerated and left on a tree branch postmortem)
- Unidentified woman (killed and dismembered postmortem; her remains weren’t found)
- Two unidentified men (killed and dismembered postmortem; their remains weren’t found)
- The Montana elk hunters murders:
- Unidentified man (strangled; eviscerated and left on a tree branch postmortem)
- Unidentified man (killed and dismembered postmortem; his jawbone was found in a cougar’s den)
- Unidentified man (killed and dismembered postmortem; his remains weren’t found)
- Cape Town: Elliot Gott (beat to death; stole his identity)
- The Botswana safari expedition massacre:
- Clarence Nghobo (strangled; eviscerated and left to be eaten by hyenas postmortem)
- Isao Matsunaga (strangled; eviscerated and left to be eaten by an African leopard postmortem)
- Johnny Posthumus (shot and dismembered postmortem; his remains weren’t found)
- Richard Renwick (shot and dismembered postmortem; his remains weren’t found)
- Keiko Matsunaga (shot and dismembered postmortem; her remains weren’t found)
- Sylvia Ofwegen (shot and dismembered postmortem; her remains weren’t found)
- Vivian Kruiswyck (shot and dismembered postmortem; her remains weren’t found)
- Millie DeBruin (attempted to shoot; she escaped)
- The Maine hunters murders:
- Brandon Tyrone (strangled; eviscerated and hung upside down postmortem)
- Nick Thibodeau (killed and dismembered postmortem; his remains weren’t found)
- Boston: Leon Gott (strangled; eviscerated and hung upside down postmortem; left his organs in a basket at the scene and stole his photos and money)
- Brookville: Jodi Underwood (strangled with a ligature; stole her phone, laptop, camera, and money)
- Suffolk Zoo, Boston:
- Debra Lopez (strangled; thrown into the African leopard den postmortem)
- The leopards release and escape: (attempted to kill with released leopards; failed)
- Detective Jane Rizzoli
- Dr. Maura Isles
- Numerous unidentified police
- Numerous unidentified zoo patrons
- Boston: Millie DeBruin (attempted; strangled with a ligature; she killed him instead)
Trivia[]
- Rhodes is inspired by multiple real-life fictional criminals and criminal cases:
- The murder of Julie Ward, a British woman who disappeared when she was on safari during a vacation, then found dead in what is now an unsolved murder case.
- Stephen Norton, the main antagonist of Poirot: Curtain's Last Case, a serial proxy killer guilty of, to compensate for his nervous and resentful personality, inserts himself into people's lives, pushes their buttons without being suspected do to his demeanor, and watches people kill each other based on his suggestion.