  |
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. |
Albert Mason Price is the main antagonist of Richard Laymon's 1999 horror novel Cuts. A teenage spree killer with a sexual fetish for stabbing women, he rampages from Illinois to California, eventually coming into conflict with the protagonists in California.
Personality[]
Albert Price has piquerism, a sexual fascination with stabbing or piercing people. He is sexually aroused by stabbing women, usually to death. He is also a general sexual sadist, attempting to prolong his attacks for as long as possible and combining his stabbings with rape and humiliation.
Even aside from his dangerous sexual deviance, Albert has a generally sociopathic, selfish, and cruel personality. He has no qualms with killing anyone for any reason - while mostly targeting women, he kills several men as well, either to steal their cars or homes or simply to get them out of the way. He lives on the run, taking over the homes of his victims for a couple days at a time and stealing their cars to move on to the next victims, and hopes to keep this up forever. He is constantly on the hunt for new victims, either for sexual gratification or simply to steal a new vehicle or home.
Albert's only non-violent hobby is watching horror movies, especially slashers, but even this is implied to be an expression of his violent sexual urges.
Biography[]
Past[]
Albert Price was 17 years old at the time of his October 1975 murder spree, placing his birth in 1957 or 1958. He grew up in North Glen, Illinois. At an early age, he witnessed an unknown attacker stab his mother to death - it is implied that this event formed the root of his stabbing fetish. Thereafter he lived with his father, who was severely abusive and once locked him in a shed for two weeks. By 1975, Albert Price was a dangerously angry and unstable young man.
Killing Spree[]
North Glen murders[]
The night before the first murders, Albert Price arranged to meet a classmate named Betty for sex. When they met, Betty demanded $20 as payment. Albert did not have enough money, so Betty rebuffed him. They arranged to meet later when Albert had enough money, and Betty sent Albert home. On the way home, a frustrated Albert stabbed a dog to death in a rage.
The next day, Albert happened to meet Rita Braxton at the grocery store. He learned her name and address by glancing at her checkbook and recognized her as the mother of one of his classmates. That evening, Albert decided to break into the Braxton home to steal enough money to pay Betty. Not knowing if anyone was home, he took a switchblade with him. The break-in was initially uneventful, but while he was in the house Mrs. Braxton came home with her lover Charles. Albert hid in a closet, where Charles found him. Albert impulsively slit Charles' throat and, seeing the opportunity to indulge his violent lust, attacked Mrs. Braxton. He stabbed her and raped her before killing her.
After the murders, Albert went home, where he spent the night and the next morning disposing of evidence and preparing to leave town. The night after the murders, Albert hitchhiked with an old man named Morris, who was heading to St. Louis. Albert was initially friendly with Morris, but when he spotted a female hitchhiker he carjacked Morris at knifepoint, forced him out of the car, and stabbed him to death. He then drove back to find and kill the female hitchhiker, he found that she was gone. Albert then continued on to St. Louis.
St. Louis and Kansas City[]
Albert spent a day looking for victims in St. Louis, but did not find any unaccompanied young women to prey on. Subsequently, he drove on to Kansas City.
In Kansas City, Albert met a teenage girl named Chelsea Abercrombe. He followed Chelsea home, where he gained access to her home by pretending to be a classmate. When her parents introduced themselves, Albert immediately stabbed her father to death before subduing the mother and daughter. Albert bound the two women and held them captive in their own home for three days, raping and torturing them at will. At some point, he killed Chelsea's mother. On the morning of the third day, Chelsea baited Albert into making her cook bacon for them. She used the stovetop to set the grease in the pan on fire and threw the burning grease at Albert, missing him but starting a massive fire in the house. Chelsea used the fire to escape, since it blocked Albert's pursuit.
Albert fled the burning house, desperate to leave the scene before Chelsea brought firemen and police down on him. He forced his way into an elderly neighbor's home, stole a butcher knife, and stabbed her to death with it. Looking for clothes to conceal himself with, he found only women's clothes, inspiring him to dress as a woman to evade detection. He quickly dressed in a female disguise before driving away in the old woman's car, taking her corpse with him in the trunk.
Wichita[]
Albert drove to Wichita, where he disposed of the old woman's body. He then went out in disguise to hunt for victims and to watch a movie. At the theater, he was sexually harassed by a patron who had fallen for his disguise and mistaken him for a woman. Two women at the theater, Katie and Tess, drove the harasser off. Finding the two ideal victims, Albert introduced himself as "Alicia" and quickly hit it off with Katie and Tess, who invited "Alicia" to stay at their home. At their place, Albert/"Alicia" met Katie's boyfriend Steve, who then departed with Katie for a weekend trip, leaving "Alicia" alone with Tess. After a brief conversation, the two saw a news broadcast naming Albert as a suspect in the North Glen and Kansas City murders. This was the first Albert had heard about being wanted, and it also prompted Tess to realize that "Alicia" looked very much like Albert. Albert immediately attacked Tess and stabbed her to death.
Albert stayed in the house for two days, storing Tess's corpse in a bathtub full of ice and implicitly engaging in necrophilia with the body. When Katie and Steve came home, Albert ambushed them, killing Steve with two stabs to the back and subduing Katie. He spent the next five hours raping and torturing a bound Katie before killing her. Afterward, Albert amputated Katie's breasts, using them to fill out his bra.
Denver[]
Albert next arrived in Denver. There, he ran disguised through a neighborhood, pretending to be a rape victim. When a man let Albert into his home, Albert murdered the man and took over his house. Now with access to men's clothes, Albert abandoned his female disguise.
The next night, Albert was wandering Denver when he happened upon a film shoot. There, he met young actress May Beth Bonner. He charmed her, and she took him home for sex. While the sex began as consensual, Albert began to sexually assault May Beth. She escaped by jumping through a closed window. While seriously hurt by the broken glass, May Beth escaped with her life. Albert took May Beth's keys from the scene and fled back to the shoot's parking lot, stealing May Beth's car before anyone realized anything was wrong.
Grand Beach[]
After two nights hiding in Arizona, Albert needed a new home to live in. He headed to Grand Beach, California, knowing that May Beth's mother Emily Jean lived there and that he now had a key to her house. He arrived in Grand Beach on Halloween night and quickly broke into the house, finding it empty. He hid naked in May Beth's bedroom, laying in wait for Emily Jean to come home. He did not know that Emily Jean was in Denver visiting her injured daughter and would not be home for some time. Albert ultimately planned to go from Grand Beach to nearby Los Angeles, a city so large that he hoped he could continue his house-hopping murder spree forever without detection.
Soon after, friends Janet Arthur, Ian Collins, and Lester Bryant arrived at Emily Jean's house. They were all friends of Emily Jean, and were heading to her house to drop Lester off after his wife's infidelity had been exposed at a Halloween teacher's party they all attended. Lester was the first to find Albert, who promptly stabbed Lester in the gut, killing him. He then attacked Janet and Ian as they came up the stairs. He shoved Ian down the stairs, knocking him out and breaking his arm, then turned on Janet, shutting her in the bedroom with him.
Albert stabbed and sexually assaulted Janet, but she managed to wrest his knife away from him and slash him across the face, badly injuring him and taking out one of his eyes. She then pinned him down, but he grabbed the knife back and got away from her, getting back to his feet and coming at her again. However, he was too badly hurt to press the attack. Janet, not wanting to kill him or even let him die, seduced him into dropping the knife. Janet and Ian then called the police, who took an exhausted and wounded Albert into custody.
Later life[]
For unknown reasons, Albert was found unfit to stand trial for his crimes. He was sent to a mental institution, where he spent 24 years before he was deemed cured and released. However, Albert's violent sexual desires were actually as strong as ever.
In August 2000, Albert sought out Janet's family for revenge. He went to the Malibu home of the since-married Janet and Ian, but only found Janet's daughter Lisa - Janet was pregnant with Lisa at the time Albert attacked her. Lisa let a disguised Albert into the house, where he revealed his true identity and assaulted her. However, Lisa actually knew exactly who Albert was and had let him into the house to lull him into a false sense of security. She turned the tables on him, blinding his other eye and slicing his Achilles tendons. She then told the blinded and crippled Albert that she was not nearly as kind as her mother, who had gone out of her way to spare him, and that she intended to give him the torturous death she thought he deserved. The novel ends just as Lisa begins to torture Albert.
Victims[]
Albert Price murdered eleven people and attempted to kill four others. Most of his female victims were tortured and sexually assaulted, while his male victims were killed outright. The attacks took place across five states in a continuous spree lasting more than a week.
- North Glen, Illinois:
- Charles
- Rita Braxton
- Morris
- Kansas City, Missouri
- Mike Abercrombe
- Mrs. Abercrombe
- Chelsea Abercrombe - survived
- Unnamed old woman
- Wichita, Kansas
- Tess
- Steve Colvert
- Katie
- Denver, Colorado
- Willard
- May Beth Bonner - survived
- Grand Beach, California
- Lester Bryant
- Ian Collins - survived
- Janet Arthur - survived