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“ | It's hard to trust a man who can't trust himself with a beer, don't you think? | „ |
~ Reverend Tuttle subtly threatening Rust Cohle over his alcoholism. |
Billy Lee Tuttle is the secondary antagonist of season one of the HBO series True Detective. He is a Christian reverend, the head of the Tuttle Ministries and a prominent member of the Tuttle family, a powerful family amongst the Louisiana elite. However, he is secretly one of the leaders of a cult of powerful men that worships the "Yellow King" and enacts horrific atrocities involving the ritualised sexual abuse and murder of women and children.
He was portrayed by Jay O. Sanders, who also played Harry Rowan, Sr. in Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Ranch Wilder in Angels in the Outfield.
Biography[]
Reverend Tuttle is the son of Sam Tuttle, the former sheriff of Vermillion Parish, and the half-brother of Billy Childress. He was born into a wealthy, respectable family which exerted a sizable influence over Louisiana politics; his cousin, Edwin Tuttle, would go on to become Governor of Louisiana. Billy Tuttle himself was a prominent state religious leader and enjoyed a good relationship with state law enforcement. He was the founder of the Tuttle Ministries which set up churches, schools and charities all across the state. His greatest achievement was the Wellspring Program, an initiative he founded to fund underprivileged private schools in return for the schools promoting a religious education.
However, unknown to the public was the fact that the Tuttle family were in fact involved in a cult which included many powerful members of the Louisiana elite, worshipping a deity known as the King in Yellow or Yellow King in a bizarre fusion of evangelical Christianity and ancient Cajun superstitions. The cult's rituals involved the rape, torture and murder of young women and children, often at an altar out in the woods. Reverend Tuttle was one of the leaders of this cult and used the Wellspring Program to gain access to victims via the Tuttle-funded schools, while using his family connections in politics and the police to make sure the disappearances were never properly investigated.
1995[]
The cult's crimes come to the attention of the Louisiana State Police after the latest victim, Dora Lange, is found ritualistically staged in a field. During the investigation, Reverend Tuttle visits the detectives in charge, Rust Cohle and Marty Hart, to express his concerns about the case. He demands that they investigate the murder as having a Satanist connection; when Rust and Hart ignore his suggestion, he invokes his connections to Governor Edwin Tuttle to have their boss set up a taskforce to investigate supposed "anti-Christian" crimes, intent on taking control of the investigation before it gets too close. However, Rust and Hart persuade their boss to give them a few more days before turning the case over to Tuttle's taskforce.
Rust and Hart's investigation leads them to connect Dora Lange's murder to the disappearance of 10-year-old Marie Fontenot in 1990 and the death of 22-year-old Rianne Olivier in 1992, which was written off as an accidental drowning; both victims had attended the Tuttle schools. While investigating their prime suspect, sex offender Reggie Ledoux, they also find that he had bragged about being a member of a cult of powerful men who sacrificed children to the Yellow King out in the woods. They eventually corner Ledoux and his cousin Dewall, who allude to their role in the cult, but are killed by Hart before they can give up any information. Rust and Hart then rescue the Ledoux's latest victims and find evidence linking the Ledouxs to some of the murders, and the case is closed without Tuttle's involvement being suspected.
2002[]
Seven years after the Dora Lange case was closed, a double murderer Rust was interviewing tells him that more people were involved in the murder and alludes to a cult, mentioning the Yellow King. He agrees to tell Rust everything in return for a plea bargain, but before Rust can talk to him again, he is forced into killing himself by the cult.
Undeterred, Rust begins investigating unsolved disappearances of children and young women all over the state since Dora Lange's murder. He soon uncovers a connection between the disappearances, as all of the victims attended schools that were part of the now-defunct Wellspring Program at the time of their disappearances. Rust then interviews Joel Theriot, a former pastor at one of the Tuttle schools, who reveals that he heard rumours of sexual abuse within Wellspring and ultimately left the ministry after finding child pornography at the school where he worked. He also reveals that he reported the abuse to his superior, Tuttle's close associate Austin Farrar, who reluctantly agreed to investigate; soon after, Farrar was sacked for embezzlement and killed in a car crash. Rust also talks to the Ledoux's surviving victim, who tells him there were other people involved in the crimes.
After his superiors refuse to investigate further, Rust visits the Tuttle ministries to interview Reverend Tuttle alone, finding that Wellspring is soon to be re-opened. Tuttle evades his questions, claiming to have "lost" all records about Wellspring; when Rust brings up Austin Farrar, Tuttle tells him that Farrar's career was destroyed because he "couldn't trust himself with a beer", hinting at Rust's own substance abuse issues that could destroy his career if revealed. Deducing that Rust is onto him, he gets him to admit the reason for his visit - "dead women and children" - then uses his influence in the police to have Rust suspended. This drives Rust to quit the force.
2010[]
After several years of his investigation going nowhere, Rust finally has a breakthrough when he tracks down a man who attended the same school as Marie Fontenot, which was shut down due to allegations of sexual abuse. The witness tells him that children at the school were molested by people wearing animal masks, including the Ledouxs and the presumed third killer; Marie had started talking about the abuse just before she disappeared. Now certain that Tuttle is responsible for the murders, Rust breaks into his second home in Baton Rouge, finding photos of children in the woods surrounded by men in animal masks, and a tape of Marie Fontenot's rape and murder by a group of masked men.
Soon after the tape's disappearance, Reverend Tuttle is found dead in his home from a drug overdose. The official conclusion is that he died accidentally from mixed medications, but Rust suspects he was killed by his fellow cultists so he could not be blackmailed.
Despite Tuttle's death, Rust continues his investigation and, two years on, he and Hart are finally able to confront and kill the true killer: Errol Childress, Reverend Tuttle's half-nephew. The true extent of the crimes, and their connection to the Tuttle schools (where Childress was a groundskeeper), are revealed to the public; although nothing directly links either Edwin Tuttle or the late Reverend Tuttle to the crimes, the mere suspicion of involvement destroys the Tuttle families' reputation and influence, finally bringing an end to the cult.