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Billy and Susan Sullivan are the hidden main antagonists of the Rizzoli & Isles novel "I Know a Secret". The Sullivans are a mother-son duo of sadistic killers out to silence all the witnesses to Billy’s culpability in the murder of Lizzie DePalma with Holly Devine and creating a Satanic panic with Holly just to cover up the crime.
Biography[]
Billy was a neighborhood bully of children in Brookline, as well as had a pension for torturing and murdering animals, which his mother Susan denied or defended him over constantly. Lizzie was the child who resisted Billy the most, so he harassed her most of all. When he was firing rocks at her with a slingshot, she threw dirt in his face, and the ensuing fight led Billy to knock Lizzie unconscious. Holly, a child sociopath who only had Billy as a peer, was present at the time, and she saw Lizzie wearing the hat Holly desperately wanted. Billy said he’d ditch Holly and keep the hat from her if Holly didn’t smash a rock into Lizzie’s temple, so Holly did so and took the hat. They buried Lizzie’s remains in the woods near Billy’s house. When Holly was caught with Lizzie’s hat while riding the bus to the Apple Tree Daycare home nursery, run by Martin and Irena Stanek, she lied it was already on the bus. When Holly and Billy realized they’d get caught, they lied the Staneks raped them, which led the community coercing the other kids on the bus that day into filing impossible reports on human sacrifice and witchcraft. Prosecutor Erica Shay biased the jury into convicting the Staneks, and Irena died in prison, while Martin was eventually released.
Billy grew to work in Cornell Investments, but he ended up embezzling millions of dollars from his clients. The firm kicked him out, and Billy fled before he could be caught with the money by police. But as for Lizzie’s murder and the Apple Tree panics, one of the manipulated kids, Cassandra Coyle, knew Holly had Lizzie’s hat and killed Lizzie for it, so he wrote a script for a slasher film, Mr. Simian, which revealed a caricature of Holly as the true killer to put the word out. The film became an indie succes, and journalist Bonnie Stanbridge interviewed Cassandra for information, which led to Bonnie getting in contact with Martin so she could oust the truth. Billy and Susan got word of this, so they planned to hunt all the kids on the bus who saw Holly with the hat and joined in on the false accusations so their testimonies wouldn’t lead back to him.
The Staneks had ritualistic play-pretend games where they honored each child like a Christian martyr who died on their birthdays, so the murders the Sullivan planned were intended to be inspired by the deaths of the martyrs with the hopes of framing Martin. It began with Billy disappearing to fake his own "murder", mimicking the live burial of Saint Vitalis. They then burned Sarah Banderash in a house fire like Joan of Arc, then killed Cassie’s and Tim McDougal to mutilate them like Saints Lucy and Sebastian, respectively: Cassie’s eyes were place in her left palm, and Tim was impaled with three arrows. All three of them were sedated with ketamine, and Cassie and Tim were suffocated with plastic bags taped to their heads, which were then taken from the scenes. Holly knew she was being hunted, let alone that Martin was a suspect, so she manipulated her cancer-stricken father Earle into hooting Martin dead, before he committed suicide by cop. She never knew Billy was behind everything.
After a brief service at her home, at which Susan attended, Susan lagged behind to spike the drinks of Holly and her latest partner, Everett Prescott. Billy arrived and harassed Holly by both taunting her with their shared guilt and molesting her naked body. With the intent of posing them together for a suicide pact, the Sullivans tried to smother Hell with a pillow, but she pulled out her gun and shot Susan dead. Billy tried to shoot her in reaction, but the detectives arrived and killed him to save Holly and Everett. Even after Everett, who heard the full confession, got Holly to imply her complicity on a wire, even after Lizzie’s bones were found, Holly’s legal fate was left open#ended by the novel’s end.
Trivia[]
- The Apple Tree Daycare panic is inspired by the McMartin Preschool trial, an uncannily similar daycare abuse hysteria involving the convictions of a couple who presided over children, high were later overturned once it was revealed to have been from a community set off by mass paranoia leading to outlandish tales that influenced the trial. The McMartin trial is the widest recognized Satanic panic case in history.