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| “ | You're my kind of woman. | „ |
| ~ Bob Rusk's come-on line used to lure his victims. |
Robert "Bob" Rusk is the main antagonist of the 1966 novel Goodbye Picadilly, Farewell Leicester Square and its 1972 film adaptation Frenzy, directed by the late Alfred Hitchcock.
He was portrayed by the late Barry Foster.
Biography[]
Beneath his charming, "ladies man" exterior, Rusk is a misogynistic psychopath and serial killer who rapes dozens of young women and strangles them with neckties. He patronizes a matrimony service run by his friend Richard Blaney's ex-wife Brenda, but she blacklists him after he beats and abuses a woman she had matched him up with.
Rusk becomes obsessed with Brenda herself, so he breaks into her office and propositions her. When she turns him down, he attempts to rape her; when he cannot perform, he flies into a rage and strangles her. Suspicion falls on Blaney, who had been seen arguing with her days earlier.
Rusk also murders Blaney's girlfriend Barbara and disposes of her body in a lorry filled with potatoes. When he discovers that Barbara grabbed his tie pin while fighting for her life, Rusk hops onto the moving lorry and breaks her fingers, which have gone stiff with rigor mortis, so he can get it back. He then hops off the lorry unnoticed.
When the police start looking for Blaney, Rusk offers to hide him in his flat and then calls the police. Blaney figures out that Rusk is the murderer after Rusk frames him, but it is too late; he is found guilty of Rusk's crimes and sentenced to life in prison.
Believing himself to be untouchable, Rusk celebrates his freedom by killing another woman. He goes out to get a crate to dispose of the body, but returns to find that Blaney, who has escaped prison and tries to kill him with a tire bar, and Inspector Oxford, the chief investigator on the case, are both in his flat and have discovered the body. Oxford dryly remarks, "Mr. Rusk, you're not wearing your tie", and Rusk resignedly drops the crate. He is presumably arrested and imprisoned for life.
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