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I don't know where you think you're going. You're mine now.
~ Harvey threatening Susie Salmon just before murdering her.

George Harvey is the main antagonist of the 2002 novel The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, and its 2009 film adaptation of the same name directed by Peter Jackson. He is a serial killer who rapes and murders young girls, including the protagonist, Susie Salmon.

He was portrayed by Stanley Tucci, who also played Lord Roderick in Jack the Giant Slayer, Vernon in Beethoven, Frank in Jury Duty and Joshua Joyce in Transformers: Age of Extinction.

Biography[]

Novel[]

The novel and the film are relatively the same in portraying his character, with the exception being that the film omits his tragic backstory. Harvey's mother had bipolar disorder and committed petty theft during her manic phases. When Harvey was eight years old, he witnessed his mother being gang-raped by a group of men whom she had robbed. Shortly afterward, his cold and abusive father banished her from the family.

Movie[]

As an adult, Harvey murders a number of pre-teen girls and one middle-aged woman. He takes a souvenir from each victim. He lives alone in Norristown, Pennsylvania, making a living building dollhouses and claiming to be a widower. Between murders, he satisfies his bloodlust by torturing and killing animals, and his pedophilia by spying on young girls in various stages of undress.

On December 6, 1973, he lures his 14-year-old neighbor Susie Salmon into an underground "clubhouse" he had built in the woods near his house and rapes and murders her once she is in his power. He then dismembers her body and puts her remains in a safe, which he keeps in his basement. He also keeps a piece of her bracelet as a souvenir, frequently plays with it while he stares at the safe in order to relive the memory of killing her.

He believes he got away with the "perfect crime", and begins looking for more victims, at one point even toying with the idea of killing Susie's older sister Lindsay. Susie, while looking down from the afterlife on her family and her murderer, has to choose between her family and vengeance. She also meets his other victims, befriending Denise Lee Ang, the girl he murdered just before her.

Harvey is forced to go on the run after Lindsey, who suspects him of killing Susie, breaks into his house to find proof of his guilt. She eventually finds an incriminating drawing of his "clubhouse", but he catches her. He runs after her, but she is too quick and gets away with the evidence. Panicked, Harvey quickly packs up and flees the state as the cops search his house and put him on a wanted list. He takes with him the safe where he has stored Susie's remains ever since killing her and buries it in a sinkhole right before leaving town.

After leaving Pennsylvania, he lives a nomadic existence for several years, and eventually settles in New Hampshire. On a wintry night, he approaches a young woman named Clair outside a diner and offers to give her a ride, intending to make her his next victim. She rebuffs his advances, however, threatening him if he does not leave her alone. However, as Harvey turns to leave, an icicile breaks loose and strikes him in the neck, sending the frail old man over the side of the ledge and killing him.

Victims[]

Besides Susie, Harvey murdered several other girls and women:

  • Sophie Cichetti - A 49-year-old woman in Pennsylvania whom Havey murdered in 1960. She was Harvey's landlady. They had sex, and he impulsively smashed her skull in and left her body by a creek.
  • Lana Johnson (Leidia Johnson in the novel) - His youngest victim, a six-year-old girl he killed in Bucks County, Pennsylvania in 1960. He lured into a shack he had built and raped and murdered her.
  • Flora Hernandez - An 8-year-old girl in Delaware, whom he murdered in 1963. Harvey had only wanted to touch her, but he killed her when she screamed. He left her body to decompose in an old basement. Only her left sock and shoe was ever found.
  • Jackie Meyer - A girl in Delaware who has just turned 13 when Harvey killed her in 1967. Her body was found in a drainage ditch by the side of the road.
  • Leah Fox - A 12-year-old girl whom Harvey murdered in Delaware in 1969. He fell asleep on top of her after he raped her and she suffocated. She was already dead when Harvey dumped her corpse in a river.
  • Denise Lee Ang (Wendy Richter in the novel) - A 13-year-old girl whom Harvey murdered in Connecticut in 1971. She liked to call herself "Holly Golightly", after the protagonist of the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. She was waiting for her father to close up their shop when Harvey kidnapped, raped and strangled her. She befriends Susie in the afterlife.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • Before the icicle fell on him to cause his demise, it emits a strange yellow light, suggesting that Susie used divine intervention to loosen it.
    • Harvey's death can also be seen as poetic, as he falls off a cliff and is buried by snow in a similar fashion to how he dumped the safe containing Susie's remains into the sinkhole and were buried in mud and dirt.
  • In the novel, Ralph Cichetti, Sophie Cichetti's son, tells Hal Heckler, brother of Lindsey Salmon's boyfriend Samuel, that he thinks his mother was killed by a boarder who made dollhouses; Hal connects this to Susie’s murderer.
  • For his performance as Harvey, Tucci was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Nevertheless, he later said that he found the experience of playing Harvey unpleasant.

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