Gideon Whitely

Mr. Gideon Whitely is a Vietnam veteran who killed gay men using New York City gay clubs as hunting grounds, earning him the moniker 'Mai Tai Killer'. He is a character in NYC portrayed by Jeff Hiller. He worked as a nurse when he is not hired by Velvet Touch to dispose of bodies.

Background[]

In 1979, Whitely assisted the hitman known as Velvet Touch in disposing of a corpse on Fire Island after a three some ended in accidental death. Although Whitely was sexually aroused in chopping up the body, he was disturbed by the death of such a beautiful boy - one who should have been protected according to him. ^[2]

Story[]

Whitely abducts a drugged Gino Barelli on the sidewalk outside The Brownstone Bar, loading him into the car.^[3]

Whitely vacuums the carpet in a room while Gino is bound and gagged to a chair placed in front of a television set with a soft pornographic program. He keeps Gino drugged via intravenous injections before tying him to a bed, rambling whilst inserting a recently heated needle under Gino's fingernails. Whitely claims sterilizing needles is an old habit. The torture continues, and Whitley tells his victim he's going to lift his arm and dislocate his shoulder. The man claims Gino is not his first victim, but he was careless with the others – he made them anonymous. Now, he needs to make a statement about homosexual victims, rambling about an upcoming war. However, the moment he spots a United States Marine Corps tattoo on Gino's chest, he decides to let him go. After administering another injection, he leaves him in front of an adult video-store.

In Dr. Hannah Wells' waiting room, Whitely has an argument with two other patients about medical privacy stating that he could sue them for harassing him. Noting that he has overreacted, he says the he's in for a "little scratcharoo". Once in Dr. Wells' office, Whitely tells her he's got a rash that won't go away. At night, Whitely spikes a man's drink at The Ditch, a local underground club, and stabs him in the neck. ^[4]

Whitely teases Detective Patrick Read during a stakeout and then offers a Mai Tai to Adam Carpenter, Barelli's colleague during an evening at the Ascension Club. The one-sided flirtation is interrupted by an arson attack that ends in a cat-and-mouse hunt in the emergency room. After protesting Dr Wells taking his blood samples, Whitely taunts Patrick and Gino into chasing him around the crowded hospital. He overpowered the reporter, locking him in a refrigerated drawer in the morgue. ^[5]

Whitely teases Patrick again with a phone call to the station during the city-wide blackout. The serial killer lures the detective to Central Park, where he is attacked by Big Daddy. Later on, Whitely severed a man's head in the park aware that David and Cameron were spying on him. When the two follow him to his flat, Whitely lures them and attacks them in the lift with a hunting knife after joking about the bad smell emanating from his bag.^[6]

Stapping the two men on slabs in an abattoir, Whitely tells them that he will give meaning to their lives. He is planning to expose what he consider shallow hypocrisy during the upcoming Pride parade by unveil his creation – The Sentinel, assembled from the parts he collected from his kills, missing only a heart and genitals. Whitely ponders which part will come from each captive. ^[7]

Whitely's services are requested by Henry, a hitman with whom he has collaborated in the past. However, Whitely notices something wrong with the voice of the man on the other end of the phone. Suspicious confirmed when they meet at the bar and Henry refuses the offered drink. At that point, Whitely lures and narcotizes the hitman in the bathroom and loads him into his car. ^[2]

Whitely tortures Henry, removing his left ear. When Gino and Patrick break into his lair at the slaughterhouse, Whitely knocks them unconscious and decides to use Patrick's heart for his Sentinel. By his own admission, he admires the detective for coming out on the job and assiduously trying to solve the Mai Tai Killer murders. As his captives break free, Patrick shoots and kills Whitely in the midst of rambling about his motives for the killings. ^[8]

Personality and Appearance[]

Whitely was a mission-oriented serial killer with medical training whose vision seems to have originated during his work as a cleaner of the hitman Velvet Touch in disposing of Billy's body by dismembering him. ^[2] Whitely justified his actions as compelled to shock society's apathy towards gay men. ^[4] To do this, he took parts from the corpses of his victims by constructing a creature he called "The Sentinel." Whitely's delusions were such that he believed this assemblage of corpse parts would come back to life with a transfusion of Whitely's own blood. ^[8]

While torturing Gino Barelli, Whitely specified how his modus operandi evolved; if initially he targeted anonymous men leaving behind as many anonymous bodies, he moved on to victims who would force society to pay attention. ^[4] Whitely was a reserved man whom Henry was able to subdue with the threat of outing him to his mother. ^[2] He enjoyed the thrill of the hunt with an organized method, carefully selecting his victims for the Sentinel project, eg Patrick's heart as a symbol to his courage in coming out as a cop.^[8] Whitely was soft-spoken and cultured enough to move with ease in both leather bars and more exclusive clubs such as the Ascension.

At 6-foot-5 (195.58 cm), Whitely was a disturbing presence who towered over his victims and had great facility in overpowering them. Whitely was a man with a fair complexion, receding brown hair and a sturdy build. He wore black-rimmed glasses and casual clothing like jeans, polo shirts and sensible shoes.

Quotes[]

Whitley: "There is a lot of pain in us. I want to make that legible."
Whitley: "They were just bodies. I need to give them people."
To Gino: "Homosexuals are central to the natural order of things. And you will be a totem to that."
Whitley: "They think we bleed differently. But we are all the same. And they will see the blood."
Whitley: "There's a war that's coming. It will fix some things."
To Dr. Wells: "I have a rash. A rash that won't go away."

Notes[]

When he visits Dr. Wells' office, she mispronounces his name as Whitley. Ironically, Billie Lourd who plays Dr. Hannah Wells previously played Liv Whitley in American Horror Stories.
Whitely is purportedly inspired by two real-life serial murderers:
- Richard Rogers, a gay man and surgical nurse at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, convicted for the murders of Thomas Mulcahy (a name that is referenced in the show) and Anthony Marrero in 1992 and 1993, respectively but he is suspected of other killings.^[9]
- Paul Bateson, a convicted killer who worked as an extra on the 1973 film The Exorcist. He worked as a radiologist and was tried for the murder of reporter Addison Verrill. Bateson was also suspected for a series of unsolved killings between 1975 and 1977, called the "Bag Murders." ^[9]