Seilon

Dr. Mario Joseph Seilon, KCRC MD FRS (born 11 May 2641), often simply going by the mononym Seilon, is a Terran medical doctor, researcher, biologist, and serial killer who is the current Presiding Director of the Lyman Institute for Xenological Studies, on the planet Lonnel of the Eton star system, and has been since 2676. In 2674, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine, together with his colleague Dr. David McGrady, "for the eradication of a viral pandemic in its cradle, and the rapid discovery of its cure". Doctor McGrady was awarded it posthumously, and Doctor Seilon accepted the award alone at the ceremony. He was subsequently appointed Research Director, and later Presiding Director, of the prestigious Lyman Institute.
Doctor Seilon is also known for a brutal series of murders known as the Long Island Killings committed between March 2667 and December 2672. Seilon became the subject of a massive media frenzy during the course of his trial in March 2673. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Stronsay Imperial Correctional Facility in Scotland, but was paroled a year later after a period of voluntary service to the Crown and State, during which he acted to cure the Unthor viral haemorrhagic fever. He was formally pardoned of his crimes in late 2674 and entered a career in xenobiological research.
== Early life and education ==
=== Childhood ===
Mario Joseph Seilon was born to Michelle Justine Seilon, a Quebecois living in upstate New York, on May 11th, 2641, at the Interlake Health Facility in Ticonderoga, New York Province. His father was not listed on his birth certificate, and remains unknown to this day. His mother also had another child, Jules, from a different father, who was born October 12th, 2638.
Very little is known of Seilon's childhood. and he has been reluctant to speak on the subject in interviews or press releases. Public records show that he and his mother moved to New York City in 2648, and she obtained a job as a pharmacist. In July 2654, his mother and brother were murdered by then-unknown assailants, later discovered to be members of the Martels, an infamous street gang active in New York and New Jersey. Seilon was sent to the Queens Central Orphanarium initially, but was placed there for only a few months before being sent to foster care in the home of Lawrence and Richard Milanese. He was given private education, and there developed an interest in medical sciences.
=== Education ===
At age 18, Seilon enrolled in the New York Medical College, successfully testing into the institution despite his lack of a formal secondary education. He departed for Valhalla, New York and took up studies at the College from August 2658 to May 2665, studying psychology and forensics as well as medicine. During this time, he lived in an rented cottage in nearby Sleepy Hollow. As would be later revealed in testimony at his trial, his primary interest in medical training was obtaining the skills necessary to commit his murders. It is now known that he began his killings while in college, and continued them throughout his career in New York.
Seilon obtained his M.D. from the NYMC in 2665, and began to practice medicine in Manhattan. His professors remarked that he was skilled, but not particularly brilliant, with medicine. His greatest area seemed to be in research and analysis as well as cellular biology, and he repeatedly received top marks in his human psychology, xenopsychology, anatomy, genetics, chemistry and forensics courses.
== Early career ==
Seilon began his medical career at the Public Health Service's Broadway Complex in late summer of 2665, as an intern physician under the wing of Dr. David Winters. The next year, Winters departed to teach at the Martian College of Medicine. Seilon continued to work as an intern at Broadway until December 2666, whereupon he was certified for his residency. He worked at Broadway until April 2670. During this time, he practised medicine with a specialization in disease prevention and management, genetics research, and pathogen research. He consulted surgical physicians in methods of preventing the spread of pathogens during complex surgeries, and made several discoveries involving genetic predisposition towards susceptibility to certain diseases. He also consulted on haematology, particularly with vascular surgeons, in the New York area. While working at Broadway, he received certification in pharmacotherapy.
In April 2670, he was invited by the private Northmont Hospital to become a resident physician there and conduct "cutting-edge" genetics and haematology experiments and research alongside the famous David McGrady. The two were apartment room-mates and worked together on numerous research projects until Seilon's arrest in December 2672. During his time at Northmont, Seilon also consulted the hospital's physicians on haematology, pharmacology, and disease management. He provided consultation services to law enforcement investigations in forensics sciences relating to blood and genetic evidence at crime scenes. It is believed by investigators that his actions in this regard masked evidence for his own crimes, and often threw off the trail of his own killings by falsely interpreting evidence to indicate other culprits. Indeed, after the trial, several convicted murderers had their sentences overturned on account of new evidence indicating Seilon's complicity in the crimes.
== Murders ==
Throughout the 2660s and early 2670s, Seilon is believed to have murdered 54 people. After his trials for murder and the failure of subsequent appeals in September 2673, he admitted to having murdered a man named Orell Ewing in 2661 while he was attending the New York Medical College in Valhalla, New York. He claimed that he spotted the man while walking in town, and asserted that the victim was connected to the death of his mother. This would become a consistent theme in Seilon's justification for his murders. He tracked the man across town and bludgeoned him with a rock, dragging him into an alley to slit the victim's throat. Seilon took the rock with him and later disposed of it in a dumpster. The murder went unsolved until Seilon confessed.
He did not kill again for two years, when a series of disappearances began in the college town in the summer of 2663. Approximately six students disappeared during this time, and their remains were later discovered after copious searching in late 2663. Seilon experimented in his methods of killing by kidnapping college students and injecting them with psychoactive substances while performing amateur surgery on them before dismembering and disposing of them in various sites. Among these sites were Rockefeller Park forest, Tarrytown Lake, and the Hudson River. Armed with extensive knowledge of criminology and forensics from his studies at the college, he was able to minimize evidence and evade suspicion. Seilon claimed in his trial that the college murder victims were rapists of their fellow students. His claims have yet to be substantiated. These murders also went unsolved until after Seilon's trial.
Upon moving to New York City to begin his medical career, he engaged in a series of murders in Long Island. After establishing himself in his career, he meticulously researched his first victims and killed them. From early 2667 to late spring 2670, Seilon would stalk, kidnap, and murder victims at a rate of about one per month. He did so in increasingly elaborate and violent ways, with greater usage of psychoactive drugs to torment and, allegedly, to obtain confessions from his victims. From the spring of 2670 to his capture in December 2672, the rate slowed to one every three months. Outside of these consistent serial killings, Seilon also engaged in deliberate medical malpractice with the intent of killing his patient, of which eight persons can be identified as having died as a result of Seilon's treatment.
Seilon alleged that the Long Island murders were all done to target specific people, whom he claimed were members of organized crime groups who were connected to the death of his mother. Seilon came into contact with most of his victims through work, as many of them were patients of doctors for whom he consulted. He very rarely chose his own patients to be his victims. He would stalk them for months at a time, staggering his killings so that the death of one victim would not be soon after his seeing another as a patient or consulting with the victim's usual physician. Seilon was an unusually organized and calculating serial killer, who used his victims' trust in him as a doctor to take advantage of them and eventually overpower and kill them. He utilized various aspects of his medical training to reduce evidence left, to throw investigators off his trail, and to commit his murders. The verified connection of some of his victims to organized crime also led investigators to attribute some deaths to gang violence.
Seilon would often approach his victim on the street and engage them in conversation while walking. He would subtly guide them towards a secluded pre-planned location where he would surreptitiously knock them unconscious with blunt objects, nerve-pinch techniques, or with tranquillizers. He would then either carry the body to another location to would have already guided them to the desired location for torture. He would torture the victim in various ways, often lasting for hours, which usually involved psychoactive and hallucinogenic substances, muscle relaxants, and employment of invasive surgical techniques while taunting the victim. No evidence or testimony has arisen to suggest that Seilon ever used anaesthetics on his victims, meaning that they felt pain during the entire torture. He would then either disembowel them or slit their throats. He would dispose of the bodies through dissolution in vats of acid at secure, secluded locations.
The combination of a consistency in his killings, repeated patterns in the manner of deaths, and trace genetic evidence led to an intensive investigation into the Long Island killings throughout 2672. A psychological profile of the killer was made, describing the murderer as either a sadistic psychopath or a sadistic narcissist with rage issues. The profile was released to the public in May 2672, but it did not lead to the capture of the killer for another six months. Seilon was arrested on December 11th immediately after murdering his last victim, Barry Maxwell, whom he had kidnapped hours before. The kidnapping was witnessed by a police officer, Adrian Lancore, who pursued Seilon stealthily and took charge of the raid that led to Seilon's capture after obtaining substantial backup from a police Special Response Team. Having witnessed a suspected kidnapping, it was determined during the course of the trial that Officer Lancore had probable cause to apprehend Seilon and did not need to obtain an arrest warrant. Seilon was held at the Queen's County Jail before being transferred to the Adirondacks Imperial Prison two days later.
== Trial and confessions ==
From 13 December 2672 to 6 March 2673, Seilon was imprisoned at the Adirondacks Imperial Prison in Hope, New York. He stood trial for the murder of Barry Maxwell at the Crown Court of the New York District in March. The trial was covered by over 300 reporters from across Earth, as well as around a dozen from other states and colonies of the Empire. His defence was handled by a team of six state-appointed barristers.
A pre-trial plea bargain was proposed in which Seilon would confess to his crimes and provide explicit detail on the victims. His claims of the victims being organized crime figures were taken seriously, and the defence team offered to provide evidence for the murder victims' wrongdoing. The proposal was hoped to give Seilon a lighter sentence, and convert the charges of murder to charges of manslaughter, thus avoiding the death penalty or life imprisonment. Prosecutors were generally amenable to a deal as there was a chance that they would lose at trial, but Seilon was not. He believed that his carefulness meant that delaying at trial would lead to sensitive evidence diminishing rapidly, especially as he had disposed of most of his victims' corpses with acid vats, leaving little workable material. He refused the deal and the trial began on March 16.
The trial process was the focus of an enormous media "frenzy", televised and commented on round-the-clock by the reporters. The event placed Seilon, considered to be charming and good-looking, into the public spotlight and he gained numerous "fans", who wrote letters and concocted a viral social media campaign for Seilon's pardon and release. The trial lasted from March 16 to March 21. The jury took less than four hours to convict him on March 21 of the first degree murder of Barry Maxwell. He was sentenced that same day to twenty years of imprisonment in a New York provincial correctional facility.
A second trial took place from April 3 to April 11 at the same Crown Court, based on evidence that arose during the trial for the murder of Barry Maxwell. Seilon was charged for the murder of thirty-eight people and various related crimes. This time, the trial was adjudicated by an Imperial judge rather than a jury. Seilon was convicted of twenty-nine counts of first-degree murder, thirty eight counts of tampering with evidence, thirty eight counts of aggravated kidnapping, thirty eight counts of aggravated assault, and nine counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced three days later to twenty-nine life sentences plus 1,870 years with the stated possibility of parole in fifty years, all to be served concurrently. He began his life sentence at the Stronsay Imperial Correctional Facility on the island of Stronsay in Orkney, Scotland.
After the sentencing, he began an appeals process. However, the appellate court of New York unilaterally rejected his appeal in July. He appealed to the Imperial Crown Court of Earth, but it was again rejected. Exhausting all possible option, he appealed to the House of Lords. He was transferred for his hearing in Geneva on September 3, 2673, but it was to no avail. The appeal was rejected and he was transferred back to Stronsay to serve his sentence. With no further avenues of appeal available to him and with no motivation to deny his crimes, he initiated a series of interviews with agents of the State Security Service. He divulged details of his crimes and his thought process.
According to Seilon, his mother had become employed by the Varnes Pharmacy, a subsidiary of Varnes & Co, a major pharmaceuticals and medical equipment corporation based in Buffalo, New York. His mother had rejected the sexual advances of her supervisor, who had organized crime connections to the Martels gang. The supervisor allegedly dispatched several gangsters to break into the Seilon home and brutally assault her and his brother, Jules. She was murdered, while Seilon himself hid under a couch and watched. He took note of their faces and sought to find out more about them. While growing up at the orphanarium, he researched information about them and discovered that his mother's supervisor had changed his address to Tarrytown in upstate New York. Her supervisor, and the primary source of Seilon's obsessive rage, was his first murder victim. In order to find him, he moved to Valhalla, New York and attended university there. He obtained his medical education primarily to give him a better understanding of human anatomy and physiology, in order to carry out his murders. He gradually became consumed with hatred for everyone associated with the Martels, in particular managerial officials of Varnes & Co whom he alleged were members of the gang.
He confided in special agents of the Security Service Behavioral Analysis Unit, who analyzed his psychology for explanations of his behavior. During his trial, Seilon underwent multiple psychiatric examinations and was found to be sane and was diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder with possible co-morbidity with borderline personality disorder. This diagnosis was upheld in these later interviews. His motivation for his crimes were an emotionally intense rage towards his victims. The inability of investigators to substantiate his claims regarding his victims' criminal histories has led pathologists to attribute this anger to a complex delusional paranoia directed towards employees and associates of the company his mother worked for, and towards people whom he believed to be associated with them. His abandonment by his father, insecurity regarding his paternity, and his mother's absence from home during her employment contributed to a fear of abandonment. The departure of his mentor Dr. David Winters and his resulting suicidal and violent ideations is an example of this pathological fear. However, Seilon has not displayed a disorganized sense of identity or an inability to establish and maintain close personal relationships. This makes diagnosis of a borderline personality difficult and controversial. Many pathologists instead opined that Seilon suffers from paranoid personality disorder, attributing his intense paranoid delusions to this disorder.
Unlike other famous serial killers, Seilon has not visibly attempted to manipulate or bargain with his interviewers. After the apparent impossibility of appeal and commutation of his sentence, he confessed his crimes and admitted to details of all of the killings. Numerous murders that went unsolved during the 2660s were finally able to be solved following Seilon's admission of guilt. Pathologists determined that, rather than a psychopathic personality and the resulting lack of empathy or guilt suggested by the original police profile, Seilon had a profound sense of understanding and responsibility for his crimes. Seilon stated in one interview, "I should be locked up. I've murdered people...people that deserved it, I know that for certain, but[...]I deserve every ounce of punishment I am receiving, just as they deserved every ounce of pain I gave them." This sense of guilt commensurate to his crimes and his diagnosed depressive and anxious tendencies contributed towards his attempts at suicide in prison.
== Parole and Unthor pandemic ==
On August 22nd of 2674 Seilon was offered early parole by Imperial government officials, with executive clemency promised upon completion of a task. The orders came directly from the Crown, overriding judicial rulings. Seilon was selected to join a team of scientists commissioned by the Terran Imperial government to assist in a disease control crisis developing on the occupied Cassiopeian world Unthor. Along with fellow Northmont Hospital physician David McGrady, he departed Earth with a State Security team to investigate the outbreak of a deadly haemorrhagic fever. Under the protection and supervision of State Security officers and with the assistance of a technology expert, the two doctors began work collecting samples, performing scientific experiments, and researching a cure while encamped at a Terran colonial outpost in the planet's arctic belt. Many details of the operation are still classified under the National Secrets Act, but enough details have been declassified to reconstruct the following events: Seilon, while collecting samples in the forest, was attacked by a wild animal infected with the virus. He subsequently fell ill and was hospitalized, while working on a formula that would temporarily stave off the worst of the disease, before having to be evacuated to a cryostasis facility to save his life. Seilon remained there while McGrady and the State Security forces obtained source information relating to the disease, its origin in a cassiopeian biological warfare program, and the complicity of cassiopeian saboteurs in the outbreak. Upon the team's return, McGrady used biological samples and cassiopeian data in conjunction with Seilon's research and earlier samples to synthesize a cure for the disease. Within a month, a vaccine was mass-produced and put to use. The first recipient, at McGrady's insistence, was Seilon himself.
For the following two months, Seilon and McGrady's whereabouts went unrecorded and are still unknown by biographers. Rumours abound as to his activities during this period; it is speculated that he was still performing classified work relating to the Unthor crisis. What is known is that he reappeared in late October on Earth. McGrady travelled to Luna, where he committed suicide. Seilon offered his personal condolences to McGrady's family. In a formal ceremony in mid-November 2674, he was pardoned of his crimes by Emperor Maximilian, with the condition that he submit to State Security monitoring of his activities for the remainder of his natural life.
== Later career ==
In December, following his pardon, he was re-certified by the Public Health Service's Board of Medical Certification, and restored to his license to practice medicine. On December 10, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine "for the eradication of a viral pandemic in its cradle, and the rapid discovery of its cure." He shared this prize with David McGrady posthumously. At the ceremony at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm, he made a speech honoring McGrady's memory, stating publicly: "David's warmth calmed my rage, and purified me of my hate, just as he purified that world of its sickness. He was the closest thing to a friend I had in all my life, and he helped me when no one else would, or could." He accepted the other medal in David's name and delivered it to David's father, Patrick.
In a press conference on Christmas 2674, Seilon spoke of contrition for his past behaviour, and asserted that he had turned over a new leaf in part due to his experiences with David McGrady. He was soon after offered a job by the Public Health Service to be Research Director at the Lyman Institute on planet Lonnel, an old and prestigious biological research facility dedicated to the study of alien lifeforms. The institute had been established in 2529 by Dr. Chester Lyman. Seilon departed on 2 January 2675 to take his office there. Seilon managed several genetics and biological research projects, particularly regarding sentient alien specimens. Some groups criticized the work of the institute as unethical experimentation of sapient beings, but these assertions were dismissed by government advocates.
He served as Research Director until July 2680, when he was appointed to be Presiding Director following the resignation of previous director Dr. Charles "Chap" Markman. Seilon has served in this role since. The reputation of the institute has changed in light of Seilon's hiring of alien medical professionals to serve in nursing, research, and experimental departments. The precise nature of its experiments and its experimental subjects has been considered since 2679 to be a matter of national security and is classified. This has spurred rumors of secret government research and torture of aliens, including allegations of vivisection. The government has neither confirmed nor denied these rumors.
== Personal life ==
Mario Joseph Seilon has no surviving relatives, and lives on the planet Lonnel in the Eton star system in a cottage adjacent to the medical research facility in which he works. He is married to Karla Maya ic-Seilon, formerly il-Thaang, a Registered Nurse and presently director of nursing at the Lyman Institute. Karla Seilon is a free alien of the inion species, a race granted limited legal and occupational privileges due to a long history of loyal vassalage to former Orion Empire. Seilon claims that he met Karla while on Unthor, where she was his nurse and helped him recover after his illness. He took her on a few dates and she later accompanied him offworld, where he obtained paperwork allowing her to be his personal assistant. She disappeared from the record, but reappeared under the name "Karla Maya" in the records of employees at the Lyman Institute in 2676. Her identity was revealed to the public in 2681, when Seilon announced his formal engagement to her. Being a prestigious researcher of some merit, he was able to obtain special dispensation to recognise their common-law marriage as she had cohabited with him for several years on Lonnel, and he was able to obtain a marriage license despite the general illegality of human-alien relationships. He married her on August 4th, 2682 in a small ceremony attended by the facility staff.
Seilon has raised twin children born to Karla, who were artificially implanted from cloned tissue, born March 22nd of 2683; a boy, named David Patrick Seilon and a daughter, named Artemis Juliet Seilon. They are legally considered his children, despite being born to her.
Seilon has publicly commented on the circumstances that led to his serial murdering, and has advocated on behalf of people suffering from severe personality disorders. He has also commented publicly on his guilt and remorse for his crimes, citing often the role of David McGrady in "making [him] see responsibility for [his] sins." He has referred to David as his only true friend, and referred to David's death as "the greatest tragedy of our times." On Christmas 2684, he unveiled a newly-remodeled entrance lobby to the Lyman facility, which bears a marble statue of David McGrady as its centrepiece, with a stele at its base with the words inscribed: "Even Death May Die," a quote often used by Dr. McGrady and attributed to the 20th century fiction author H. P. Lovecraft.
== Honors, awards, and achievements ==
For his vital assistance in the Unthor pandemic, Seilon was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine in December 2674. He shared the award with his colleague, David McGrady, who received the award posthumously. He was awarded the Knight's Cross of the Red Cross for the same achievement by the Imperial government in September 2674.
In 2680, he was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society, a prestigious institute for scientific research and knowledge based in London, England. He received in appointment that same year to be an honorary Research Fellow at the New York College of Medicine, his alma mater. He has prepared video lectures for the university, which are used in various courses, and which cover a variety of subjects ranging from human psychology, alien psychology, xenobiology, genetics, forensics, pathology, and criminology.
== Behind the scenes ==
The character of Dr. Seilon was developed by creative team member Tyler Cobb as a player character for the tabletop roleplaying game based on this setting, which has been used to create and flesh out numerous important persons. The figure of Seilon was crafted as a counterpoint to David McGrady, as a murderous doctor opposed to the kind-hearted doctor portrayed by Jamere Rice. The character interaction between the two developed instead into a mutual understanding and friendship, which changed Seilon from a vengeful serial killer into a respectable physician with a mission to make the world a better place. Seilon's appearance and personality was originally to be based on that of Patrick Bateman from American Psycho, as depicted by Christian Bale in the 2000 film adaptation. However, over time, the appearance was changed to resemble that of actor Michael Fassbender, and the character traits of Seilon became their own thing. The traces of the original concept can be found in the methods of his serial murders, though the motivation became crystallized as a classic revenge plot. Seilon's suspicions and allegations regarding his mother's murderers, the Varnes & Company management, and their criminal ties are all true in-story, though few believe him and they've never been proven in court. To Seilon, he was genuinely making the world a better place by taking justice into his own hands rather than leaving it in the hands of a corrupt system.
Seilon's wife, Karla Maya, did indeed meet him during his recovery, and accompanied him and the other people of his adventuring party. Their endeavors pulled them across formerly-Cassiopeian occupied territories to uncover a strange alien legend and even stranger alien artefacts. Their final destination became Luna, where David was shot by State Sec agents Primus Lucan and Adrian Lancore in an effort to secure an unstable situation. Seilon however disappeared before that point, offered by State Sec general Brian Kessar a chance to change the world for the better. Though vaguely stated, the opportunity became clearer as Kessar was later revealed to be collaborating with the Galactic resistance movement. Seilon, seeking a fresh start and a chance to end the system that "allowed" his mother's murder, committed himself to clandestinely trafficking aliens through his facility into rebel training camps and researching genetically-modified supersoldier concepts for both the government and the rebels. His pardon and rehabilitation was politically-motivated, a gambit on Brian's part, and the State Security surveillance was provided solely by Brian's top men of the IX Legion to ensure it all went as he planned.
Most recently in the tabletop game, Seilon's pursuit of cold revenge was resolved when a team of interstellar mercenaries kidnapped the head of Varnes & Co. and brought him to Seilon. The corporate oligarch was tortured and slain "offscreen", completing Seilon's original story arc.
Category:Living people
Category:Medical doctors
Category:People convicted of murder
Category:Serial killers
Category:Earthborn Terrans