Lawrence Gordon

## Biography

### Early Life

Lawrence Gordon was a doctor who graduated from Indiana University's School of Medicine on June 4, 1979, and was granted a medical oncology degree. Afterward, he began his career as a successful oncologist at the Angel of Mercy Hospital. He was the husband of Alison Gordon and the father of Diana Gordon. However, he and Alison were plunged into a marital crisis, because of his workaholic traits, it became unbearable for her to deal with her husband's increasingly cold and emotionless attitude. Eventually, Lawrence engaged in an affair with Carla, one of his medical students from the hospital. Over time, the two occasionally met after work, although they kept their relationship a secret.

### Terminal Diagnosis

As an oncologist, Lawrence regularly had to inform numerous cancer patients about their impending, unavoidable death. One of these patients was the civil engineer John Kramer, whom Lawrence diagnosed with colon cancer and a frontal lobe tumor around the end of 1994. However, during an earlier visit to the hospital, one of the residents, Dr. Logan Nelson, made a careless mistake and inadvertently mixed up John's x-rays with those of another patient, Alex Rubinstein. Therefore, his cancer had further evolved and was no longer curable at the time of its diagnosis. Nonetheless, John underwent chemotherapy and external beam radiation therapy. In addition, he regularly returned to the hospital for routine check-ups to keep track of his declining health.

### Suspect in the Jigsaw Case

During one of these examinations in late March 2004, Lawrence introduced him to his medical students, including Carla. However, he was interrupted by Zep Hindle, one of the orderlies, who reminded him that John was "a very interesting person" as he was disgruntled by the fact that Lawrence continuously only called him "the patient." Annoyed by this interruption, Lawrence sarcastically thanked Zep for the information. As Zep left and Lawrence was about to continue his medical round, he was once again interrupted and called to his office. When he entered it, he was greeted by Detective David Tapp and Detective Steven Sing, two homicide detectives who worked for the Metropolitan Police Department. They asked him about his whereabouts on the previous night between 11 o'clock and 1 o'clock. When Lawrence asked Tapp why he wanted to know about this, the latter showed him a penlight with Lawrence's fingerprints on it, which had been found at the crime scene of one of the deadly games set up by a wanted serial killer known as Jigsaw.

After that, Lawrence was taken to the police station for further interrogation. He immediately informed his friend and lawyer, Brett, who arrived shortly afterward and asked him about his alibi. After some initial hesitation, Lawrence eventually admitted to having met up with his mistress, Carla, at the time of the murder. When he asked Brett what to do now, his lawyer advised him to tell the police the truth immediately as they would not believe him later. Ultimately, Lawrence informed the detectives about his rendezvous with Carla. Even though Carla confirmed his alibi, Detective Sing asked him to stay a little longer and listen to the interrogation of a drug addict named Amanda Young, the only known survivor of one of Jigsaw's games at that time. Amanda told Tapp how she had woken up at an unknown location and found herself strapped to a chair. While she was unconscious, Jigsaw had put a mechanical device on her head and hooked it into Amanda's upper and lower jaw. Amanda had received instructions from a mechanical ventriloquist puppet named Billy, which spoke to her via a video recording. The doll described the device on her head as a "reverse bear trap," which would rip her mouth open if she did not manage to free herself within 60 seconds. To do so, she had to cut the key to the device from the stomach of her supposedly dead cellmate, Donnie Greco. When the tape ended, Amanda successfully freed herself from the chair and ultimately obtained the key by disemboweling her fellow prisoner. The doctor was visibly shocked as Amanda described her traumatic experience, and even more so when Sing told him that Amanda's fellow prisoner was still alive and merely paralyzed with an opiate overdose when she cut him open. When Tapp asked her if she was grateful for what Jigsaw had done to her, she answered that he had helped her. However, despite this, she was still traumatized by those events and burst into tears.

After the interrogation, Tapp drove Lawrence home and implied that he still was not entirely convinced of the doctor's innocence. Tapp's distrust grew into a downright obsession when his partner died in one of Jigsaw's traps shortly afterward, resulting in Tapp's discharge from the police force. Convinced that Lawrence was the killer, Tapp rented a run-down flat across from the doctor's apartment and focused on observing him from then on.

### Abduction

One night, five months after Amanda's interrogation, Diana woke up in her bedroom when she heard the sound of her wind chimes. Despite the darkness, she soon realized that someone was in the room with her. Out of fear, Diana went to Lawrence and Alison's bedroom, where her mother was sleeping. When she got aware of Diana's presence, Alison became concerned about her well-being and asked if she was okay. Diana then told her about the scary man in her room. When her mother believed she merely had a nightmare, Diana said that the man had talked to her. Therefore, she wanted her father to come with her to get the intruder. However, Lawrence wanted to finish his work first, much to Alison's dismay.

Lawrence eventually put her back to bed and managed to cheer her up for a moment. However, only moments later, he was paged by Carla, who asked him to come to the Hotel Barfly. Lawrence told Diana that he had to go back to work. When her father was about to leave, Diana asked him if he would abandon her and Alison. Surprised by her concerns, Lawrence told her how much he loved them and would never leave them. He left the room then, promising Diana he would read her favorite story to her the next day. As he prepared himself to leave, he got into an argument with Alison, who had been waiting outside the room. Angered by his cold attitude towards them, Alison openly admitted she was not happy with their marriage anymore. When Lawrence told her they would talk when he came back and tried to kiss her, Alison turned away, telling him to leave.

When he arrived at the run-down hotel shortly afterward, he visited Carla in her room and rebuked her for paging him while he was at home. As she was about to undress, Lawrence held her back and decided to end their affair as it had become too risky for him. When he wanted to leave, the phone rang, and an anonymous caller demanded to speak with Lawrence. Lawrence took the phone and was warned that the caller knew about his affair, which caused him to leave hectically. On the way to his car, he suddenly noticed the flash of a camera, but instead of worrying about it, he got into his car and eventually realized that he was trapped in the parking garage. However, neither his mobile nor the emergency telephone seemed to work. During his repeated attempts to make a call, he did not notice how a person with a sinister pig mask, who had been hiding in the back seat of his car, snuck up on him and eventually attacked and subdued him.

### Test

His unconscious body was taken to a dilapidated bathroom in an underground tunnel network, where John Kramer, the actual Jigsaw Killer, and Amanda Young, his accomplice, had prepared a deadly game for him. He was chained to a pipe in the corner of the room by his right leg, while a young man named Adam Stanheight, Lawrence's opponent in his game, was chained to a pipe in the opposite corner by Amanda. Meanwhile, John poured a bucket of fake blood on the floor in the middle of the room and injected himself with a medicament that slowed his heart rate and relaxed his muscles. After finishing their preparations, Amanda took Adam's shoes and belt and the things they had used to set up the game and was about to leave. John, however, stayed in the room and lay down in the puddle of blood with a tape recorder in one hand and a revolver in the other, which ultimately gave him the appearance of a suicide victim. Then, Amanda turned off the light, left the room, and closed the heavy sliding door behind her.

When Lawrence woke up shortly afterward, he quickly realized that he was not alone as he heard the frightened screams of his fellow prisoner. When he eventually found a switch and turned on the light, he saw that Adam was trapped in the same way as him. Adam further panicked when he saw the body of John Kramer, covered in blood. Lawrence, however, calmed him down again. After introducing himself, he asked Adam whether he knew the dead man or remembered how he ended up in the bathroom, which Adam denied. Despite his fear and distrust, Adam eventually told Lawrence his name. Lawrence pointed out that their abductor could have killed them already and assumed that they wanted something from them. As he further examined the room, he noticed a clock on the wall, which was factory-fresh, as opposed to the environment, and concluded that their abductor wanted them to know what time it was.

Lawrence then tried to open the sliding door within his reach when Adam suddenly found a white envelope with his name on it in his pants pocket. It contained a mini-cassette with the message "Play me" written on it. Lawrence found such an envelope in his pocket as well. Besides another cassette, it also included a key and a single bullet. He immediately tried to use the key on his shackle. As this attempt remained unsuccessful, he threw it to Adam, who could not free himself either. Moments later, Adam noticed the tape recorder in John Kramer's hand. As it was out of reach, he tried to use his shirt to get possession of it. When this did not work, Adam tied the plug from the bathtub to one of the sleeves. After some more attempts, he finally got the recorder when the stopper got caught up in a loop attached to it.

When he put the cassette into the recorder and played it, a distorted voice gave him a gruesome ultimatum. His abductor mockingly confronted Adam with his voyeuristic work, which mainly comprised spying on other people. On this day, he would watch himself die unless he did something about it. Once the tape was over, Lawrence asked him for the recorder to listen to his instructions. Out of fear that he could destroy the tape player by throwing it across the room, Adam refused and demanded the tape from Lawrence, which the latter eventually threw to him after briefly protesting against it. Lawrence's cassette had been recorded by the same distorted voice, which confronted him with his profession and the fact that he gave people the news of their impending death every day of his working life. Now, it was his task to kill another human himself. The voice demanded that he killed Adam by 6 o'clock. Otherwise, his daughter and wife would die while he would be left to rot in the bathroom. Furthermore, he learned that there were many clues and useful tools hidden in the room, which could help him solve his task. One of these clues was a cryptic message, according to which an "X marked the spot for the treasure." Additionally, the voice told him about the seemingly dead John Kramer, pointing out that the only thing left to do, when there was that much poison in one's blood, was to shoot oneself.

When the recording ended, Lawrence once again demanded the recorder from Adam. This time, Adam threw it to him without hesitation. Upon repeatedly winding the tape back and forward, Lawrence discovered one final clue. At the end of the recording, he heard the voice whispering, "Follow your heart." Seconds later, he noticed a heart drawn on the tank of a water closet next to Adam. Despite his disgust, Adam searched the dirty toilet, albeit unsuccessful. However, when he examined the tank, he found a black plastic bag inside, which contained two hacksaws. Adam immediately tried to saw through his chain and tossed the other saw to the doctor. Unnoticed by his fellow prisoner, he threw the bag into the empty bathtub. As the men tried to cut through their chains, Adam's saw broke after a few seconds. He angrily hurled it towards a mirror on the wall, causing a single shard to break out. When Lawrence's attempts to free himself also remained unsuccessful, the latter eventually concluded that the saws were not meant to cut through their chains but to cut off their feet. Thereby, he realized that they had been abducted by the Jigsaw Killer and told Adam how Jigsaw had tried to frame him for one of his murders by leaving Lawrence's penlight at a crime scene five months earlier.

Although he was shocked by the things Lawrence told him about Jigsaw and his deeds, Adam's distrust grew further and, for a moment, even lead him to the conviction that Lawrence himself had something to do with his abduction. In a fit of rage, he grabbed the shard from the mirror and threatened to kill Lawrence if he did not tell him what was going on around them. However, he stopped when he realized that the shard belonged to a one-way mirror. Adam threw pieces of broken tiles at the mirror, thereby destroying the glass entirely. In doing so, he discovered a camera positioned behind it. To his dismay, it was protected by a second, shatterproof glass pane. Lawrence tried to calm him down so they could concentrate on Jigsaw's clues instead of becoming exasperated with the camera. When Adam subsequently asked him whether he even thought about the things Jigsaw could do to his family in the meantime, Lawrence told him about the final conversation with his daughter on the night of his abduction.

Thereby, he put oil on troubled waters. When Adam asked him whether he wanted more children, Lawrence denied this as it was already hard enough for him and his wife to do justice to Diana. During their conversation, Lawrence threw his wallet to Adam to take a look at some photos of his family. However, when Adam searched the purse for a picture of Lawrence's wife, he made a horrifying discovery and found an image signed with the word "Regards" and a drawn jigsaw piece. The picture showed Diana and Alison gagged and tied up in the bedroom of their apartment. As he did not want to worry him, Adam chose not to tell Lawrence about the picture and instead gave him the wallet back, claiming that the photo of his wife was not there. While the confused doctor searched the purse, Adam unobtrusively took another look at the picture. On the backside, Jigsaw had written the message, "X marks the spot. Sometimes you see more with your eyes shut."

When Adam's uncooperative attitude caused another argument between him and Lawrence, he suddenly asked the latter to turn off the light. Despite being skeptical, Lawrence did as he said. Upon doing so, they spotted a glowing "X" on the wall, which had not been visible in the light, leading Adam to conclude that it was drawn with fluorescent paint. Lawrence smashed the marked part of the wall with his hacksaw and discovered a hollow space with a small box hidden inside. He opened it with the key he had found in his envelope at the beginning of his game. It contained a mobile, a lighter, two cigarettes, and a written message, which told Lawrence that the cigarettes were harmless, that he did not need a gun to kill Adam, and that "smoking was only poisonous when it ended in bloodshed." When Adam, who did not notice any of this, asked him for a cigarette, Lawrence denied his wish. Instead, he tried to call the police. To his disappointment, the mobile could not be used to make calls but only to receive them. However, this caused him to remember the night of his abduction.

After telling him about this, Lawrence asked him how he knew that they had to turn off the light. When Adam claimed it was because of his instinct and tried to avoid the question, the doctor got angry once again until Adam finally revealed the photo of his abducted family to him. Then, prompted by his fear for Diana and Alison, Lawrence thought about another way out and came up with a plan. Unnoticed by Adam, he dipped one of the cigarettes in the blood of the lifeless body of John Kramer, which, according to Jigsaw's clues, had to be poisoned. Afterward, Lawrence turned off the light and told Adam about his plan, which required him to fake his death. When he turned the light back on, he threw the second, harmless cigarette and the lighter to Adam. Moments later, Adam pretended to collapse due to the poison. However, their plan failed when Adam received an electric shock from his shackle, which caused him to panic once again. Angered by this, Lawrence blamed him for the failure of their plan. The shock, however, caused Adam to remember his abduction as well.

After he told Lawrence how he was kidnapped from his apartment by a person with a pig mask, the phone rang. When the doctor answered the call, his frightened daughter begged him to save her and her mother. Afterward, he also spoke with Alison, who warned him not to trust Adam as he had known him long before their game began. When Lawrence confronted him with that warning, Adam finally admitted that he had observed and photographed him throughout the previous days and showed him the photos, which he had found in the bag with the hacksaws. This revelation resulted in yet another argument, during which Adam told Lawrence that he had followed him to the Hotel Barfly, where he met up with his mistress, Carla, the night before. Lawrence angrily asked him who hired him, convinced that Adam's client was also their abductor. However, when Adam described the man as a "tall black guy with a scar around his neck," Lawrence realized that it was Detective David Tapp who still blamed him for Detective Sing's death five months earlier.

When the two of them lapsed into silence again, Adam suddenly noticed that one of the photos from the bag was not taken by him. It showed a man standing at the window of Lawrence's bedroom, but Lawrence claimed that, besides Diana and Alison, nobody had been in their apartment the night before. Adam showed him the picture, causing the shocked doctor to recognize the man as Zep Hindle. Seconds later, Adam noticed that the time of their game was over. Shortly afterward, the mobile rang again. To Lawrence's surprise, it was Alison who called him after freeing herself from the sadistic orderly. However, only moments later, he also heard several gunshots and the desperate screams of his daughter. Lawrence started to cry but suddenly lost consciousness when he received an electric shock from his shackle.

Adam immediately tried to wake him up and was afraid that Lawrence was dead until the latter woke up again. Unfortunately, though, Lawrence suffered a mental breakdown, which became even worse when the phone rang again but was out of reach after he had inadvertently thrown it away when he was electrocuted. In a last desperate attempt to save his family, Lawrence used his shirt to stanch his leg and, despite Adam's efforts to calm him down, cut off his foot with the hacksaw. After he freed himself from his chain, he crawled to the middle of the room and took the revolver from John Kramer's hand. Then, Lawrence used the bullet from his envelope and shot the frightened Adam, who collapsed immediately. Shocked by what he had done, Lawrence screamed at the camera and begged for his family's life.

Moments later, the door was opened, and Zep Hindle entered the bathroom. Lawrence frantically yelled at him and tried to shoot him, even though he had no more bullets. Unimpressed by his threatening gestures, Zep aimed his gun at Lawrence and wanted to kill him as the doctor did not kill Adam in time. However, before he could do so, he was attacked by Adam, who had survived the gunshot. As they lay on the floor and struggled for the gun, Adam disarmed his enemy and smashed his head with the lid of the toilet tank. Lawrence crawled towards his cellmate and eventually convinced him to stop. In pain, Adam burst into tears as the bullet had injured his shoulder. Lawrence told him he would bleed to death if he stayed with him and promised to get help. Despite Adam's desperate attempts to hold him back, the severely wounded doctor crawled out of the room.

### Recruitment

Due to his injury and the severe loss of blood, Lawrence did not make it very far. Shortly after his escape, he reached a hot steaming pipe in one of the underground hallways leading to the bathroom. After initially hesitating, Lawrence pressed his stump against the pipe to cauterize the wound. Even though this was successful, he lost consciousness due to the immense pain. Shortly afterward, he was found by John Kramer, who had followed his blood trail. As he dragged him away, Lawrence briefly regained his consciousness and recognized his patient, who smiled at him and congratulated him for his survival before he passed out again. John took the unconscious doctor to a room with medical supplies. When Lawrence woke up again, he started to panic but calmed down when John treated his wound and adjusted a prosthesis to his stump. Because of this, he began to trust John and ultimately agreed to become his accomplice and assist in his future games. After his treatment, John allowed him to leave.

### New Life

After the disturbing events in the bathroom, Lawrence quit his job at the Angel of Mercy Hospital and started working at the Saint Eustace Hospital. Furthermore, he joined a self-help group of other Jigsaw survivors who met in a local church downtown.

### Michael Marks' Test

Throughout the following years, Lawrence helped John prepare several other games by offering him his surgical skills and medical knowledge. One of their victims was Michael Marks, an informant working for the corrupt detective Eric Matthews. After his abduction in October 2005, Lawrence performed surgery on the young man, during which he placed a key behind Michael's right eye. This key would later become the only way for Michael to save himself from one of Jigsaw's traps, a so-called death mask. Within 60 seconds, Michael had to cut out his eye to obtain the key. Otherwise, the two halves of the mask, which were both spiked with nails, would close in on his head and kill him.

### Lynn Denlon's Test

Six months later, Lawrence suggested abducting the surgeon Dr. Lynn Denlon, who worked at the Angel of Mercy Hospital, to force her to participate in what was likely to be John's final game. It should be her task to keep the severely weakened John alive until her husband, Jeff Denlon, overcame a series of tests. Besides her connection with Jeff, Lawrence specifically chose her because of her formidable surgical skills.

### Trevor's and Art Blank's Test

In mid-April 2006, two weeks before the beginning of the final games, Lawrence helped John to prepare another test. The persons tested in this game were Trevor and Art Blank, John's former business partner and lawyer. After their abduction, Lawrence performed another surgery on both of them. He sutured Art's mouth and Trevor's eyes, so it would be impossible for them to communicate during their test. After finishing these preparations, both men were taken to a mausoleum, where their game took place.

### Final Request

As he had expected it himself, John was killed by Jeff Denlon during his game on the night of April 28, 2006. After that, another accomplice of John, Detective Mark Hoffman, continued their mentor's deadly games without knowing about Lawrence's involvement in John's work. Lawrence sent him an anonymous letter with the message, "I know who you are." to his office at the police station.

Furthermore, John's ex-wife, Jill Tuck, inherited a black box, which John had previously given to his executor, Bernie Feldman. Besides some other things, the box contained an envelope addressed to Lawrence. To carry out her late ex-husband's final request, she brought the envelope to Lawrence's office at the Saint Eustace Hospital. It contained a video, which John had recorded before his death. He asked Lawrence to watch over Jill after his death and told him to act on his behalf immediately if anything happened to her. In return for that, John promised to reveal all of his remaining secrets to him. Furthermore, he talked about the place which was "the most meaningful" to him, thereby hinting at the bathroom where Lawrence had been tested.

Shortly after giving the video to Lawrence, Jill revealed Mark Hoffman's true identity to the police. Several months later, Lawrence joined another meeting of his self-help group on March 12, 2007. On this occasion, he met Bobby Dagen, who had gained fame and recognition for publishing his book "S.U.R.V.I.V.E. - My Story of Overcoming Jigsaw." In this book, he explained how he once survived one of Jigsaw's games and how his life changed afterward. However, Lawrence knew that Bobby's story was a lie and, therefore, sarcastically mocked him for his "remarkable" ability to get something positive out of his horrifying experiences. Bobby, however, tried to act confident and thanked him. Therefore, Lawrence and the other confused group members applauded him, showing their gratefulness for being part of his story. Later that evening, Bobby, his wife, Joyce Dagen, and Bobby's crew, which consisted of his publicist, Nina, his lawyer, Suzanne, and his best friend, Cale, were abducted by Hoffman, who forced them to participate in another game. Thereby, he wanted to put the police under pressure to get revenge on Jill Tuck, who had been taken into protective custody at that time.

### Mark Hoffman's Abduction

On the same night, Hoffman put his plan into action and invaded the police station, where he brutally murdered Jill. When the news channels reported her death to the public, Lawrence decided that it was time to intervene and went to Hoffman's hideout in an abandoned hangar, along with two accomplices. After Hoffman blew up the hangar and was about to flee, the three men attacked him while covering their faces with pig masks. While his accomplices held Hoffman in place, Lawrence injected him with an anesthetic and revealed his identity to the horrified ex-detective. Moments later, Hoffman passed out.

To carry out John's last wish, Lawrence and his helpers took Hoffman to the underground bathroom, left him barefoot, and chained him by the leg to the same pipe as Adam's rotten corpse. Shortly afterward, Lawrence himself entered the room one final time. As he turned on the light, Hoffman woke up. The latter immediately panicked and tried to grab the hacksaw previously used by Lawrence to cut off his foot. However, Lawrence picked up the saw and, after cruelly remarking that Hoffman would not get the same option he did, threw it out of the room. While Hoffman yelled at him in anger and despair, Lawrence turned off the light, closed the door, and left him to die with the mocking words "Game Over."

## Personality

Lawrence Gordon was a highly intelligent yet arrogant man who barely cared about the people around him, especially his patients. Because of this, he often seemed cold-hearted and emotionally distant. Most of the time, Lawrence was more interested in his work and success than in interpersonal relationships, which negatively affected his marriage and family life. In addition, he showed signs of a narcissistic personality disorder and often patronized other people.

Nonetheless, Lawrence also had a charming personality, as proven by his relationship with Carla, who seemed to have actual feelings for him. Although they had an affair, Lawrence did not sleep with her because he genuinely loved his wife despite their marital problems. He also loved his daughter and tried to be a good father to her. Following his abduction by Jigsaw, Lawrence suffered a breakdown, cut off his foot, and even tried to kill another human being to save his own family.

Following his recruitment by John Kramer, he became dedicated to the latter's mission and learned to value his life and the lives of those around him. Despite his traumatic experience, which John was responsible for, Lawrence became a loyal supporter of John's work. He forced numerous people to participate in their deadly games to test their will to live. Upon doing so, he seemingly felt no remorse.