Newton Joyce

## Related Wikis

Villains Wiki

**Newton Joyce** is the main antagonist of the Kay Scarpetta novel *Point of Origin*, by Patricia Cornwell. Joyce is a wealthy yet sadistic serial killer targeting people with beauty, extending the murders from Europe and bringing them to America, with the assistance and at the coaxing of new ally and major series antagonist Carrie Grethen.

## Biography

Newton Joyce had an acne riddled face in youth, leading to constant bullying at school and a scarred complexion in adulthood. Gaining a disturbed hatred for young, beautiful people, and having substantial finances from entrepreneurship, Joyce became a serial killer for years, butchering and mutilating victims to disguise the true motivations of the murders, stealing and collecting their flawless faces, faces Joyce never wanted and wanted to personally take and hold possession of. Killing at least twenty-four victims by the start of the book, Joyce started in the territories of the UK before moving the murders to the United States, starting in the Rockies and moving eastward to Virginia. Joyce favored dismemberment and would often reduce the victims found to headless torsos. Kay Scarpetta investigated the murders during the bioterrorist spree of Phyllis Crowder, two of them college students in Lynchburg and Blacksburg and one a copycat killing of Crowder's own mother she emulated. Scarpetta could never catch the killer despite stopping Crowler, and the case always haunted her.

On-the-run fugitive Carrie Grethen, ex-accomplice of dead serial killer Temple Brooks Gault and ex-girlfriend of Scarpetta's niece, Lucy Farinelli, knew the cases very well and knew it would be just the way to target the family and their law enforcement colleagues. By unknown means, Grethen found out Joyce was the serial killer and tracked Joyce down, using an unknown appeal and shared psychopathy to form an alliance out of wanting a new partner. Grethen had enough forensic expertise to assist Joyce in future killings and share points, and most notably, one thing she got Joyce to employ in murders was instead of dismembering the victims, Joyce would set their homes on fire to cook their corpses and destroy evidence. This went successfully well for the two murders of Marlene Farber and Austin Hall.

After Scarpetta receives a discursively taunting letter from Grethen, she's brought onto the case of their latest victim, Claire Rawley. She was murder in the bathroom at the ranch of horseman Kenneth Sparks, all 19 of his horses except for one agonizingly and torturously engulfed in the flames of the house. As per their usual spree, her face was cut off like all their other successful victims, shown in the remains of a hair net she wore when she was dead. Going by the pattern and the evidence at the scene, Farber's and Hall's murders are found in case databases. Their next murder was much more disastrous: Kellie Shephard put up much more of a fight, covered in stab and slash wounds but killed from her throat being cut. Because Joyce was shaken from never being used to a fight, the fire didn't go as planned, only burning half of the house and not even reaching Shephard enough to destroy the evidence of what happened. Joyce also doesn't take her face to not be reminded of the sloppy crime. Boyfriend and profiler Benton Wesley was required by the FBI to take advantage of the situation to fake his death because his own life was in danger from other criminal matters. As a result, Scarpetta was devastated from believing Wesley was the final victim when a corpse with his watch and shoes, seemingly placed in cuffs, was found at a burnt grocery store. Scarpetta was broken but even more resolved to bring the killer duo to justice.

Eventually, going by where Rawley could've possibly met Joyce, they track his records while going off the profile of the killer, and his name comes up in short time. His house is raided, and the forces there find the fridge where Joyce kept all the victims' faces. Scarpetta doesn't just recognize the fire victims, but the dismemberment victims as well, in shock and crushed, which is what she knew Grethen wanted. Scarpetta, Farinelli, and Farinelli's mentor and ATF task force leader TN McGovern take off in Farinelli's helicopter to head back to the station for the next move. The next move finds them, however: Joyce and Grethen tail them in their own helicopter, trying to ram and shoot at it to kill everyone on board. The ensuing is extensive, and the three ladies have extreme difficulty finding an angle to force the duo's copter back from without getting injured as well. But they have an idea, Farinelli throws the aerodynamics of Grethen and Joyce off kilter enough to shoot the copter and ram its blades, causing it to fall and suddenly explode in midair. The only visible remnants of the two killers are two life jackets in the sea.

## Modus Operandi

Joyce targeted various young, beautiful adults in Northern European island nations and eventually in the United States for looks he never had, going from northwest and working through the Rockies into Virginia. Joyce's typical means of killing them was by slashing them to death cleaning, such as slashing their throats or stabbing their hearts. Originally, Joyce would dismember them and discard them as headless torsos to hide his true motive: cutting their faces off and taking them as trophies. When partnered with Grethen, Joyce would start utilizing fire as a means of destroying evidence. Killing the victims in their homes, using in bathtubs, a point of origin that would best fully spread the fire and destroy all evidence was chosen, before the ignition was triggered and the arson did the rest. The point would typically be the bathrooms, where the victims were flayed after they were killed. The corpses would be left at the scene in a state too degraded to easily determine cause of death and make it a nightmare to identify them. Claire Rawley was the victim of the murder, with Kenneth Sparks' horses, save for one, victims of the arson itself. Kellie Shepard resisted and sustained lacerations scattering her body before her throat was cut, and her homely wasn't burned enough, leaving her remains barely burnt. Being shaken from the fight, Joyce never took her face. When Benton Wesley was presumably killed, the FBI set it up so it seemed he was cuffed and forced to climb a ladder into the attic, before he was killed and the fire was set. When the duo tried to kill Scarpetta, Farinelli, and McGovern, it was by trying to ram the ladies' helicopter with their own, as well as shooting at them to make them crash into the sea. But that tactic was used to kill the two killers instead so the women saved their own lives.

## Victims

* London, England, 1981: Unidentified victim (first dismemberment victim)
* Liverpool, England, 1983: Unidentified victim
* Ireland 1984-1987:
	+ Belfast: Unidentified victim
	+ Galway: Unidentified victim
	+ Dublin: Nine unidentified victims, including in Malahide, Santry, and Howth
* 1987-1996, Utah, Nevada, Montana, Washington, and Mississippi: Five unidentified victims
		- Virginia Beach: Unidentified victim
		- Norfolk: Unidentified victim
	+ 1996:
		- Lynchburg: Unidentified college student
		- Blacksburg: Unidentified college student
* October 1997: Marlene Farber (first fire victim: fire started in the master bathroom)
* March 1998, Maryland: Austin Hart (fire started in the bathroom)
		- Claire Rawley (fire started in the master bathroom)
		- Nineteen of Sparks' horses (all burned to death)
		- One of Sparks' horses (attempted; got loose and escaped)
	+ Lehigh County, PA: Kellie Shephard (repeatedly stabbed and slashed; killed by cutting her throat and only burned half her house postmortem; fire started in the bathroom; her face wasn't cut off and taken)
	+ The helicopter attack (attempted to shoot and ram helicopter and make crash with Carrie Grethen; both were killed instead):
		- Lucy Farinelli
		- Kay Scarpetta
		- TN McGovern

## Trivia

* Joyce is presumably based of the still-unidentified Cleveland Torso Killer, also known as the Mad Butcher of Kingsbury Run. The killer would target various people in Cleveland for reasons unknown and by unknown means of pouncing on them. Despite how many of the victims were found in dismembered body parts in ravines, only two of them were successfully identified, being Edward Andrassy and Florence Genevieve Polillo.