Murder Incident Article



The Murder Incident Article is found outside Wood Side Apartments in a garbage chute in Silent Hill 2. The article discusses the arrest of a man named Walter Sullivan, who was responsible for the deaths of twins Billy and Miriam Locane. He was arrested and imprisoned for their deaths; soon after his imprisonment, however, he committed suicide by using a soup spoon to stab himself in the neck, severing his carotid artery.

Transcript

 * "The police announced today that
 * Walter Sullivan, who was arrested
 * on the 18th of this month for the
 * brutal murder of Billy Locane and
 * his sister Miriam, committed
 * suicide in his jail cell early on the
 * morning of the 22nd.
 * According to the police
 * statement, Sullivan used a soup
 * spoon to stab himself in the neck,
 * severing his carotid artery.
 * By the time the guard discovered
 * him, Sullivan was dead from blood
 * loss, the spoon buried two inches
 * in his neck.
 * An old schoolmate of Walter
 * Sullivan's from his hometown of
 * Pleasant River said "He didn't
 * look like the type of guy who
 * would kill kids.
 * But I do remember that just
 * before they arrested him he
 * was blurting out all sorts of
 * strange stuff like 'He's trying
 * to kill me. He's trying to
 * punish me. The monster...
 * the red devil. Forgive me. I did it,
 * but it wasn't me!'.
 * The schoolmate then added
 * 'I guess now that I think of it,
 * he was kinda crazy'."

Plot significance
The article mentions a "Red Devil" coming to punish the serial killer Walter Sullivan, who was jailed for murdering two children, foreshadowing the later manifestation of Pyramid Head and the reveal that James Sunderland murdered his wife. This led to some speculation that the Red Devil is Pyramid Head himself. This was debunked by creature designer Masahiro Ito and Lost Memories: Silent Hill Chronicle, which clarify that before the introduction of the Bogeyman in Silent Hill: Homecoming,   Pyramid Head was intended to be an element of James' subconscious. Lost Memories adds that "no one besides Sullivan himself can really know what he saw". It is also insinuated that Walter was not fully in control of his actions, with him protesting, "Forgive me. I did it, but it wasn't me!"

It is ultimately revealed in Silent Hill 4: The Room that the Red Devil is Jimmy Stone and that he and Walter were members of the town's cult. Stone is one of the cult's executioners, who wore red hoods and an executioner's outfit modeled after their angel of rebirth Valtiel. The game's victim files elaborate that another cultist, George Rosten, was tasked with training Walter from an early age to carry out the 21 Sacraments ritual to summon God. Rosten discreetly had Valtiel implanted into Walter's mind so that the angel could guide his actions in fulfilling the ritual, but this backfired when Rosten could no longer control him. Under Valtiel's influence, Walter performed the 21 Sacraments in a way that Rosten did not intend. Stone, Rosten, and the Locane twins were all sacrificed to fulfill the ritual, with Stone as his first victim. The murder victims later came back as Ghosts, with Walter killing himself as the eleventh sacrifice.

James and his wife Mary visited the town of Silent Hill on vacation three years before the events of Silent Hill 2. James observed various paintings of the town's executioners while visiting the Silent Hill Historical Society, the memory of which resulted in Pyramid Head taking a similar appearance. Takayoshi Sato has referred to Pyramid Head as a "distorted memory of the executioners", the group in which Jimmy Stone and George Rosten belong.