Background: Chuck Severn never had what might be termed a normal childhood. His mother abandoned him at the fire station when he was days old, and he was shuttled around between foster homes from the very beginning. Foster homes sometimes get a bad rap, but in this case Chuck was the catalyst�he began manifesting violent behavior from a very early age, and though many of his foster parents were loving, caring people, few of them were equipped with the wherewithal to raise a child who found it natural to kill the family pet as a way to deal with the stress of being scolded.

By the age of 12, Chuck was spending quality time in adolescent treatment centers. By the age of 16, he had been shuffled through the juvenile court system multiple times. But when he turned 18, he dropped off the legal radar, got a job as a tattoo artist in a relatively respectable establishment, and managed to pay his rent and bills on time. It seemed as though he�d outgrown whatever chemical imbalance might have contributed to his disturbing aggression.

But Chuck is a classic narcissistic psychopath. He learned how to cope with society so that society would tolerate his presence. He directed his anger inward, in a twisted and perverse one-man church with himself as both the head of the clergy and the divine. He had religious symbols ranging from fallen angels to Maltese crosses inked on his skin, and the further he sank into his delusions, the quieter and more reclusive he became.

And when he finally and irrevocably snapped, when he finally came to truly believe his own delusions, he led a one-man crusade, killing six people within six months. He didn�t have a standard modus operandi�though the victims were always tortured, and the corpses always mutilated, the causes of death weren�t always the same. He did have a signature, though�and it was the small tattoos he placed on them before death that finally proved his undoing. Detective Lori Stark was instrumental in securing his arrest, and when all hell broke loose, he was awaiting trial at the State Prison.