| “ | Humanity's...dreams? That's it...? You killed my mom over something that stupid?! | ” |
–Mark to Lester, 1932 Summer: Man in the Killer | ||
Mark Wilmens (マーク・ウィルメンス Māku Wirumensu) is a teenaged boy who commits a series of murders in New York in August 1932. Known to the media as the serial killer Ice Pick Thompson (アイスピック・トンプソン Aisupikku Tonpuson), Mark eventually passes on his identity as Ice Pick Thompson to Laz Smith.
He currently studies under Smith as his apprentice, and refers to him as Master.
Appearance[]
Mark has short blond hair and blue eyes. He usually wears an all green outfit, with his shirt and ascot differing in hue to his jacket and trousers.
Personality[]
To be added.
Chronology[]
Background[]
Mark is born sometime approximately in the latter half of 1917 to Paula Wilmens, a prostitute rumored to be Barnes' bastard daughter. He is occasionally looked after by Paula's friend Lisha Darken as a child, though Lisha's increasing struggles with drug addiction over the years more and more often result in him looking after her.
Unbeknownst to Mark, Paula's work as a prostitute is in fact a cover for her real job as one of Barnes' subordinates—which he will later realize explains her respectable financial savings and apartment. Her main duty is to look after the incomplete versions of the Cure-All Elixir that Szilard Quates gives to Barnes for testing, which includes taking bottles of the product away for contingency purposes.
Paula at some point brings one of the bottles home with plans to have Mark drink from it, but later changes her mind. She and Mark bury the bottle at her husband's grave instead; while she does not divulge the bottle's true contents to him, she instructs him to reveal the bottle's location should someone ever ask him for it.
In November 1930, several of Szilard's men invade the Wilmens' apartment in search of Paula and the elixir. Paula hides Mark in their closet and orders him to remain absolutely silent before shutting the door; terrified, and terrified of acknowledging his fear, Mark remains hidden in the closet for two days straight until he is eventually found by the police.
The police inform him that his mother's corpse has washed up on the banks of the Hudson River, and request that he confirm the body's identity. The body is covered in badly burned holes when he looks upon it, but he is able to confirm that the woman is his mother. Later on, a reporter by the name of Lester publishes an article in a major newspaper claiming that the incident was drug-related. This is a blatant lie on Lester's part, as he was the one who murdered Paula in the first place, but the article successfully tarnishes her reputation regardless.
August 1932[]
Mark is left with a sizable amount of money after his mother's death, some of which he initially lends to Lisha until he realizes she is using the money to buy drugs. When Lisha offers to tell him the true nature of his mother's murder in exchange for the money he is withholding, however, he relents.
Lisha tells him everything, from the names of the five men involved in Paula's torture and murder to the reason they murdered her in the first place. Swearing vengeance, Mark retrieves and polishes a rusted ice pick from a speakeasy's refuse to use as a murder weapon, and he proceeds to stalk and successfully murder four of the men one by one. His modus operandi is clearly inspired by the image of his mother's corpse, as he stabs his victims with an ice pick so many times that at first glance the bodies look like they must have been on the wrong end of a Thompson submachine gun. The brutal method soon earns him the popular moniker 'Ice Pick Thompson' as coined by Daily Days reporter Carl Dignis.
Elmer speaks to Mark on the Brooklyn Bridge.
Mark's search for Lester—the fifth man—leads him to mistakenly attack Elmer C. Albatross, as Lester and Elmer have similar builds, features, and attire. When he realizes that he has murdered an innocent person by mistake, he is so horrified that he runs straight for Brooklyn Bridge with the intention of committing suicide.
Elmer catches up with him on the bridge's edge and engages him in conversation, though Mark does not recognize Elmer as the man he had stabbed earlier. At first, Elmer assures Mark that he will not intervene as long as suicide will make Mark happy; when Mark denies that this is the case—though he insists he does not want Elmer to interfere – Elmer decides to interfere anyway. His remarks on the pain and inconsiderate nature of suicide-by-jumping spark fear in Mark's heart, and he decides that a live demonstration is just what Mark needs to make an informed decision.
To Mark's horror and confusion, Elmer does just that: he jumps off the bridge, and splatters across the ground in gory fashion. Mark abandons the bridge and rushes down to the alley where Elmer landed, arriving to find the body intact and no blood in sight (he assumes the rain simply washed the blood away). Driven mostly by shock, he shakes Elmer's body out of the wild, impossible hope that perhaps Elmer survived the fall...and is frightened beyond words when Elmer's corpse sits upright and proclaims itself to be an Immortal.
Mark runs for his life, eventually managing to calm himself down some distance away—though he still intends to eventually kill himself as originally planned. With his interest in immortals and Szilard Quates renewed, he enters an antique bookshop the next day and pays a visit to its owner, whom he has known for ten years. The owner blanches as soon as Mark attempts to ask him if he has heard of 'people who cannot die', and he urges Mark to never speak of whatever it is he has witnessed. When Mark exits the shop, he encounters Elmer outside it; though Elmer claims that he was drawn to the owner's loud lecturing and that their encounter is a coincidence, Mark flees in terror.
While in flight, Mark enters an alley and accidentally steps on Graham Specter in his haste to escape. Elmer enters the alley shortly afterward, and asks Graham and his gang to help him look for Mark.
Mark returns to the bookstore that evening and directly asks the owner to tell him about the immortals—this time adding that one of them seems keen on following him around. The bookstore owner finally relents and explains that he personally witnessed Luck Gandor dying and coming back to life earlier that year.
Mark meets Tick.
Against the owner's warnings, Mark visits Coraggioso—a jazz hall that fronts for the Gandor Family's headquarters—where he meets the Gandors' torturer Tick Jefferson and assassin Maria Barcelito. Tick warns Mark not to inquire into immortals, as the Gandors have been in a bad mood as of late due to Ice Pick Thompson.
Carl Dignis enters Coraggioso with news relating to Ice Pick Thompson, as well as 'one other thing'. With the Gandor brothers absent, one of the mafiosi escorts Carl into a backroom so that they can discuss Ice Pick Thompson in private. When Tick confides that Carl is with the Daily Days and can likely provide Mark with pertinent information, Mark decides to follow Carl and sell him his identity as Ice Pick Thompson in exchange for information on the immortals.
Around this time, Lester hires Laz Smith to kill Mark.
Carl Dignis speaks with Mark.
Once Carl notices Mark is following him, Mark asks him about the immortals and Szilard's current whereabouts. As payment, he pulls out his ice pick from his sleeve and reveals that he is Ice Pick Thompson. However, once Carl is able to confirm Mark's identity and motives, he refuses to give him any information beyond the fact that Szilard is no longer in New York. His argument is that anyone could become a serial killer and give away their identity in exchange for valuable information, which would consequently put the Daily Days out of business. Mark eventually accepts this explanation and goes home.
Smith, who has been waiting inside Mark's apartment, locks the door once Mark returns. Pointing a rifle at Marks head, he announces that he is an assassin hired to kill Ice Pick Thompson and that he would like Mark to explain why he became a serial killer before he kills him. Mark repeats the story behind his mother's death; when Smith asks him for if he has last words, he confesses that he accidentally killed an innocent person instead of his intended final victim. However, when Smith shows Mark an article supposedly about the person he stabbed by accident, Mark discovers that Lisha had been killed the day before in a manner similar to his previous targets. Furthermore, Lisha has been identified as Ice Pick Thompson's fifth victim. Smith decides to spare Mark's life in exchange for Ice Pick Thompson's identity, as he personally lacks a reputation as an assassin).
Mark prepares to smash the bottle of elixir.
Upon exiting the apartment, Smith encounters Graham, Shaft, and Elmer and informs them that he has just killed Mark. Mark waits in his apartment for a little while longer before visiting Lester's office, and at last tracks Lester down to Coraggioso. He stabs Lester in the shoulder with his ice pick, and Lester, in his confusion and rage, takes a gun from one of the Gandor men and fires at Mark. Elmer suddenly appears and takes the bullet for him – Elmer had known Smith was lying about killing Mark, and had come to Coraggioso on Shaft's advice.
After Elmer's wounds heal, he explains that he was the man Mark mistook for Lester the other day—meaning that Mark has not killed an innocent person after all. Once Lester fully processes that Elmer is an Immortal, he begs Elmer for the elixir. This prompts Mark to take out the bottle of elixir he had brought in a paper bag—the same bottle that he and his mother had buried at his father's grave. Lester pleads for the bottle, but Mark declares that he had brought it for the sole purpose of destroying it in front of Lester's eyes.
Mark stabs Lester several more times when Lester lunges at him, but Lester manages to wrest the bottle from his grasp and drink its contents—heedless of Elmer's warnings. He immediately becomes an incomplete immortal on the spot, with the unwitting consequence of making all his injuries permanent.
The Gandor men make to detain Elmer and Mark, only for capo Nicola Casetti to appear and identify Mark by name – though he deliberately stops Mark from confessing he is Ice Pick Thompson. Once the situation in the room is explained to him, Nicola takes personal responsibility for punishing Lester.
When Elmer and Mark are finally let off the next morning. Elmer assures Mark that he still has a right to happiness post-achieving his revenge. While Mark is still afraid of Elmer, he thanks him for all that he has done. Carl offers to adopt Mark the same day, but Mark refuses on the grounds that he may as well be "dead" to the surface world.
Carl encounters Mark later that evening at the Jane Doe speakeasy, by which time Mark has become Smith's apprentice. Mark explains that he does not truly intend to become an assassin, he simply wants to follow Smith seeing as Smith has taken on his crimes.
February 1935[]
By 1935, Mark and Smith are living at Fred's Poorhouse They are among those recruited by the Gandor Family in anticipation of the casino party at Ra's Lance.
To be written in full.
Trivia[]
- The serial killer "Ice Pick Thompson" is first mentioned by Huey Laforet in the eighth light novel volume 1934 Alice in Jails: Prison.
- In Chapter Three of the Durarara!! side novel A Standing Ovation with Orihara Izaya, Ryuusei Takioka and his sister Tamae briefly discuss the American serial killer "Ice Pick Thompson" in the early twenty-first century. Tamae remarks that Ice Pick Thompson was seen as the American equivalent of Jack the Ripper, and that his identity remains a mystery.