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Species: human
Gender: male
Age:
DOB: October 17th, 1959
Birthplace: E5774>Earth>United States>Michigan>Detroit
Praetor:
Occupation:
Languages: English

Personality
 

Physical Characteristics
Height: 193cm (6' 4")
Weight/Build: bulky, strong
Hair: dark brown, short, buzzed on the sides
Eyes: grey
Skin:
Face:
Attire: tailored suits,

Collective History:
 

Individual History
Second of four children, Gunn's father left when Gunn was three years old and his mother was pregnant with younger brother Patrick. It was suspected that his father was institutionalized, but never confirmed. Gunn grew up in a broken household where his mother juggled multiple jobs to keep her children fed. When Gunn was seven, his thirteen-year-old sister Eileen was raped. It utterly destroyed her and she committed suicide when she was sixteen. Gunn became consumed by a desire to see justice, but at the same time struggled with his own emotional issues and was forced to leave school after getting into fights. He completed his degree at home and attended community college, then going on to police academy. On his first murder scene, he spotted a detail crucial to the solving of the case and earned the notice of the captain, who tested Gunn out on a few other tough crime scenes with good results. Within two years he was appointed junior detective despite some controversy over his mental state and aberrant behavior patterns. Throughout, Gunn supplemented his training with college forensic and psychology classes. He was noted as being a voracious reader, a trait considered unusual given his somewhat thuggish physique and background.

Gunn's big break came when he was twenty-five and the Detroit Slasher serial killings began. Gunn was at the scene of the first crime and suggested it would become a serial case based upon the ritualistic sexual aspects and meticulousness of the killer, and furthermore hypothesized that there was at least one previous victim. A second victim was discovered a month later and then a third two months after that, verifying Gunn's assessment of a serial spree. He scoured police records searching for his hypothesized "victim zero" while working with the FBI as new murders occurred. The Slasher was characterized by careful planning and victim selection. A major break in the case occurred with victim four when it was discovered three of the victims had ordered various home repairs. The killer then canceled the work orders and showed up at the house pretending to be from the company with an unmarked white utility van. Unfortunately, shortly after the white van and canceled work order information surfaced in the press, the killings stopped and fell out of the news. The case went cold and most of the resources were dropped, but Gunn became obsessed with the murders and continued investigating on his own, convinced that the murderer was busy scheming up a new scenario for murder. Gunn was on the verge of being fired when a new murder occurred, this time with a different modus operandi but the same signature sexual mutilation. Gunn was suddenly hailed as a genius detective and became a media hero, to his own considerable chagrin, since it made his work more difficult and exposed aspects of his private life he was uncomfortable with, such as the death of his sister.

The Slasher was finally brought down when Gunn uncovered Victim Zero in a small town in Indiana. It was originally thought that the rape/murder had been committed by a group of men traveling through the town and sub-par police and forensic work had made sure the case was not flagged with earlier searches looking for related cases, but Gunn asserted it was in fact the work of the Detroit Slasher and that the Slasher was a local. (The FBI disagreed since the files on the case were so imprecise as to be contradictory in places and exhumation was inconclusive.) In one respect Gunn was wrong; it turned out the girl was an out-of-town cheerleader the killer had spotted at a basketball game and then traveled to her town to commit the crime. Nevertheless, Gunn managed to track down Thomas Wayne Dickens, formerly a resident of that county and now living in Detroit. Dickens was apprehended and his DNA matched that of the Slasher. He totaled seven victims and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Unfortunately, the media scrutiny caused Gunn to have a psychological breakdown shortly before Dickens' apprehension and he was placed on forced leave for several months. When he did return, he was even less popular than previously, becoming a black sheep in the department who was only called in as a last resort. His peers viewed him as either mentally unstable, antisocial, or a media hog. One of Gunn's few remaining allies was an FBI agent he met during the Detroit Slasher case, Phillip Stokes, a rookie at the time of the Slasher case who rose in the ranks to become a decorated senior agent. Stokes convinced his boss to hire Gunn as a consultant on a string of murders in New England. Gunn worked with several profilers who noted he had a talent for understanding the criminal mind and interpreting unusual crime scene details. Gunn's contact with various influential agents led to a job offer, well-timed given steadily decreasing opinions of Gunn back in his Detroit precinct. As usual, there was some argument, but eventually Gunn's supporters won out on the grounds that as difficult as Gunn could be to work with, he was too good a resource to pass over. Then thirty-four, Gunn underwent FBI training and was subsequently partnered with Stokes working on high-profile crimes, particularly suspected serial cases.

The next ten years saw Gunn and Stokes working various cases across the country, Stokes providing cover from the media and allowing Gunn to work in the background. Then, in 1997, they came up against a new serial killer with a highly refined process who was hitting seemingly random cities across the country, torturing and strangling women. The killer sodomized victims with wooden implements which many profilers thought suggested impotence, but Gunn and fellow FBI profiler Andy McCormick believed the perpetrator was a woman. The killer struck seemingly random communities, used multiple methods of transportation, and left little or no identifiable forensic evidence, and always managed to lure victims to remote locations without being seen by witnesses. It took several days to weeks just to unravel how the killer managed to set up each opportunity.

The murders would occur at seemingly random intervals, with weeks to months between them. Airline tickets were checked, bus schedules, even credit card usage at gas stations, no one could figure out how the killer was moving across the country. Leads seemed to go cold, there were no suspects who could possibly have committed every crime or even most of them, the case was a huge fiasco and difficult to hide from the media.

A break finally came when the killer left communication for Gunn and McCormick with the ninth victim. In scrawling letters written with the victim's lipstick, the killer mocked Gunn and McCormick and promised to continue. It was the first time the killer had ever left any kind of statement at a scene, but it would not be the last.

After this point the killings accelerated somewhat. Each time, there would be a new statement, sometimes concerning how the victims deserved it, and sometimes personal attacks against the agents involved. The worst message was with victim twelve, when the killer implied Gunn's sister had deserved her rape, causing Gunn to become physically ill and necessitating his removal from the scene. The media got ahold of the situation and once again Gunn's mental health suffered and he recused himself, returning to his home outside Arlington. McCormick continued and Gunn sequestered himself and waited for the killer to be caught, not even leaving his house.

In 2000, Gunn was at home when he received a call from the killer, who promised that tracing the line would be pointless. (Naturally, Gunn signaled the bureau to intitiate a trace anyway.)In the background, Gunn could hear McCormick. Gunn used his theory of the killer's profile to keep her on the line, knowing his friend and colleague's life depended on it. The killer wanted Gunn to listen as McCormick was tortured, "just like your sister." Despite the overwhelming stress Gunn instead directed the attack back at the killer: "You mean just like you." This threw the killer into a rage, but Gunn convinced her he would listen to her story, knowing that at this stage, the killer was demanding to be heard and would continue talking as long as he listened. It was extremely difficult to listen; the killer's experiences reminded Gunn strongly of his sister.

Then, Gunn heard a very distinctive mockingbird on the killer's side, a bird he recognized from his yard which had copied the bell tune from a local church. He immediately realized where the killer was. He grabbed his gun, dropped the phone, and headed for a storage barn in the field across the road. He could hear sounds of a struggle inside and rammed the door open, only to find the killer standing directly behind McCormick with a garrote pulled tight. Gunn initially hesitated because McCormick was in his shot, but from having spent so long on the phone listening to the killer describe being raped, was unable to fire on someone who reminded him so strongly of his sister. Even though McCormick tried to signal Gunn to shoot regardless of the risk, Gunn could not and watched as McCormick was strangled to death instead. By this point, sirens were audible in the distance and escape was no longer likely. Still, the killer made a run for it, passing Gunn. Finally he turned and shot blindly in her direction. When he opened his eyes she was lying in the field, dead. Both McCormick and the killer were unable to be resuscitated. Though no charges were brought against Gunn and he was considered a hero, he committed himself to a psychiatric hospital and dropped off the face of the planet.

There was some speculation that Gunn and McCormick had a relationship which was more than professional, but nothing was ever confirmed.
 

Post-Extraction
In the hospital he unknowingly befriended a Praetorix named Lily who was institutionalized for apparent paranoid delusions. When it turned out Lily was not in fact delusional, merely a victim of minor dimensional fracture, Gunn accompanied her back to the Fleet and began a new life with Security. Gunn and Lily chose to live together, having become psychologically dependant on one another during their time in the hospital. After completing basic training Gunn served as a routine surveillance officer for several months, then became a member of Investigative Services at its formation, returning to detective work. As one of the more experienced investigators available to the Fleet, he helped train the current group of inquisitors. He was instrumental in the training and appointment of Geiseric du Pont, the Fleet's first feien investigator, to Investigative Services and was du Pont's partner for several months.

Despite leaving his home dimension, Gunn continued to be haunted by his personal demons. He displayed several severe behavioral abnormalities, such as an inability to make or hold eye constant with others, an inability to keep still for long periods of time, and an obsession with twiddling with things. Normal psychological counseling was not effective, so Gunn became the trial case for a new joint venture between PsyCorps and MedCorps: psychic counseling.

Which was how Gunn met Jill Johnson, a nurse and psychic, and also Gunn's dimensional alter. His improvement was marked and immediate. Within just a few months he had discarded most of his aberrant behavioral habits. Gunn and Jill also found their third alter, an ex-con named Jack O'Malley.

Currently, Gunn lives with Lily and works with the Imperium's criminal consulting agency. He spends his time working on cases, looking after Lily (who remains psychologically dependant on him), and spending time with Jack, Jill, and Jill's son Deacon, who calls Gunn "Uncle Billy."

Gunn is mildly obsessive compulsive, which helps hi locate out of place clues at crime scenes.