He kills women so he can skin them and create a 'woman suit' for himself, completing his 'transformation'. Gumb wants to become a woman-or at least believes he does-but repeatedly fails to qualify for gender reassignment surgery. In the novel, multiple examples of how Gumb does not fit the psychological profile of a real transsexual are given. He was made one through years of systematic abuse.'īoth the novel and film depict Gumb as hating his own identity, though multiple characters state that Gumb is not transsexual. In the film, Hannibal Lecter summarizes Gumb's life thus: 'Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice. The screenplay omits Gumb's backstory, but does imply that he had a traumatic childhood. After Raspail leaves him, he kills Raspail's new lover, Klaus, and flays him. Later, Gumb has a relationship with Benjamin Raspail. He is institutionalized in Tulare Vocational Rehabilitation, a psychiatric hospital, where he learns to be a tailor.

The novel goes on to tell of Gumb living in foster homes until the age of 10, when he is adopted by his grandparents, who become his first victims when he impulsively kills them at age 12. It is stated that 'The 'Jame' on his birth certificate apparently was a clerical error that no one bothered to correct.' Gumb's mother, an aspiring actress, went into an alcoholic decline after her career failed to materialize, and Los Angeles County placed Gumb in a foster home when he was two. Gumb was born in California in 1948 or 1949. In the television series Clarice, he is portrayed by Simon Northwood. In the film and the novel, he is a serial killer who murders overweight women and skins them so he can make a 'woman suit' for himself. Jame Gumb (known by the nickname ' Buffalo Bill') is a fictional character and the main antagonist of Thomas Harris's 1988 novel The Silence of the Lambs and its 1991 film adaptation, in which he is played by Ted Levine. Ted Levine as Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.

Harris silence of the lambs