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Aaron Stampler is a fictional character in William Diehl's 1993 novel Primal Fear and its two sequels, Show of Evil (1995) and Reign in Hell (1997). He was portrayed by Edward Norton in the 1996 movie adaptation of Primal Fear in an Academy Award-nominated performance.

Contents 1 Appearances in Diehls's novels 2 In Primal Fear 3 In Show of Evil 4 In Reign in Hell

The novel reveals that Stampler was born and raised in the tiny (fictional) Appalachian mining town of Crikside, Kentucky, and subjected to systematic physical, emotional and sexual abuse from a young age. In public, he often appeared meek and frightened, with a severe stutter. He went down into the mine as a child with his father, and was so terrified by the cramped, dark space that he vowed to never go down there again. From then on, he would have a lifelong fear of being trapped in the dark.

He lost his virginity at age 14 to Rebecca Nolan, one of his (much older) teachers.

At 16, Stampler ran away to Chicago, where he was homeless until he was taken in by Rushman, the city's beloved Archbishop, who gave him a home in a mission for disadvantaged youth. Rushman seemed to dote on Stampler, making him head of the mission's alter boys and featured soprano in the choir, and introducing him to his first real girlfriend, Linda. There was a darker, hidden side to their relationship, however; Rushman was a pedophile and forced Stampler, Linda, and his fellow altar boys to perform in videotaped child pornography. This went on for three years until Stampler finally snapped and brutally murdered Rushman, dismembering him and carving a library reference number to a quotation from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter into his chest: "A man who wears one face to himself and one face to the multitude may become confused as to which one is the true."

Arrested immediately after the murder covered in Rushman's blood, Stampler was dubbed "the Butcher Boy" in the media and became the most hated man in Chicago — attracting him to Martin Vail, a hotshot defense attorney who wanted to represent him for the publicity. Stampler swore to Vail he didn't kill Rushman, claiming that he had been with the archbishop but had blacked out, awakening to find him dead.

One day, after Vail questioned him harshly, Stampler flew into a rage and suddenly became (literally) like a different person; his stutter gone, he now appeared to be a violent sociopath and began identifying himself as "Roy." He then bragged about killing Rushman. Vail and court psychiatrist Molly Arrington realized that Stampler suffered from multiple personality disorder and that the "Roy" persona had in fact committed the murder, as well as several others beginning when Stampler was as young as five. Arrington explained that "Roy" took over whenever "Aaron" felt threatened, and acted out on the violent impulses Stampler was too traumatized to express.

"Roy" came out in the middle of the trial, attacking prosecutor Jane Venable in the middle of her cross-examination. Stampler was found insane by the court and sentenced to a mental institution. Vail, who by now had come to care about Stampler, felt that justice was done — until Stampler revealed to him that he had been faking multiple personality disorder the whole time. In reality, the shy, stuttering "Aaron" persona had been an act, and he was merely being himself when he became the cunning, sociopathic "Roy." Angered that Vail had not introduced Rushman's child porn tapes into evidence, Stampler taunted Vail by admitting that he had been perfectly sane each time he committed murder; he was confident that Vail would never reveal the truth for fear of ruining his career.

In the sequel to Primal Fear, set 10 years later, Stampler was released from the institution and persuaded his former lover Nolan to kill the other alter boys and Linda, to get revenge on people he thought had betrayed him without casting suspicion on himself. Vail found him out, tracked him back to Virginia, and foiled his plan. Vail paid a price for it, however, when Stampler killed Arrington, who had also briefly been Vail's lover, and beat Venable (who was now in a relationship with Vail) so badly that she lost an eye. Nolan was killed in a shootout with police and Vail chased Stampler to the feared coal mine of his childhood, which he fell into to his (apparent) death.

In the final novel in the series, however, it was revealed that he survived the fall. He then traveled to rural Texas and disguised himself as a blind Baptist preacher, part of a scam to bilk people out of their money and get access to their teenage daughters. He aligned himself with a survivalist militia, which attracted the attention of his archenemy Vail, who now worked for the U.S. Attorney's office. As the militia surrendered to federal agents in what turned into a Waco-like shootout, Stampler tried to escape in the clothes of an agent he'd killed, but justice finally caught up with him: He was shot and killed by an agent after Vail, who had accompanied federal authorities to see that his case didn't end in violence, recognized him.