Michele Wilkes, an Emergency Medical Technician, races an ambulance through the
streets of Philadelphia as her highly-regarded partner, Leonard Betts, attends to a dying
man. As the ambulance speeds through an intersection, it is broadsided by a truck. Wilkes
survives, but she is horrified to discover Betts’ decapitated body nearby.
Mulder and Scully are brought into the case when Betts’ headless corpse disappears
from a hospital morgue. Scully theorizes that someone attempted to steal the body and sell it
to an unscrupulous medical supplier. But when security camera footage shows an
unidentified person with a strange distortion around the head area leaving the hospital.
Mulder suspects something strange is going on–perhaps the body left by itself.
With Mulder’s reluctant help, Scully fishes through the hospital’s bio-disposal unit for the
missing corpse. The agents recover the missing head, but the whereabouts of the body
remains a mystery. As Scully prepares to perform an autopsy on the head, its eyes and
mouth suddenly snap open.
A tissue sample taken from Betts’ head is analyzed by a pathologist who determines that
Betts was riddled with cancer, so much that a normal human could have never lived that
way. Mulder hypothesizes that Betts had somehow incorporated cancer into his body, and
possessed unimaginable regenerative powers–perhaps the next step in Man’s evolution. A
fingerprint search reveals that Betts’ real name is Albert Tanner. The agents interview his
mother, Elaine, who claims that Albert died in an automobile accident six years earlier.
As Wilkes is transporting another patient, she recognizes Betts’ voice transmitting over
the ambulance radio. She locates Betts working as an EMT at another hospital. As the two
embrace, Betts sadly pulls out a syringe and injects Michele with a lethal substance. A
security guard witnesses the murder and handcuffs Betts to his car. Betts slips out of the
cuffs by tearing off his own thumb. When the thumb is found, Mulder guesses he tore it off
because he knew he could grow another.
When the agents search the trunk of Betts’ car, they discover plastic bags filled with
human tumors. Mulder postulates that Betts is ingesting the cancerous tissue in order to
survive. They learn that the car is registered to Albert Tanner’s mother.
Weak and needing sustenance, Betts attacks and kills a heavy-smoking bearded man
after he leaves a bar. Strengthened, Betts is then able to “gives birth” to a duplicate of
himself.
The agents discover a storage locker key at Mrs. Tanner’s home. When they open the
door to the locker, they find the smoking man’s body, its left lung missing. Suddenly from
within the locker, a car roars to life, and Betts attempts to run down Mulder and Scully. The
agents dive for cover and open fire. The car bursts into flames, incinerating Betts.
Though Mulder is convinced that something else is going on, Scully reminds her partner
that Betts is quite dead and his not coming back to life, and the case is over. Nonetheless,
Mulder exhumes the body of the man Mrs. Tanner claimed was killed in the automobile
accident. Inside the casket is a corpse identical to Betts. Mulder concludes that the fiery
crash was a ruse-and the real Leonard Betts is still alive.
The agents stakeout Mrs. Tanner’s home waiting for Betts to return. When an ambulance
arrives at the scene, Mulder and Scully race inside. They find Mrs. Tanner, still clinging to
life, with a fresh surgical incision on her chest. Mulder searches the neighborhood while
Scully accompanies Tanner to the hospital, but when the ambulance pulls into the hospital
parking lot, she realizes Betts hitched a ride by hiding on the vehicle’s roof. Betts jumps
inside the ambulance and slams the rear doors behind him. Wielding a scalpel, he tells
Scully she possesses “something I need.” A scuffle ensues, and Scully kills Betts using
defibrillation pads. Later that night, as Scully lies in bed, she wakes up coughing and finds a
few drops of blood on her pillow. As her nose continues to bleed, she recalls Betts’ haunting
words.
THE X-FILES “LEONARD BETTS” #4X11
Original Air Date: 1/26/97
CAST:
DAVID DUCHOVNY as Special Agent Fox Mulder
GILLIAN ANDERSON as Special Agent Dana Scully
GUEST CAST:
JENNIFER CLEMENT as Michele Wilkes
PAUL MCCRANE as Leonard Betts
LUCIA WALTERS as EMT
MARJORIE LOVETT as Elaine Tanner
KEN JONES as the Bearded Man
SEAN CAMPBELL as the Local Cop
GREG NEWMEYER as the New Partner
DAVE HURTUBISE as the Pathologist
BILL DOW as Dr. Charles Burks
BRAD LOREE as the Security Guard
PETER BRYANT as the Uniformed Cop
DON ACKERMAN as the Night Attendant
LAARA SADIQ as the Female EMT
J. DOUGLAS STEWART as the Male EMT
WRITTEN BY:
FRANK SPOTNITZ
JOHN SHIBAN
VINCE GILLIGAN
DIRECTED BY:
KIM MANNERS
