Phyllis Crowder

Dr. Phyllis Crowder is the main antagonist of the Kay Scarpetta novel Unnatural Exposure by Patricia Cornwell. Crowder is a British microbiologist disgraced from blame for a sample of smallpox leaking out and causing a death, leading to Crowder experimenting with the virus and planning a mass scale terrorist revenge.

Biography
Crowder was an English junior staff lab employee in Birmingham where she handled highly dangerous epidemic samples. In 1978, a sample of smallpox accidentally leaked out of its containment and fatally infected a scientist, Crowder ending up taking the heat for negligent manslaughter. She was tarnished and fired, leading to an obsession with revenge. Crowder eventually planned a bioterrorist spree starting with splicing smallpox and monkeypox to create a deadly, near-incurable strain which was prepared to unleash on the public. Her home base for the operations was in her new employment at the Medical College of Virginia, where she found work as a microbiologist and never got promoted at, asserting sexism as the motive behind it.

Testing it on her mother, with whom she had a strained relationship, she infected her with the viral concoction, them killed her by bashing her skull and decapitating her at her neck spinal disc. She then cut off her limbs and left her mother's torso at a landfill to be found, emulating the crimes of then-unidentified serial killer Newton Joyce. When she was ready, Crowder released the pathogen at Tangier island, resulting in three deaths. All the while, under the handle of "deadoc", Crowder sent taunting messages to Scarpetta in an AOL chatroom, showing pieces of information and daring and threatening her and the rest of the team, as well as Virginia at large. Crowder was at the lab Scarpetta was working with to analyze and contain the strain to prevent more deaths.

The crimes escalate when a drifting ex-con somehow a threat to Crowder's plans was shot by Crowder with a shotgun, but the attempt to make it look like a suicide was easy to see through. When directly targeting Scarpetta, it was in the form of killing her lab assistant, Wingo. The smallpox was laced in facial spray delivered right to Wingo's door. Eventually, Scarpetta realizes Crowder's guilty from seeing her dining room in the photos send in the chatroom messages. The team rushes over and arrests her, but she infected herself with her own strain and dies 21 days later.

Modus Operandi
Crowder primarily targeted random civilians in Virginia to infect with her spliced concoction of smallpox and monkeypox in her terrorist attacks. Starting with killing her mother, covering up her crimes to emulate later identified serial killer Newton Joyce, she infected her, then decapitated her at her spinal disc in her neck once Crowder was done. Crowder's mother's limbs were cut off meticulously at the shoulder and hip joints and would only be found as her torso in a private landfill. Crowder eventually started the bioterrorist attack at Lila Pruitt on Tangier Island to have it systematically catch the populous of Virginia exponentially. In the case of the drifting ex-con, she resorted to blasting him with a shotgun, then leaving it on his person as a poorly staged suicide. Wingo, Kay Scarpetta's assistant in the lab, would be deliberately killed by infection that would be laced in facial spray, which was placed in a box at his doorstep.

Victims

 * Virginia:
 * Crowder's unidentified mother, 65-80 (infected with mutated pox virus; bashed her skull and decapitated at her spinal discs, cutting her arms and legs off postmortem; copied based off the crimes of Newton Joyce)
 * Tangier Island:
 * Lila Pruitt (killed in her home; infected with mutated pox virus; also pulled her teeth)
 * Unidentified mother and daughter (infected with mutated pox virus)
 * Unidentified drifting ex-con (blasted with a shotgun; poorly disguised as a suicide)
 * Wingo (Scarpetta's assistant; infected with mutated smallpox laced in facial spray, amplifying existing damage from AIDS)