Donald “Donnie” Barber was a deer hunter killed by Hannibal Lecter, becoming his twenty eighth known victim. Barber was a thirty-two year old man that was discharged from the air force for bigoted views. He lived in an trailer-park and found work as a sometime air-plane mechanic. Hannibal Lecter arrived back in America after murdering Rinaldo Pazzi and met Barber at a hunting store. Lecter lured him into the woods and shot him through the head with a crossbow and mutilated his body into the Blood Eagle position, an ancient supposed Norse execution where the short ribs were broken from the back and the lungs pulled out and flattened to look like wings. Lecter dressed the deer and did the same to Barber. Lecter removed the sirloin and loin from Barber and took the hunter's sweetbreads.[1]. While examining his corpse, Starling recognised this as the MO of Lecter, as he had murdered a bow hunter years ago, and had arranged the body in the style of Wound Man. Starling believed that Lecter killed Barber out of whimsy, as with the bow hunter, and believed that Lecter would be caught again.
- ↑ Autopsy had revealed he had removed the "backstrap" of a deer Barber had poached illegally and the same items from Barber himself, as well as the liver and thymus of the deer, though Barber's liver was not taken due to being cirrhotic