Spencer Truman
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| Dr. Spencer Truman | |||||||||||||
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 Paul Satterfield as Spencer Truman on One Life to Live |
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| One Life to Live | |||||||||||||
| First appearance | May 25, 2005 | ||||||||||||
| Last appearance | September 24, 2007 | ||||||||||||
| Cause/reason | Murdered by Lindsay Rappaport | ||||||||||||
| Profile | |||||||||||||
| Gender | Male | ||||||||||||
| Date of death | January 26, 2007 | ||||||||||||
| Occupation | Doctor | ||||||||||||
| Residence | Llanview, Pennsylvania | ||||||||||||
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Dr. Spencer Truman is a fictional character on the soap opera One Life to Live. He was played by Paul Satterfield from May 25, 2005 to January 30, 2007. Satterfield has reprised the role, in the form of hallucinations by characters Miles Laurence and John McBain, several times in 2007.
[edit] Character history
Spencer Truman was a brilliant doctor, but he had come to Llanview, Pennsylvania in 2005 with a secret agenda. His younger brother, David Vickers was furious to have his older brother back in his life. Dr. Paige Miller, Spencer's ex-wife, was definitely not happy with his arrival in Llanview either.
Despite their concerns, Spencer did not plan on leaving Llanview anytime soon. However, Spencer was murdered on January 26, 2007. Before his death, Spencer developed a friendship with Blair Cramer (and later had an affair with her) after performing an operation on her son, Jack Manning that eventually saved his life. He also expressed interest in Blair's cousin Kelly Cramer. The two shared several dates. David and Paige were determined to keep Spencer away from the people that they loved.
[edit] Spencer's criminal behavior
Obsessed with winning Blair Cramer's love for himself, Spencer framed Todd Manning for the murder of Margaret Cochran, who was still alive. In reality, Spencer had faked Margaret's death. Throughout Todd's grueling murder trial, Spencer was finally able to make Blair question Todd's innocence, and seduced her. Todd was sent to death row for Margaret's murder and was executed. However, Todd was brought back to life by Spencer when John McBain came into the room with the very much alive Margaret.
Meanwhile, Spencer had secretly delivered Margaret's baby, with help from his ex-wife, Paige. Spencer then kidnapped the baby and illegally gave him up for adoption. The baby was recently adopted by Michael McBain and his wife Marcie Walsh. Todd is the baby's biological father.
Unbeknownst to David and Paige, Spencer had murdered John and Michael McBain's father, Thomas McBain, 25 years earlier. Spencer used his manipulation of the facts of that night's events to blackmail his brother and ex-wife and keep them under his sway. (See Spencer Truman and the Murder of Thomas McBain for more plot details.)
Spencer also had a vendetta against Asa Buchanan. Spencer's dying mother, Emma Bradley, had been one of Asa's wife Renee Divine's former bordello 'girls', and told Spencer that Asa was his biological father. However, the results of a DNA test showed that Spencer was not Asa's son after all. Spencer and Emma didn't realize that David was the illegitimate Buchanan heir, not Spencer. On New Year's Eve 2005, Spencer injected Kevin Buchanan with a virus that caused him to be unable to father children. Later that night, Spencer drugged Asa Buchanan, and told the hallucinating old man that he would destroy Asa's family piece by piece. Asa never remembered the night Spencer drugged him at the lodge, but marked him as an enemy nonetheless. When Spencer attempted to confront Asa about what he believed was his true paternity, he was shocked to discover he was not a Buchanan, and that his endless pursuit of the Buchanans' destruction had been pointless.
Eventually, Blair caught onto Spencer's dirty deeds, and after Todd's failed execution, she became determined to redeem herself in Todd's eyes and stop Spencer once and for all; she began a 'Mata Hari'-like scheme, staying in Spencer's bed and trying to force him to slip up and incriminate himself, drugging him and recording their conversations. Ultimately, Blair and John McBain succeeded in getting Spencer jailed, but he copped an insanity plea, fooling court-appointed psychiatrist Marty Saybrooke into believing he was unfit to stand trial. Todd abducted Spencer, determined to torture him to death, but ended up sending Spencer and Blair off a building rooftop by accident. While recuperating in the hospital in early 2007, Spencer descended deeper and deeper into his own private psychosis, obsessing over Blair. The night that he sneaked into Blair's nearby hospital room, drugging her and preparing to rape and then "marry" her, he was murdered by Lindsay Rappaport. By killing him, she was protecting Marcie McBain, who she loved like a daughter, from finding out the truth about her adopted son Tommy. Todd Manning was Tommy's father and if he found out, he would take him from Marcie...so she had to stop Spencer from spilling the beans.
After Spencer's death, Jessica Buchanan's uncle Miles Laurence came to town. Miles had been a longtime patient of Spencer's; Spencer's surgical genius had fixed Miles' grotesquely deformed facial features. The sheltered Miles, having lived his entire life in hospitals and institutions, believed Truman to be his only friend, and took his posthumous messages from beyond the grave as gospel, deciding to take revenge on all of Spencer's enemies himself. Miles had Spencer's nemesis Todd Manning assaulted and abducted and kept the secret of Tommy McBain's paternity, but after his scheme to force Marty Saybrooke to become his wife fell apart, a remorseful Miles realized the extent of Spencer's misdeeds and gave up his "friend's" final secret, revealing to Blair that Tommy was Todd and Margaret's missing son.
