Tess Williams (Jud Tylor) is the main villainess from "Defective," episode 2.06 of Perception (airdate July 30, 2013). She is an employee at Oscidyne, the company responsible for creating Deep Brain Stimulators (DBS) for Parkinson's Disease sufferers.
As also revealed, Tess was the illicit lover of Dr. Randall Vetter, the physician of violinist Sario Donati, whose DBS malfunctioned and caused him to be hospitalized. Randall's wife, Susan, also suffered from Parkinson's and had an Oscidyne 5.0 DBS model in her brain as well, and it was three years prior to the events that Randall and Tess met, though they never slept together at the time. Once Susan's tremors became worse, Randall's attraction for his wife decreased, and he ended up sleeping with Tess. When Susan got the DBS, the tremors stopped, and Randall spent more time with his wife, which upset Tess to the point where she plotted to kill Susan to be with Randall.
It was revealed that Tess was the one who tampered with Sario's DBS, using her MP3 to raise the DBS' level, causing Sario to have side effects. Sario was a test for Tess' real target--Susan--but Tess learned that Randall was planning to shut off Susan's DBS out of fear that they were defective (which was part of Tess' plan). Knowing that she had to work quickly, the evil Tess appeared at the Vetter household and sabotaged Susan's DBS, commiting her villainous act from outside a window from the house. However, the villainess was surprised to see Randall coming home early, and she witnessed Susan's violent tremors resulting in her shoving Randall, as Susan was angry over her DBS being on. Randall's head struck the edge of the table and killed him, and after Tess realized that her lover was dead, she became immensely heartbroken.
After Susan was saved and realized what she had inadvertently done, her deceased husband was actually suspected of the attempt to kill his wife to be with his lover, with Dr. Daniel Pierce, Kate Moretti, and Donnie Ryan not knowing who his lover was. Pierce's hallucination of a better and more sane version of himself showing him a photo of a happy family led him to the realization that Tess was the true attempted killer, and it was during her interrogation that Tess revealed her affair with Randall. After denying the claims at first, Tess admitted to the attempt, stating that she raised the DBS level just enough to cause side effects. As Pierce revealed to Donnie, Tess' inability to look at Susan with her son present actually gave her away, as she was heartbroken that her evil actions ended up resulting in Randall's death, with Tess stating that she wanted Randall for herself. Tess was later arrested (off-screen) for her attempt to kill Susan, as well as the attempt on Sario
Trivia[]
- Jud Tylor also appeared as identity thief Eve Martinkus on CSI: Miami, as well as the evil Mae Feinberg on The Mentalist, and villainous angel Adina on Supernatural.
- Jud Tylor's villainous characters from The Mentalist and Perception share similarities, as both were adulteresses who resorted to attempting to eliminate the wives so they can be with their lovers. One difference is that Mae was successful and married her lover, while Tess was unsuccessful and her lover was inadvertently killed because of her villainous actions.
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