The psychotic Melinda White
Melinda "Mindy" White (Clea DuVall) is the villainess of the 2011 Lifetime film And Baby Will Fall.
History[]
Melinda was a high school classmate of David Rose and harbored a deep crush on him, despite the fact that he (like many of her classmates) regarded her as "odd". One night, while at her job at the local bowling alley, David came in with his friends to get drunk and party, and it was during this time that Melinda was raped by David's best friend Theo. Melinda became pregnant as a result of the assault, and her mother forced her to have an abortion.
Later in life, Melinda was working in a lab and her affections for David became an obsession, as she believed him to have impregnated her in high school. But by that point, David was now married to Ivy, who also went to the same school as David and Melinda. After learning of Ivy's past miscarriages, the conniving and delusional Melinda began plotting to get back at David for abandoning her (in her mind) and claim Ivy's current baby as her own.
Events[]
Melinda re-encountered David and Ivy when she attended a yard sale they were holding, wearing a baby bump to appear pregnant. She also let David take her on a tour of their home before leaving. Later on, Melinda broke into the Rose household to steal Ivy's necklace and toothbrush--planning to use the latter to frame David for her own murder. She also planted her shirt in their garbage covered in her own blood and the fetal tissue she had gotten from Ivy's second miscarriage to make it appear that she were pregnant with David's child and that he had murdered her to cover up an affair between the two of them. She began a police investigation by calling the police and reporting her "disappearance", posing as her sister (when she was later revealed to not have one). Melinda's sinister plan succeeded, as David was eventually arrested under suspicion of causing her disappearance.
When Melinda's mother discovered her daughter's nefarious plan and threatened to have her committed, the evil Melinda killed her and placed her body in the bathtub, filling it with ice to prevent decay. She also attacked Ivy and David's neighbor Mrs. Bindel to keep her quiet about being a witness to her crimes (though she ultimately survived with amnesia). When Ivy and her friend Jody broke into Melinda's house to find evidence to help exonerate David, they discovered photos Melinda had taken of David, revealing that she had been stalking him. They additionally found Melinda's high school diary talking about the incident at the bowling alley as well as the corpse of Melinda's mother in the bathroom, mistaking her for Melinda. The shock sent Ivy into early labor, but once at the hospital, Melinda snuck in posing as a nurse and injected her with a drug to stop the contractions.
Melinda's reveal came when Ivy returned home from the hospital to find Mrs. Bindel's dog (who she had been taking care of while she was hospitalized) dead inside the crib she'd bought for her baby. Melinda then snuck up on Ivy and injected her with a labor-inducing drug before tying her to the bed in the attic. There, Melinda revealed that she was never really pregnant and that she delusionally believed that David owed her a baby, using a knife to free Ivy from her restraints and threatening to kill her if she tried to escape (though she revealed that she planned on killing her anyways once the baby was born). When Melinda went downstairs, Ivy used the dumbwaiter to escape the attic. Melinda attacked Ivy as she tried to escape the house, leading to a fight which ended with Ivy knocking Melinda out with several injections from Melinda's medical bag. Melinda was arrested, and her final scene showed her handcuffed in the backseat of Detective Frank Blanchard, who had been the lead detective in her "disappearance", arrogantly boasting about how her plan had fooled everyone.
Trivia[]
- Clea DuVall previously appeared on CSI as delusional villainess Abigail Spencer, and on Bones as the evil McKenna Grant.
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