Dr. Frederick Chilton is a fictional character appearing in Thomas Harris' novels Red Dragon (1981) and The Silence of the Lambs (1988), along with the film and television adaptations of Harris's novels. In the novels Red Dragon Chilton is first introduced in Harris' 1981 novel Red Dragon as the pompous, incompetent director of a sanitarium near Baltimore, Maryland, acting as the jailer for the cannibalistic serial killer Hannibal Lecter. When FBI profiler Will Graham goes to Lecter for advice on capturing another serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde, Chilton makes an unwelcome attempt to question Graham about Lecter's psyche. When Dolarhyde learns of Graham's visits with Lecter, the two killers attempt to correspond through the classifieds of a tabloid newspaper; a cleaning crew finds one of Dolarhyde's letters, hidden within Lecter's toilet paper spool. Chilton informs Graham and his superior, Jack Crawford, of the discovery. Lecter's reply is intercepted and revealed to contain Graham's home address, which Dolarhyde uses to track down Graham in the novel's climax. The Silence of the Lambs In The Silence of the Lambs, Chilton allows Crawford to send an FBI trainee, Clarice Starling, to interview Lecter about another serial killer, Buffalo Bill. He makes a clumsy pass at Starling on their first meeting and she quickly rejects him. Chilton gradually grows envious of Starling's success, where he has failed, in convincing Lecter to share information. He eventually uses a recording device to eavesdrop on their interviews, from which he learns of Crawford's offer to transfer Lecter to a better prison facility in exchange for revealing Buffalo Bill's identity. Chilton learns that the offer is a trick but sets it up anyway, then quickly hogs the spotlight as the plan's architect. Lecter is transferred, but gives false information: he claims that the killer's name is "Billy Rubin", a pun on bilirubin, a compound that colors human bile and feces and a reference to Chilton's hair color (in the film adaptation, he gives the name "Louis Friend", an anagram for "iron sulfide", or fool's gold, as a red herring). Lecter gives Starling the real information needed to track down Buffalo Bill. Afterwards, Lecter makes a bloody escape from custody after using an improvised handcuff key made from a pen tube (taken from a pen which Chilton himself carelessly left in Lecter's cell) and paper clip he was able to use only when transferred to police custody. While still on