Before leaving town, following a fight with Burke Devlin at the Blue Whale because he was harassing Maggie, Willie heard from David that the Collins family ancestors were buried with their personal jewels; Willie decided to help himself to the jewels by breaking into the Collins family mausoleum. In an effort to abscond with the jewels of Naomi Collins, he inadvertently discovered a secret room in the rear of the crypt. Inside was a single coffin wrapped in large, heavy chains. Willie removed the chains and opened the coffin. Rather than finding a cache of jewelry, however, Willie unwittingly freed Naomi’s son, Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid), who had been turned into a vampire 170 years before and was later chained in his coffin by his friend Ben Stokes (Thayer David) on the request of Barnabas’ father, Joshua Collins. After being bit by Barnabas, Willie then became his slave. Shortly after his release, Barnabas showed up at Collinwood and introduced himself, first to Elizabeth, then the rest of the family, as a 'cousin' from England. Victoria was charmed, but was more concerned with Jason's hold on Elizabeth especially when he forced her into marriage and, on her wedding day to Jason, Elizabeth could take no more and finally admitted the truth behind Jason’s hold on her: 18 years earlier, Elizabeth had killed her husband, Paul Stoddard, and that Jason, a friend of Paul’s, had buried his body in the Collinwood basement in a trunk, and that Jason had been blackmailing her with this information. Elizabeth also mentioned that she had confided this to Victoria and made her promise to keep this secret to herself. However, when Burke Devlin and Collinsport Sheriff George Patterson (Dana Elcar) went down to the basement to investigate, they dig up the trunk, and later showed both Elizabeth and Roger that Paul’s body was not in the trunk: it was in fact empty! Jason, apprehended by Patterson’s deputy after fleeing Collinwood, sheepishly revealed privately to Elizabeth that Paul had only been stunned when she hit him, that Jason later helped Stoddard disappear and lied to Elizabeth in order to get blackmail money in exchange for his silence. Elizabeth was furious that she had not only wasted 18 years of both never leaving Collinwood to guard this secret but also that Jason let her live with the guilt of believing that she killed Carolyn’s father. Though Elizabeth does