 Using FBI records , Mulder and Scully find that eighty @-@ seven people have vanished within a two @-@ hundred mile radius of Dudley over the past half @-@ century . Mulder suspects that the town 's residents are practicing cannibalism in order to prolong life , possibly explaining Paula 's youthful appearance . Mulder also realizes that Kearns originally had Creutzfeldt @-@ Jakob disease , and that the other residents caught the illness after consuming his body . The agents try to search the town 's birth records for confirmation of Paula 's age , but find that they have been destroyed . At Chaco 's mansion , Chaco and Harold meet with Doris , who tearfully implies that she " helped " Chaco kill her husband ; Chaco instructs her to obstruct the FBI 's investigation . 
