Strahm's Hand

Strahm's Hand is a important item in the Saw franchise, appearing in Saw VI.

History

Peter Strahm's Death

Peter Strahm was a special agent working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. At one point in his career, he got in involved in the case of serial killer John Kramer, better known as the Jigsaw Killer. Even though the corpses of John and his accomplice, Amanda Young, were found over the course of the investigation, their deadly games continued and Strahm began to suspects the leading investigator, Detective Mark Hoffman, to be Jigsaw's successor. Therefore, he observed the detective and eventually followed him to a house. Unknown to him, Hoffman had noticed him and in fact wanted him to follow him. Shortly after Hoffman entered the building, Strahm followed him inside. This building was actually the Nerve Gas House which had been used for another one of Jigsaw's games about six months earlier. While carefully making his way through the house, Strahm eventually found a trapdoor on the floor in one of the rooms, which led him down to an underground tunnel network.

Shortly afterwards, he found a room with a large glass coffin in its center. The coffin was filled with broken glass shards, as well as a tape recorder. Strahm grabbed it and played the message left for him by Hoffman, but stopped when he heard Hoffman's steps behind him. He quickly went into hiding behind the door and waited for the detective. When Hoffman arrived and entered the room, he found the tape lying on the floor, and Strahm calmly approached him from behind while holding him at gun point. However, Hoffman saw a reflection of Strahm in the coffin glass and therefore thwarted his surprise attack. The two men engaged in a fight and eventually Strahm managed to lock Hoffman inside the coffin. Seconds later, the door to the room closed, and Strahm furiously demanded Hoffman to tell him how to open it, but Hoffman just calmly pointed at the tape. When the agent listened to the second half of the tape, the coffin was slowly lowered down into a hollow space in the floor, while the walls of the room started to move towards each other. Strahm desperately tried to find a way out and angrily yelled at Hoffman. However, he was eventually crushed to death by the walls, while Hoffman averted his gaze in disgust. (Saw V)

Moments later, Hoffman was transported to another room nearby where he was able to open and leave the coffin. He returned to the hallway and used a switch which caused the walls that killed Strahm to return to their original position. Upon reentering the room, he saw Strahm's mutilated corpse which was still clinging to a grate at the ceiling with one hand. When he approached it, it fell down to the floor. However Hoffman realized that the now severed hand, which still clinged to the grate, was almost unharmed. Therefore he removed it by using pliers and took it with him in order to use it to place Strahm's fingerprints on his future crime scenes. (Saw VI)

Eddie and Simone's Test

Feeling safe now, Hoffman continued the games undaunted. His next two victims were Simone and Eddie, two ruthless money lenders who had ruined the economic existence of numerous people by granting them high credits even though they knew that these people couldn't pay them back. Therefore, he set up a game for them in a factory and abducted them. Each one of them had a vicious device put on their heads which would pierce their skulls with drills after a timer of 60 seconds went off. The only way to survive was to cut off their own flesh and put it on a scale in the middle of the room. Only the person who sacrificed the most flesh would survive. Eventually, Simone was able to win the game by cutting off her left arm. After that, she tried to flee in an attempt to get help. When he was alone, Hoffman entered the room, used Strahm's severed hand to place the latter's fingerprints on the scale and Eddie's eyelids and cut a jigsaw piece from his victim's skin, before he left. Shortly afterwards, he was called back to the crime scene, which had been found by the police by then.

Upon his arrival, a female officer informed him that the FBI was now in charge of the investigation and had asked for Hoffman to come to the crime scene as soon as possible. When he entered the room, he was surprised to see Strahm's supervisor, Special Agent Dan Erickson. The agent told him about the fingerprints and showed them to him with a black light. Furthermore, he informed him that the fingerprints had already been identified as those of Peter Strahm, while voicing his surprise and dismay of this new situation. However, he also stated that they had prepared a surprise for Strahm on their own and led Hoffman to the next room. Hoffman was shocked, when he saw Special Agent Lindsey Perez, Strahm's partner, standing before him, even though she supposedly had been killed by one of Jigsaw's traps. Erickson revealed that they had staged her death in order to guarantee her safety until they knew more about Jigsaw's unknown apprentice. As they now believed to know that Strahm was the secret accomplice of Jigsaw, they asked Hoffman to work together. Hoffman initially hesitated as the agents hadn't informed him about Perez' faked death earlier, but ultimately accepted the offer when Erickson promised him to inform him about all future information and FBI activities regarding the Jigsaw Case. (Saw VI)

Reopening the Seth Baxter Case

Shortly afterwards, Hoffman received a call from Erickson and was ordered to come to the FBI headquarters. When he arrived, he was greeted by Erickson and Perez, who informed him about an anomaly found in Strahm's fingerprints. Perez told him that they had found traces of Freon, more explicitly Dichlorodifluoromethane R-12, a chemical substance which wasn't produced anymore since 1994. In order to find out if the crime scene of the latest game was polluted or if Strahm's fingerprints were already contaminated with the substance before, Perez and Erickson planned to find out what was formerly produced in the building where Simone and Eddie's game had taken place. Erickson was then interrupted by a phone call from the FBI's technical lab. Due to some connections between the murders of Eddie and Seth Baxter, the ex-boyfriend and murderer of Hoffman's sister, Angelina Acomb, Erickson had ordered the lab to examine the tape from Seth's crime scene, suspecting that it might have been recorded by someone else than John Kramer. Moments later, Erickson told them that the original voice on the Seth Baxter tape was soon going to be decrypted and told Hoffman and Perez to accompany them to the external lab. (Saw VI)

Killing Spree

The group reached the lab soon afterwards. When they came in, FBI technician Sachi was still working on the tape. As they had to wait some more time, Hoffman took a cup of coffee from the machine in the room. Noticing Hoffman's increasing nervousness, Perez tried to put him under pressure and began to discuss Strahm's motivation for helping Jigsaw and stated that she had never suspected him to be mentally unstable during the five years she had worked with him. Erickson then talked about the possibility that Strahm had killed Seth Baxter to throw suspicion on Hoffman. However there was still some detail that didn't fit the picture and therefore he finally revealed to Hoffman, that Strahm, judging by the analysis of his fingerprints, must have already been dead by the time he left his prints at the crime scene of Simone and Eddie's game. Seconds later, Sachi restored the tape, finally revealing the voice to be that of Mark Hoffman. However, before the agents could react, Hoffman quickly pulled out a knife from his pocket, slashed Erickson's jugular vein and threw the hot coffee in Perez' face. Then, he cut off the power and grabbed Sachi, who was shot in the back three times by Agent Perez as Hoffman used her as a human shield. Upon doing so, Hoffman was able to approach Perez and stabbed her multiple times in the abdomen with his knife. He then asked her who else knew about him, to which she responded with her dying breath that everyone knew about him. Calling it a lie, Hoffman stabbed her one final time, killing her in the process.

Following the massacre, Hoffman threw away his knife and ran out of the lab. Seconds later, he returned with the severed hand of Strahm, which he had kept in a cooling box in his car trunk, and a gas canister. He placed Strahm's fingerprints all around the room and also on Perez' gun as well as the screwdriver which he had used to cut off the power. Afterwards, he poured the gasoline all over the floor, the corpses and the technical instruments. When he approached Erickson, he briefly hesitated and smiled when he saw that the latter was still alive, before he poured the fuel over him as well. Then, Hoffman set the lab on fire before finally fleeing the scene. (Saw VI)

Trivia

As Strahm's hand is not seen or mentioned later on, it is likely that it was burned in the lab along with the corpses of Erickson, Perez and Sachi. This is likely since Hoffman no longer needed to keep Strahm's hand.

Apperances and References

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