Benjamin Horne
Benjamin Joseph Horne is a fictional character in the television series Twin Peaks, created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, portrayed by Richard Beymer. His middle and last names are based on department store owner Joseph Horne, founder of Horne's in Pittsburgh where Mark Frost is from, while his and his brother Jerry's first names are based on the ice cream brand Ben & Jerry's.
The richest man in Twin Peaks, Horne is an archetypal 1980s cutthroat businessman, whose greatest desire in life appears to be the acquisition of wealth. As the series progressed, he was revealed, like many of the show's other characters, to have a hidden side; beneath his ruthless, greedy facade, he is a lonely, deeply-depressed man who is disappointed with how his family and life turned out.
For the first sixteen episodes of the series, he is one of the primary antagonists not directly linked to the series' main storyline of the Laura Palmer murder. He is consistently under suspicion for Laura's murder, of which he is wholly innocent, while never being suspected of the myriad criminal activities of which he is actually guilty.
Up until the revelation of Laura's true killer, Horne was used by the writers as a red herring to prevent spoilers from leaking out; at least two scenes were filmed to lead people to believe that Horne was the real killer, so that the true identity of the killer could remain a secret.
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